Turpin backs vilified caretaker

Woman abused by parents says county official doesn't deserve most criticism that aired on TV

Jennifer Turpin has come out to staunchly defend a former Riverside County employee who came under scrutiny in a November “20/20” segment about alleged difficulties that Turpin and her adult siblings had getting assistance after the family's 13 children were freed in 2018 from years of abuse and neglect by their Perris parents.

“This is literally to clean my conscience and to let you guys know what happened, through my eyes,” Turpin said in a nearly eight-minute video posted on TikTok on Sunday.

In the “20/20” interview, ABC News identified Vanessa Espinoza as the deputy public guardian official assigned to the conservatorship of what at the time consisted of seven adult children.

Jennifer and Jordan Turpin told the show of having insufficient housing, food and life skills training. Joshua Turpin said he was denied money for a bicycle from a trust fund that held hundreds of thousands of donated dollars being administered by the public guardian's office.

And on that show, Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin told reporter Diane Sawyer that the Turpin adults were living in a “crime-ridden neighborhood” and in “squalor.”

Recently unsealed conservatorship documents show that Espinoza rejected the apartments the Turpins wanted to rent as too expensive or too far away, and instead steered them toward housing that the Turpins considered substandard.

But in the video, Jennifer Turpin said it was unfair to put so much of the blame on Espinoza.

“Most of the stuff that happened wasn't even her fault,” said Jennifer Turpin, the eldest child at 33. “Any of the bad stuff that I