Unlucky thirteen
To have so many children, you’d think the Turpins must have loved kids...
Happiness radiated from the Turpin family photo album.
The big brood, whose names all began with J, gathered round their parents, their wide smiles as matching as their cute outfits on trips to Disneyland, California.
Dad David, 57, and Mum Louise, 50, had been together since her teens.
The deeplyreligious couple would regularly renew their wedding vows in Las Vegas, with all 13 children in tow.
In October 2015, the girls were flower girls and bridesmaids, all wearing pretty plaid dresses, while the boys wore black suits.
After the ceremony, the family sang Hound Dog and posed with an Elvis impersonator – a picture of cheerfulness and fun.
The Turpins lived in a big, detached house on a leafy, well-to-do street in Perris, 70 miles south of Los Angeles.
To neighbours, they seemed a loving family, quiet and undemanding, despite the fact that there were so many of them.
But, on 14 January 2018,
The house was filthy, squalid, the kids emaciated
the Turpins’ 17-year-old daughter climbed out of a window and ran.
She managed to call the police using a deactivated mobile phone she’d found.
‘My parents are abusive,’ she told the emergency services operator.
‘My two little sisters right now are chained up...they’re chained up to their bed.
‘We live in filth and sometimes I wake up and I can’t breathe because of how dirty the house is,’ she said.
The teenager claimed she’d been tortured and abused for years – and her 12 siblings were still trapped.
The police descended on the home, where they discovered a chilling scene.
The Turpin children, aged between 2 and 29, were being held in a foulsmelling dungeon, some shackled to their beds.
It was filthy, squalid, littered with human waste, the kids were emaciated and dirt-encrusted.
They told the police they were fed once a day, allowed to shower once a year and weren’t permitted to use the toilet.
Shockingly, the 17-year-old had been planning her escape for two years.
David and Louise Turpin were immediately arrested.
Moments later, grainy CCTV footage captured the instant the Turpin children got their freedom.
In hospital, the children were treated for severe muscle wastage and neurological conditions associated with malnutrition.
They all appeared younger, due to their stunted growth. The 17-year-old was at first mistaken for a 10-year-old. The oldest – a woman of 29 – weighed just 5st.
David and
Louise Turpin were both charged with multiple counts of child abuse and false imprisonment.
They were accused of orchestrating an escalating ordeal of imprisonment and starvation. Speaking on US TV show
Megyn Kelly Today, Louise’s sister Teresa Robinette said that the couple had changed after leaving their church, experimenting with religion.
Initially, the Turpins denied over 40 charges, but
in February 2019, struck a plea deal with prosecutors.
They each pleaded guilty to 14 charges of torture, adult abuse, child endangerment, false imprisonment, and more.
It spared their children the ordeal of taking the witness stand, recounting the horrors they’d suffered.
It was, perhaps, the only kindness they’d bestowed on their children in a decade.
The court heard that the abuse spanned at least nine years, with the children chained up for months on end, and that it had started as punishment.
The kids would be tied up with ropes. But when one – who’d been hogtied – escaped, the Turpins turned to chains and padlocks.
The children were denied showers, medical care and food.
Those trips to Disneyland and Las Vegas had been the few times they’d been allowed out of the house in years.
It emerged that David Turpin had declared himself bankrupt in 2011, registered their home as a private school. The couple told everyone the children were ‘home-schooled’ by Louise – yet their education was non-existent.
‘This is among the worst, most-aggravated childabuse case I have ever seen,’ said a prosecution lawyer.
As the couple were handed their sentence, some of their children gave victim-impact statements.
‘I cannot describe in words what we went through growing up,’ said one son.
‘Sometimes, I still have nightmares of things that had happened, such as my siblings being chained up or getting beaten.’
Incredibly, he – and some of his siblings – said they’d forgiven their parents.
‘That is the past and this is now,’ their son said. ‘I love my parents and have forgiven them for a lot of the things they did to us.’
The couple cried as they apologised for their actions.
In a prepared written statement, read by his lawyer, David claimed, My homeschooling and discipline had good intentions. I never intended for any harm to come to my children. I love my children and I believe my children love me. Louise spoke directly to the court, said she was ‘truly sorry’ for what she’d done.
‘I love my children so much,’ she sobbed. ‘I really look forward to the day
I can see them, hug them and tell them I’m sorry.’
But Judge Bernard Schwartz slammed their ‘selfish, cruel and inhuman treatment’.
‘You have severed the ability to interact and raise your children,’ he told them.
In exchange for their guilty pleas, the couple were jailed for life, with a chance of parole after 25 years.
Despite the years of abuse, the Turpin children are now said to be thriving.
Enjoying their freedom in three separate homes, and regularly Skyping each other.
‘My parents took my whole life from me, but now I’m taking my life back,’ one daughter said in her impact statement, read to the court.
She added, ‘I’m a fighter, I’m strong and I’m shooting through life like a rocket.’
‘I can’t describe in words what we went through’