Suit: Foster family abused tortured kids
Turpin siblings accuse Riverside County and ChildNet agency of failing to stop alleged sexual, physical misconduct
Six Turpin children, already subjected to a lifetime of torture, were sexually and physically abused by foster family members who forced them to eat their own vomit, sit alone for hours, told them they should kill themselves and made them recount details of their parents' abuse, two new lawsuits allege.
The lawsuits, which a lawyer for four of the siblings said were filed Tuesday in Riverside County Superior Court, accuse Riverside County and at least one private foster care agency of ignoring red flags and failing to protect the Turpins from Marcelino Olguin, his wife, Rosa, and their daughter, Lennys. The three Olguin family members have pleaded not guilty to about a dozen felony counts alleging they abused nine foster children in their care.
The county and ChildNet Youth and Family Services and Foster Family Network “had a duty to protect” the Turpins, the lawsuits state.
Instead, the defendants “protected the foster parents by failing to report the abuse and neglect of [the Turpins] to child protective services or to law enforcement and by failing to intervene and interfere when abuse and neglect was reported by others,” the lawsuits alleged, adding the Turpins were allowed to stay in the Olguins' Perris home for three years.
Currently, ChildNet “is not at liberty to disclose facts or discuss the allegations” in the lawsuits, Brett Lewis, ChildNet's director of development and communications, said via email.
“We look forward to providing the facts at the appropriate time in court,” he said. “Our agency has been serving California's most vulnerable, traumatized youth for over 50 years. We have a strong track record of providing excellent care and continue to demonstrate our commitment to these children.”
Gene Kennedy, a Riverside County social services spokesperson, said via email that the county “does not comment on pending legal matters or specific juvenile cases due to confidentiality laws.”
“We deeply care about the safety and wellbeing of every single child under our care,” he wrote. “Our hearts go out to the Turpin siblings. Any instance when a child is harmed is heartbreaking.
“We continue to evaluate our practices with a critical eye and are committed to understanding and addressing the root cause,” he added. “This includes expanding the availability of quality and safe placements for all children in foster care. “
Lawyers for Marcelino and Lennys Olguin could not be reached Wednesday. Rosa Olguin's lawyer, Joshua Matic, declined to comment.
The lawsuits hopefully will “bring justice for the Turpins and help prevent something like this from ever happening to other kids,” Roger Booth, attorney for four of the siblings, said via email. “We also hope that these lawsuits will shed light on the county's failure to closely monitor the work of foster family agencies like ChildNet, which are given broad authority over the selection, training and oversight of foster parents in Riverside County.”
Oakwood Legal Group of Los Angeles is representing the other two siblings.
Booth alleged that ChildNet and the county knew about abuse accusations against the Olguins before the Turpins were placed there. Booth added that he does not know about any criminal investigation of the Olguins alleging abuse or neglect before 2021.
Sheriff's deputies in 2018 found the 13 Turpin siblings, ages 2 to 29, chained to their beds in a Perris house, filthy, malnourished and stunted in their mental and physical development. Their parents, David and Louise Turpin, who authorities said routinely beat and strangled their children and deprived them of food, pleaded guilty to 14 felony counts in 2019 and are serving sentences of 25 years to life in state prison.
After they were freed, the minor Turpins were placed in foster care while the adults were assigned to the county's Public Guardian office. According to the lawsuits, the county asked ChildNet to find a foster home for six of the children.
The Olguins “were unfit to be foster parents … because [they] had a prior history of physically and emotionally abusing children as well as severely neglecting children who had been placed in their care,” the lawsuits allege.
Carly Sanchez, a lawyer in Booth's firm, said her firm spoke with “a number of” ChildNet employees who voiced concerns about the Turpins being placed with the Olguins.
The firm also interviewed foster parents who took in kids who lived at the Olguins, Sanchez said. Those children said the Olguins abused them, and their new foster parents passed that information along to ChildNet, Sanchez said.
ChildNet, Sanchez said, had a duty to pass along that information to Riverside County.
“We don't know if they complied with that duty,” she said, adding the firm is still looking into that.
ChildNet had “a financial motive to place a large number of foster children in this foster home and thereby strengthen its relationship with the County of Riverside, and it put that financial motive ahead of its responsibility to children,” the lawsuits allege.
The defendants “were put on notice that [the Olguins were sexually, physically and emotionally abusing and severely neglecting” the Turpins, with at least one child telling social workers about the abuse, the lawsuits allege.
The lawsuits allege the Olguins abused the Turpins in the following ways:
Marcelino Olguin fondled the children, kissed “them on their mouths and [made] sexually suggestive comments.”
The Olguins pulled the children's hair, struck them with a belt and hit their heads.
The children were forced to sit by themselves, sometimes outside, for hours at a time.
The Turpin children had to sit in a circle “and recount in detail the horrors that they had experienced while living with their biological parents.”
The children couldn't communicate with their other siblings.
The Turpin children were cursed at and told “they were worthless and should commit suicide.” Marcelino and Rosa Olguin, the suits allege, “went as far as to suggest how the plaintiffs should commit suicide.”
The Olguins threatened to return the children to David and Louise Turpin.
The children were forced “to eat excessive amounts of food, which led to eating disorders [and were forced] to eat until they began to vomit.” The Olguins then “forced them to eat their own vomit.”
The Turpin children were forced “to watch as a foster child in the adult daughter's care was severely physically abused and tortured.”
The Olguins would tell the Turpin children “that nobody would ever love them.”
The lawsuits seek unspecified damages for the Turpins' “physical and psychological injuries and emotional distress.”
The legal action comes about a week after the release of a 634-page report from an independent investigation of Riverside County's care of the Turpins.
The county announced the probe on the heels of an ABC News “20/20” report that aired in November. In it, two of the adult children said they struggled to find money for food, were forced to live in bad neighborhoods and were cast into society with few life skills or regard for their well-being, an assertion backed by District Attorney Mike Hestrin.
Larson LLP, the law firm hired to do the investigation, suggested improvements to the county's child and adult protective services, which the Board of Supervisors has pledged to implement. They call for strengthening foster home oversight and fixing a chronic foster home shortage.
Booth has sued the county before. In 2018, the county agreed to pay roughly $11 million to settle two of his clients' lawsuits, one involving a girl who was repeatedly raped and eventually impregnated and the other involving a toddler found hugging her infant sibling's mummified corpse. In both cases, social workers failed to heed warning signs to remove the children from their homes, the lawsuits allege.