YouTuber Ruby Franke’s chilling story shows us that internet culture has given child abuse a new place to hide | Zoe Williams

The most disturbing thing about the prolific parenting vlogger was that she was peddling cruelty worldwide in plain sight

When I first started working in the mid-90s, there was a big furore when a US evangelical church produced a leaflet about child-rearing that included detail on the right size of cane to use to punish a six-month-old baby. The story was enough of a scandal that it travelled across the Atlantic - in the old-fashioned way, from a US newspaper to a British one - but it didn't merit comment, we decided in the end, because it was just a sad story about a bad person. Child abuse exists, and sometimes hides itself under religion: there are wider conversations about whether or not religions could do more at an institutional level to stamp it out, but those, if they're in good faith, shouldn't be started by professed atheists, to whom such institutions would be unreceptive. It was also felt at the time that, just because a person says a thing, even goes so far as to print it on a leaflet, one needn't necessarily react as if they've created a movement.

Thirty years on, child abuse still exists, and still sometimes disguises itself as faith: Ruby Franke, a Utah mother of six, was convicted yesterday of aggravated child abuse, on charges so grave that her consequential sentences could amount to up to 60 years in prison. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she was a prolific parenting YouTuber until her 8 Passengers channel was taken down by the platform last year. She proselytised harsh discipline, such as withholding food as punishment; but she omitted to mention in the vlogs that she created what a prosecutor called concentration camp-like conditions" for her children, that she made them do physical tasks in extreme heat without shoes, socks or water, and forced them to stand on hot concrete for hours, sometimes even days, at a time. Her malnourished 12-year-old son, who was bound with duct tape, escaped and asked for help from a neighbour. Police later found his sister in a similarly malnourished state.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist