Fresh charges in the Turpin case

The 13 Turpin siblings gained their freedom last month after one of them escaped through a window and called 911, ending years of imprisonment under parents accused of starving and chaining them to their beds in a putrid home not far from Los Angeles.

But investigators warned that gaining the trust of the socially stunted siblings would be a protracted process: They were accustomed to beatings and hadn’t been to a dentist or doctor in years.

When police officers stormed into the house freeing the remaining chained Turpin children, they had no concept of what a police officer was.

“Victims in these kinds of cases, they tell their story, but they tell it slowly; they tell it at their own pace,” Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin told The Associated Press last month. “It will come out when it comes out.”

As the Turpin children grew to trust their liberators, court officials said, they might open up more — and possibly reveal more about life in the Southern California house.

Prosecutors on Friday said as a result of the ongoing investigation, they have charged David Allen Turpin and his wife, Louise Anna, each with three additional charges of child abuse, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Louise Turpin has also been charged with felony assault.

In total, Louise and David Turpin are each facing about 40 charges, including a dozen counts of torture and another dozen counts of false imprisonment. They have pleaded not guilty to the charges and continue to be held on $12 million bail apiece in a jail in Riverside, Calif.

Last month, a Riverside judge barred the parents from contacting the children for the next three years, including by phone or electronically.

They can’t be within 100 yards of their children, or attempt to get their addresses, according to the Riverside Press-enterprise.

Their lawyers could not be reached for comment on Saturday.

Authorities said the children, for reasons still unclear, were starved for years and held captive in a dirty, smelly house in Perris, Calif.

If they misbehaved, they were tied to their beds as punishment — first with a rope and later, after one wriggled free, with chains and padlocks — and were kept from using the bathroom, prosecutors said.