HOUSE OF HORRORS
Terrible new details emerge during preliminary hearing.
The day a malnourished teen slipped through the window of the suburban California home she shared with her parents and 12 siblings, before dialling 911 on a smuggled phone, was a banner day: the 17-year-old’s call in the early hours of Jan. 14 exposed a house of horrors and made world headlines. Her parents, David Turpin, 56, and wife Louise, 50, were charged with the abuse, torture and false imprisonment of all but one of their 13 children. Now, in a preliminary court hearing, sensational new details have emerged, including the contents of that emergency call. In audio played in the courthouse at Riverside County, California, on June 20, the teen was heard telling the emergency operator in a child-like voice, “I live in a family of 15 people and our parents are abusive. Two of my sisters are chained up.” Sitting in court, the teen’s mother, Louise—who, together with her husband, has denied all charges relating to their ten girls and three boys aged between two and 29—was seen wiping tears from her eyes as she listened to the recording. “We live in filth,” the girl was heard saying in the call. “Sometimes I wake up and can’t
breathe because of how dirty the house is.” She also told the operator the last time she’d been allowed to shower was “almost a year ago” and added, “Our parents don’t let us move. I haven’t been out. I don’t go out much. I don’t know anything about the streets or anything. I don’t know what medication is. We don’t really do schools.”
Her mother, the girl said, “doesn’t like us. She doesn’t spend time with us, ever.” The Turpins insisted on being called “mother” and “father,” according to the girl, because it was biblical. More revelations came from the testimony of Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Manuel Campos, who interviewed the teen after the Turpins were arrested. He told the court that the girl, who was the size of a ten-year-old when he met her, had dirt caked on her skin and “had an odour emitting from her body of someone who didn’t bathe regularly.” He further related how the girl had told him that if she and her siblings didn’t obey their parent’s strict rules, they were slapped, had their hair pulled or were chained up. The 17-year-old, who is said to have plotted her escape for two years, reportedly told Campos her mother had choked her, asking, “Do you want to die? Yes
you do, you want to die and go to hell,” for secretly watching a Justin Bieber video.
When police responded to the January 911 call, they discovered the girl’s 22-year-old brother shackled. Two of her sisters, 11 and 14, had just been unchained. They had been shackled for taking sweets from the kitchen. Authorities revealed that the children were punished for washing with water above the wrists and left to lie in their own waste.
At the preliminary hearing, medical evidence was admitted showing some of the children suffered from malnutrition, muscle wasting, stunted growth, skeletal deformities and “low cognition.” One of the preteen girls was so thin, her mid-upper arm was the size of a four and half month old baby. She also had liver damage and “social dwarfism,” a form of stunted growth caused by lack of nourishment. Some of her older siblings were equally affected. In testimony, investigators said two of the adult daughters were so badly affected by the alleged abuse that they would probably be unable to have children. The eldest daughter, 29, weighed just 37kg.
The only meals served in the house, according to reports, and then only once a day, were peanut butter or bologna sandwiches, and frozen burritos and chips. Investigators had earlier told reporters that the Turpin parents had taunted their children with apple and pumpkin pies.
The court heard the teen escapee say that after eating peanut butter sandwiches every day for years, she could no longer eat them without throwing up. And the Turpins’ 22-year-old son told police he’d been chained up “off-and-on for six and a half years” for being disrespectful or “stealing” food.
Except for meals and bathroom breaks, the children spent most of their time locked in
their rooms and trying to avoid the attention of their allegedly volatile and violent mother. Most didn’t know how to use a toothbrush when they were rescued. At the conclusion of the preliminary hearing, the judge ruled only the toddler escaped abuse.
“They lack a basic knowledge of life. Many of the children didn’t know what a police officer was,” Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin said earlier this year.
To hide the alleged abuse, the family slept all day and moved around at night. Neighbours rarely spotted them. “I thought there were only three girls and one boy, that’s all I saw,” a neighbour told WHO after the January arrests. “With 13 kids, I never saw one person visit. To me that’s weird,” another neighbour said at the time.
Louise’s sister, Elizabeth Flores, who released her book Sisters of Secrets in May, revealed that she and her sibling had a troubled childhood. “Louise had been my protector,” Flores, Louise’s younger sister, tells WHO of their abusive childhood setting. Recalling how Louise had shielded her from their parents’ fights, Elizabeth says of the Louise now being depicted, “This is not the same Louise I knew, that I loved.”
Louise had run away from home at 15 with David, then 22, after the pair met at church. At 16, her parents had given her permission to marry him because she had threatened to run away again.
Flores, who had been estranged from Louise for two years at the time of Louise’s arrest, said that her sister and David moved frequently and distanced themselves from family. During a rare visit, Flores noted the kids had to ask permission to use the bathroom and were forbidden from talking to their aunt.
After the children’s rescue, the Turpins each face trial on 12 counts of torture, seven counts of abuse of a dependent adult, nine counts of child abuse or neglect and 12 counts of false imprisonment. They are being held on bail of US$12 million each. David Turpin, an engineer, is also accused of lewd conduct against a child and perjury, while Louise has been charged with felony assault. If convicted the Turpins could be jailed for life.
Since the arrest, the adult children, ranging in age from 18 to 29, spent two months in hospital before being discharged to live together in a secret location in rural California. The younger children were split between two foster homes, where they are now learning to live a normal life. “It’s a joyful new chapter after years of pain,” their uncle Billy Lambert tells WHO. “This is a new building block for them, a new step.”
“This is not the same Louise I knew, that I loved” —Elizabeth Flores