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

Some random thoughts.

I'm interested in how the 17 year old plotted the escape and the subsequent call to authorities. From what I've been able to gather the children weren't given much information about how the world at large worked. There was no access to TV and probably no radio. If there was internet in the house I suspect the parents made sure none of the children ever used it, or it was nanny filtered in the extreme.

So how did she learn about calling 911? And where did the cell phone come from? Apparently it wasn't registered to a carrier. I know that phone systems will try very hard to get a 911 call through. I wonder if she knew that or just was lucky that it's how the system works?

I'm guessing that since they had been out of the house a few times for trips to Disneyland and Las Vegas, there would be opportunities to pick up a few facts.

I've read that one of the boys was attending college. Apparently his mother would drive him there, hang around outside his classes, then whisk him back home at the end of the school day. I wonder what he was studying and whose idea it was for him to go?

Apparently they kept journals. That tells me they were taught to read and write. But what was there to write about? I suspect the journals are for the most part very boring, with the odd fascinating parts here and there.
 
Puppycow said:
For a 29-year-old woman to weigh 82 pounds is off the chart:
http://halls.md/average-weight-women/

(wish I had a better link, but it's below the 5th percentile and is close to a normal weight for an 11-year-old girl.)

It sounds like the sort of weight you might hear about in a case of extreme anorexia or bulimia.

I think we can say that their normal physical development was stunted.
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I don't think that they are height stunted. I went back to the photos. A number of the girls are already as tall as or taller than their mother. The younger ones are shorter as is expected since they are still gaining height. It might turn out that all of the daughters end up being taller than their mother. Same with the boys. Height stunting is just not there in the photos when you compare the kids to the parents.

Now we are told that they were regularly beaten and strangled. The photos show no bruising or evidence of strangulation at the neck.
 
William Parcher said:
....
Now we are told that they were regularly beaten and strangled. The photos show no bruising or evidence of strangulation at the neck.
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You sound desperate to minimize the unspeakable hell these children survived. Yeah, it is sickening to believe. That doesn't mean it isn't true. Read the latest reports:
http://beta.latimes.com/local/lanow...ve-perris-20180119-story.html#nt=oft12aH-2gp2
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ce-called-it-depraved/?utm_term=.077bc1b232b5
 
William Parcher said:
Now we are told that they were regularly beaten and strangled. The photos show no bruising or evidence of strangulation at the neck.
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Okay, stay with me now because we're going to take a leap of logic. Perhaps, it's possible that prior to the photos no one was strangled. It could also be that it was done in such a way that the perpetrator did not leave marks.
 
William Parcher said:
911 is how you call the police. But we're told that they don't know what a police officer is. We're told they are uneducated and detached from the real world. Yet the girl knows how to operate a cellphone.
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Children can be taught from a very young age that you call 911 when you need "help", and retain that idea, without learning or needing to know the intricacies or specifics of what happens when you call. It's possible that sometime in the last 17 years the girl became familiar with the basic concept of "call 911 for help".

And it's not all that unbelievable that the girl may have been aware of the basic concepts behind using a phone. It has been said the parents were keen to do things like leave food out in plain sight of the children while forbidding them to eat it. This suggests that the parents did not necessarily deprive themselves of the same things that they deprived their children of. One or both of the parents may have owned a cell phone and freely used it in front of the children enough for them to absorb what it was and basically how it worked. Additionally, the phone itself may have made it easy: Some simple cell phones, when not activated for service, have an option on the home screen to call emergency services.

That none of the 3 or 4 photos we have shows any bruising is meaningless, it only indicates that with a week or so before the moment they were taken none of the kids was choked hard enough to leave a bruise. It's important to note that none of the photos we have is candid - they are posed shots taken in public on what are obviously very special occasions and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the parents had the foresight to make sure the children weren't obviously bruised or dirty on these rare occasions when they were out in view of the public. Perhaps on these occasions the parents saved any earned "discipline" for after the family got back home.
 
These kinds of inconsistencies are not news to anyone who has been involved with the child protective services.

"Strangled every day! Locked in the basement every night! But no one suspected because they were in school every morning!"

"No contact with the outside world, but closets full of trendy clothes and dating far too young!"

It doesn't matter what the truth is. What matters is how much money the state will get from the feds for treating the problems -the stranger the tales, the bigger the checks.
 
We are now told that the children were forced to sleep all day and be awake all night. A reversed normalcy for a human. Does this mean that the parents also had that same reversal?
 
Blue Mountain said:
So how did she learn about calling 911? And where did the cell phone come from? Apparently it wasn't registered to a carrier. I know that phone systems will try very hard to get a 911 call through. I wonder if she knew that or just was lucky that it's how the system works?
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I have a mobile (cell) phone lying around. I took the SIM card out of it on Christmas Day when Mrs Don gave me a Nokia 8. I've put in a pay-as-you-go SIM card but have not yet activated it.

Even if the phone is locked, there is a screen button saying "emergency calls". I could make a '999' call without having unlocked the phone, having an active SIM card or knowing the number to dial.
 
With that man's haircut, someone should have suspected something a long time ago.
 
The Don said:
I have a mobile (cell) phone lying around. I took the SIM card out of it on Christmas Day when Mrs Don gave me a Nokia 8. I've put in a pay-as-you-go SIM card but have not yet activated it.

Even if the phone is locked, there is a screen button saying "emergency calls". I could make a '999' call without having unlocked the phone, having an active SIM card or knowing the number to dial.
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AFAIK that's by law in the UK (and EU?). No idea about the US.
 
I don't know if it is mandated by law in the US (it might be); but in my experience it is the case nonetheless.
 
fagin said:
AFAIK that's by law in the UK (and EU?). No idea about the US.
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That's the law in the U.S. too. Any cell phone can be used to call 911. There are programs to collect old, no-carrier phones to give to domestic violence victims so they will always be able to call 911.

People forget that a cell phone is basically a radio transmitter. Unless it's out of range, a signal from the phone will always reach the tower and enter the system. The system decides whether to accept it and connect it, or to reject it for lack of payment. It always accepts 911 calls. I also understand that for non-911 purposes, you can reach an operator with any phone and charge a call with a credit card.

I found it significant, somehow, that the girl escaped and used the phone rather than running to a neighbor and banging on the door. They must have had to wait a long time for a chance to steal that phone. I wonder if they were so scared of people generally that they didn't trust the neighbors.
 
William Parcher said:
Both parents pleaded not guilty today. He has a public defender and she has a private lawyer. The next court date is Feb. 28th.
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That's interesting. If I may go out on a guess, the mother's parents and/or sister(s) care enough for her that they ponied up for the lawyer, in the hope to offload as much as possible of the guilt to the father. That also opens up the possibility for the prosecutors to play them against each other.

FWIW, I don't think there's any excuse, save severe mental impairment, for either of the parents to absolve of guilt.
 
ddt said:
That's interesting. If I may go out on a guess, the mother's parents and/or sister(s) care enough for her that they ponied up for the lawyer, in the hope to offload as much as possible of the guilt to the father. That also opens up the possibility for the prosecutors to play them against each other.
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Stories I've read say they have public defenders. It's hard to imagine that the relatives have the money to pay for what a private defense in this case would cost.

This story says California authorities are comparing notes with authorities in Texas, where they lived previously. It wouldn't be a surprise if there are some Texas charges, too.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-perris-couple-children-endangered-20180118-story.html

EDITED TO ADD: But this story does say she has a private attorney, but it doesn't say whether he might have been court-appointed. Defense will be very expensive if they have to pay for it themselves.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/califo...-court-in-captivity-case-live-stream-updates/
 
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Does anybody really think this will really go to trial? I see a plea bargain in their future, maybe life with the possibility of parole vs. life/no parole if they get convicted.
 
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