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13 victims, ages 2 to 29, kept shackled by parents

An 11-year-old girl said that Louise Turpin would often punch them with a closed fist and hit her with an open hand, Riverside County Deputy Sheriff Daniel Brown testified. The girl said that sometimes, her mother pulled her hair so forcefully it would lift her off the ground, Brown said.

The girl said she was "always hungry," he further testified. The children were fed jalapeno baloney sandwiches while the parents ate Jersey Mike's, pizza and fries, he said. The girl said Louise Turpin would buy apple juice but the children weren't allowed to drink it. She kept pie in the fridge or pantry until it became moldy and then threw it away.

A doctor who treated the family said the 11-year-old girl was in the worst condition when the examined her, Patrick Morris, Supervising Investigator for Riverside County District Attorney, testified.

She had a body weight percentile of .01 and her mid arm circumference was equal to that of a 4.5-month-old baby, Morris testified. The doctor said she had psychosocial dwarfism, stunted growth due to living in an environment that is abusive or neglected.

The 15-year-old boy had difficulty walking, vitamin D deficiency, and visible scoliosis. He told the doctor that he wanted to kill animals and could predict the future, Morris testified.
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The BBC article glosses over a lot of the specifics but it's helpful to refresh one's memory of what these parents actually did to their kids.
 
Matthew Best said:
David and Louise Turpin's children told a court they still love their mother and father despite all the abuse.
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That is what's so awful about the abuse of children like this: Since they're 100% dependent of their parents and always were, they can't allow themselves to even think of them as abusive. It's like the Stockholm syndrome, only worse, since they never really had the experience of a normal, safe environment to compare their present condition with:

Stockholm syndrome is a condition which causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity.
Stockholm syndrome (Wikipedia)
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In the case of victims of the Stockholm syndrome, the condition is only temporary. In the case of parental abuse, it seems to be universal.
 
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Is anyone aware of what the parents background is? Were they ever - normal? I also wonder about how they were raised. History can repeat itself.
 
bruto said:
I'm waiting for the conspiracy theory that they're really secretly childless Europeans.
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On the contrary! They seem to live up to all expectations:

The movement sees children as a blessing from God and it encourages procreation, abstaining from all forms of birth control (including natural family planning) and sterilization.
Quiverfull (Wikipedia)
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wasapi said:
Is anyone aware of what the parents background is? Were they ever - normal? I also wonder about how they were raised. History can repeat itself.
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Wiki has this:

The couple are adherents of the Quiverfull movement and Pentecostalism. According to David's parents, the couple kept having children because "God called on them" to do so.
According to Louise's sister Elizabeth Flores, she, Louise, and their cousin Patricia were sexually abused as children by their grandfather. Another sister of Louise Turpin, Teresa Robinette, claimed that their mother let a rich pedophile sexually abuse them as children in exchange for cash. A new book by Elizabeth Flores detailed how the accused child abuser was obsessed with witchcraft, Satanic rituals and Ouija boards. Flores said her sister was obsessed with the "dark arts" and had even tried to persuade her to join a snake handling festival.
Turpin case: Perpetrators (Wikipedia)
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wasapi said:
Is anyone aware of what the parents background is? Were they ever - normal?
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If I remember right, the first few children were being raised normally initially - going to local schools and seeing doctors. Then something changed.

The parents belong to the Quiverfull movement and used some tricks known in that movement - such as registering a "private school" that only their own children attended, which was not subject to state scrutiny.

But the Turpins also diverged markedly from typical Quiverfull families. For instance, although taking care to strip it of anything they would consider "liberal bias", Quiverfull parents do actually educate their children. They network with other homeschooling parents and organizations, engage in "extra-cirricular" activities in the homeschooling community, and their children have to do "schoolwork". Whereas according to the Turpin children, David and Louise never made even a cursory attempt at providing education. Also, normal Quiverfull parents while highly oppressive in terms of micromanaging the social lives of their children (particularly girls), do not utterly forbid them from ever leaving the house or making friends.

Most importantly, typical Quiverfull parents don't starve their children as a matter of course. According to the kids, the Turpin couple bought plenty of food for themselves and regularly had takeout fast food and pizza; they just forbid the children from ever being able to eat any of it. There's something of deliberate torture in that situation, in my opinion.
 
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Thank you, Checkmite. I am curious about what the parents upbringing as children. Curious what type of parents the Turpin's had growing up, and what the family environment and dynamics were like. I can't imagine two people meeting and growing sick together, but two already sick people uniting make more sense to me.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
Funny, I thought snake handling was a Christian sect thing. The abuse seems possible particularly given how she grew up, but I do wonder if Satanism=Different Flavour of Christianity.
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Satanism is a confusing bug. In my experience, there seems to be three distinct kinds.

The first kind is first and foremost a theatrical LARP, based on horror tropes and Christian urban legends, almost entirely tongue-in-cheek and was created and is perpetuated mostly just to troll anxious Christians. This is LaVey's and the "Church of Satan"'s type of satanism and it seems to me to be the majority of self-professed "Satanists".

The second kind is a kind of vaguely-defined neo-paganism that claims inspiration from Milton's "Paradise Lost" and purports to worship Satan as a generic symbol of rebellion against orthodoxy. These people seem to represent the smallest group of self-described Satanists, although they seem to really want to project ownership of the title; that is, they would rather everyone treat them as the default definition of "Satanism", in much the same way that Wiccans assert themselves as the default definition of "witch".

The third kind is the only kind that really bares watching. It consists mostly of isolated individuals or miniature "cults" who have independently decided they want to be "satanists" and build a unique practice just for themselves. They seem to design their bespoke religions around Christian ideas of "what satanists should be like", or what is "dark" or most "evil" and in this way they are much like the first group, with the exception that they're serious about it - either they're delusional and believe they're actually in contact with Satan, or otherwise are willing to entertain that Satan is real and will reward proper worship. I think there are less of these than the first group mentioned above, but I tend to think there are more of them than the second group. This kind can be harmless edgy high schoolers, but they can also be dangerous; whenever you hear about a "satanic" murder (that actually happened) it is one of these individuals or mini-cults that is responsible.
 
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P.J. Denyer said:
Funny, I thought snake handling was a Christian sect thing. The abuse seems possible particularly given how she grew up, but I do wonder if Satanism=Different Flavour of Christianity.
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Well, snakes are the most obvious symbol of Satan in the Bible, starting with Genesis. No Christianity, no Satanism, I guess.
 
https://abcnews.go.com/US/jordan-turpin-details-making-911-call-moments-escaped/story?id=81178117

Jordan, the 17-year-old who made the initial 911 call, and her sister Jennnifer have been interviewed by Diane Sawyer and those in the US will be able to watch this tomorrow. Story - and audio of the 911 call - at the link above.

Jordan Turpin placed the call shortly after making a decision that would change her family’s lives forever.

The 17-year-old said her hands were shaking uncontrollably as she made the brave decision to dial 911 in 2018. She said it was one of the few times she had been outside in that California neighborhood.

“I was actually on the road,” Turpin, now 21, said in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer, “because I didn’t even know about the sidewalks. You’re supposed to be on the sidewalk, but I’d never been out there.”
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It's funny that there were people actively arguing that the police made up this entire story and that these two parents were the only actual victims.

Also loved it when the children's profoundly stunted growth was actually perfectly normal and the doctors at the hospital who said otherwise were part of the conspiracy against these unfortunate parents.
 
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The ABC 20/20 special, with bodycam video of the police entering the home for the first time, is heartbreaking. What's especially chilling is that some of the kids were placed in foster care where they were abused again, kids who were too old for foster care have ended up homeless and hungry, and the state public guardian in charge of their care won't let them access the hundreds of thousands of dollars donated to help them.
https://abc.com/shows/2020/episode-...-house-of-horror-a-diane-sawyer-special-event
 
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Bob001 said:
The ABC 20/20 special, with bodycam video of the police entering the home for the first time, is heartbreaking. What's especially chilling is that some of the kids were placed in foster care where they were abused again, kids who were too old for foster care have ended up homeless and hungry, and the state public guardian in charge of their care won't let them access the hundreds of thousands of dollars donated to help them.
https://abc.com/shows/2020/episode-...-house-of-horror-a-diane-sawyer-special-event
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Can you post something not behind a paywall?
 
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