California parents arrested after 13 children found shackled in home

The call to the police came in early Sunday morning. A teenage girl was on the line with an unsettling tale.

She had managed to escape from her family’s home in Perris, California, where her parents had been holding her captive. Her brothers and sisters were still locked inside – 12 of them. Some were chained to their beds, she said.

Riverside County sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to find the 17-year-old girl. When they saw her, they were struck by her small size and emaciated appearance. She looked to be only 10, according to the sheriff’s account released Monday.

The nightmarish scene that deputies discovered when they entered the house on Muir Woods Road was as bad as the girl had described. They found “several children shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings,” the statement said.

The parents, David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49, “were unable to immediately provide a logical reason why their children were restrained in that manner,” deputies wrote. The couple was arrested on suspicion of torture and child endangerment and each was being held Monday night in lieu of $9 million bail.

The youngest child was two years old. At first deputies assumed from their frail and malnourished appearance that all in the group were minors, but they later determined that seven of them were adults, ages 18 to 29, the sheriff’s statement said.

It was not clear from the statement how many of the children were found locked to their beds.

Deputies provided food and drinks to the children, who “claimed to be starving,” before they were admitted to hospitals.

Public records show the couple own the tract house where the children were found. Its address is also listed in a state Department of Education directory as the location of the Sandcastle Day School, a private K-12 campus. David Turpin is listed as the principal.

During the last school year, the school was listed in state records as a nonreligious and co-ed institution. There were six students enrolled – one each, in fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth, 10th and 12th grades. (Los Angeles Times/TNS)