Friendly reminder to everyone that the rest of the world has signed on the United Nation's Connvention on the Rights of the Child; the US doesn't like that it could prevent children from being spanked, because God wants us to spank our children (spare the rod, spoil the child).

Religion is often a basis for the suffering of children.

And zero self reflection. They never point their hyper-critical eyes towards a mirror.

When it comes to mormons, never forget that they had networks of their pastors and elders to hide and ignore abuse. They were more systematic about it than the cuntish catholics.

https://apnews.com/article/mormon-sex-abuse-de446ad8212b6ca50ecbaaf222c35e7e

https://apnews.com/article/mormon-church-sexual-abuse-investigation-e0e39cf9aa4fbe0d8c1442033b894660

This person's actions are an outlier, but the beliefs are not. My own mother held very similar ones during my early years, and the circle of women at the church was not shy in voicing their opinions which, oh so outlier-like, were also similar to this woman's. That was in an eastern US state, in a protestant church. Don't forget that the US had the (insanity of) belief in the childcare cults of satan, that D&D was from satan, that rock music was the road to satan, etc. Those were massive, widespread beliefs. They haven't gone away entirely. Talk to members of a rural church, and you'll hear the subtle hints of all those things, but they've learned not to be overt.

There are many, many Christians who abuse their kids under the guise of godliness. Ever heard of "To Train Up a Child"? It's a whole book about how to properly abuse your child to turn them into a mindless, obedient slave. They start hitting them as infants for showing curiosity. There are popular Christian influencers who have openly spoken about the ways they "discipline" their kids - one said her husband "doesn't know his own strength" with their kids. Aka he's beaten the shit out of them more than once. Sure, Ruby Franke turned it up to 11, but she and her husband routinely abused their children and were public about it for years, and plenty of people saw no problem with it and continued to consume their content.

I'd argue it's not mental illness, it's the natural consequence of practicing a branch of Christianity that doesn't see children as people, just little trophies who aren't meant to have any personality, needs, or wants. They're supposed to parrot everything their parents believe and otherwise not be seen or heard.

What?

This is par for the course.

Pretty much every Abrahmic offshoot was started by someone who was completely insane.

According to their own history, it all kicked off with Abraham killing family members because a voice in his head told him that anyone doubting the voice needs murdered.

He was violent and insane and now literally billions and billions of people worship the voice he invented, and legitimately believe that if a voice in their head shows up telling them to do horrible shit, it's probably cool because maybe it's just God again.

There is absolutely nothing surprising when a person who not only believes those fairy tales, but come from a family they may have spent thousands of years believing them, starts thinking theyre the next "special one".

Sure, most people dont actually believe in their own religions. But they pretend it's real, and then the really crazy ones do shit like this.

Being shocked this keeps happening is like asking why your car runs out of gas when you never put gas in it until after the tanks dry

This is the rational result of what they're doing.

You'd often finds that religious extremists prefer to prey on the mentally unwell. They're more susceptible to abuse and easier to turn into abusers themselves. Then the chain repeats and the abuse self-replicates, propagating the abuse. Very sane and well adjusted individuals can be made to be really cruel and destructive via religious abuse.

Her business partner (and co-defendant) is described as a "mental health counselor." I'm sure she's fine.

/s

The satanic temple name is more than anything just sarcastic, they don't believe in Satan, they're just using it because they know it irks the religious.

The father is currently fighting for custody. The situation is complicated, but Hildebrandt would wedge herself between couples, encourage wives to sever communications with the husbands, and convince them to force the husbands to move out of their joint home. Often because the husbands were 'sex addicts' (e.g., might have masturbated once or twice, of looked at pornography). Franke's husband probably had no idea what was going on with Hildebrant. He did file for divorce within a few weeks of the arrest.

"Why don't you take a seat right over there, pastor?"

Whole lot of irony in that one sentence.

Until a mental health issue has been concretely determined, I believe it's somewhat irresponsible to toss the idea around that it's the underlying root cause for this obscene behavior.

Religion, like other dogmas, has historically empowered and continues to empower a lot of otherwise mentally healthy people to feel okay doing plenty of fucked up shit, simply because religion said it's okay to do it.

Ever heard of the Stanford Prisoner Experiment? Many "normal" people will do terrible things if simply given permission.

If religion didn’t exist, a lot of this bullshit wouldn’t happen. Some still would, but a good portion wouldn’t happen.

Franke 100% would have been doing this even without being a YouTuber. What she was doing on 8 Passengers is not all that extreme in Mormon circles, and I don't mean just the deeply conservative ones. Yes, she went a little farther than most Mormons would be comfortable with, but the core ideas? They entirely understand where she was coming from. The commonly cited example is her refusing to bring lunch to a child (6yo?) that forgot it, saying that it's 'personal responsibility'; many Mormons would argue that it's a little too young to expect a 6yo to be fully responsible like that, but if a 10yo child forgot? Or an 8yo? No problem.

I don't think society understands the scale of ignorance and evil of other humans that walk among us. I used to always say it's 50/50. But I think it's more like 75/25 and decent people with respect for life are the minority. It feels like it's game over for humanity.