New details of abuse endured by 13 children held captive
DRESSED in black and with their legs shackled, the couple accused of torturing their 13 children appeared in court to answer charges.
NEW details have emerged about the shocking abuse 13 children allegedly endured at the hands of their own parents when they were held captive in their own home in California.
Riverside County district attorney Mike Hestrin revealed on Thursday that David and Louise Turpin’s 13 children, aged 2 to 29, had been tied up for years as a punishment.
Speaking at a press conference, Mr Hestrin said they were first tied up with ropes, but when one child who was hogtied managed to break free, the parents shackled them to beds with chains and padlocks. They were not even released from their shackles to go to the toilet.
“This is severe, emotional, physical abuse ... This is depraved conduct,” he said.
“Punishment would last weeks or even months at a time.”
Mr Hestrin said all 13 children were severely malnourished; the 12-year-old had the weight of an average seven-year-old and the oldest child, a 29-year-old woman, weighed only 37 kilograms.
The parents, who appeared in court on Thursday dressed in black and with their legs shackled, appeared calm as they plead not guilty to multiple counts of torture and abuse.
Louise was photographed in court smiling.
Disturbing stories have been revealed about how the couple allegedly treated their children, including that they would bring home food for themselves but not allow the children to eat it.
“They would buy food including pies, apple pies, pumpkin pies, leave it on the counter, let the children look at it, but not eat the food,” Mr Hestrin said.
A law enforcement official told NBC News that the children were served only one rationed meal per day.
Mr Hestrin said several of the kids were cognitively impaired as a result of the starvation, had nerve damage because of the “extreme and prolonged physical abuse” and “lacked a basic knowledge of life”.
He also revealed that the children were permitted to shower only once a year and were not allowed to have toys, despite the fact that many unopened toys in their original packaging were found in the house.
The only thing the children were allowed to do when they were chained up was write in their journals, hundreds of which investigators have now seized.
“As a prosecutor there are some cases that haunt you,” Mr Hestrin said.
“Some deal with human depravity and that’s what we’re dealing with here.”
Mr and Mrs Turpin have each been charged with 12 counts of torture, seven counts of abuse of a dependent adult, six counts of child abuse and 12 counts of false imprisonment. Mr Turpin also faces a charge of performing a lewd act on a child.
They pleaded not guilty to all charges on Thursday night and are due back in court in February.
The charges include acts that date back to 2010 when the family lived in Texas. The torture and false imprisonment charges do not include the two-year-old.
They are being held on $13 million bail each and could face up to life in prison.
Disturbing photos of a house the Turpins used to live in in Texas have also emerged showing scratch marks on the doors, windows boarded up and filthy carpets and walls, according to KESQ News.
The kids’ horrific ordeal came to an end when the 17-year-old daughter jumped out of a window in the family home and called 911 on a deactivated mobile phone.
A law enforcement official told NBC News that the girl was now so malnourished that she had the mental capacity of a child well below her age.
Mr Hestrin told reporters that she had been hatching a plan to escape the home for more than two years.
She initially broke free with another younger sibling, but that sibling became scared and turned back.
The children are now recovering in hospital, being injected with antibiotics, nutrients and vitamins through an IV.
“They’re relieved … Their health is being looked at. They’re in good hands. As far as where they’re going to end up, I don’t know,” Mr Hestrin said of the kids.
When police arrived on Sunday at the four-bedroom Southern Californian home, about 100km southeast of Los Angeles, they found the starving children shackled to furniture in filthy conditions. The law enforcement source described the rooms as being filled with urine.
Riverside Sheriff’s Office deputy Mike Vasquez made a similar observation to the Daily Mail.
“The smell was terrible. Faeces and urine everywhere,” he said.
“It’s what happens when people are chained up — there’s nowhere else to go to the rest room.”
Authorities told reporters this week that the parents had turned the home into a private school, prison and torture chamber.
A former neighbour said he often saw the children through the windows of the house marching in single file for hours on end.
“I’d come home and anywhere from 12.30[pm] to 3 o’clock in the morning [and see] the kids marching between those two rooms up there … just like they were in the military, just making a loop,” Mike Clifford told NBC News.
The account fits with Mr Hestrin saying that the whole family would sleep all day and stay up all night until 5am.
Meanwhile, the children’s grandparents say they saw no signs that the children were being mistreated when they last visited the family six years ago.
“They were just like any ordinary family,” Mr Turpin’s mother Betty Turpin, 81, told the Southern California News Group.
“And they had such good relationships. I’m not just saying this stuff. These kids, we were amazed. They were ‘sweetie’ this and ‘sweetie’ that to each other.”
She and her husband James visited the family for five days when they lived in their previous home in Murrieta, California. They said they were shocked by the allegations.
“I feel they were model Christians,” she said.
“It’s hard to believe all of this. Over the years, the Lord knows what happened.”
James Turpin said the children appeared to be “well-adjusted” during the visit.
“They weren’t skinny or nothing. They were joyous to see us,” he said.
David Turpin told his parents that he and his wife had so many children because “God wanted them to have them”.
Louise Turpin’s sister, Teresa Robinette, told the US Today show on Wednesday that the children lived a completely isolated existence.
“They weren’t allowed to date, or they didn’t have a social life,” the children’s aunt said.
“They weren’t allowed to watch TV. They weren’t allowed to talk on the phone, have friends over, stuff like that. Normal things that kids do.”
Another sister, Elizabeth Jane Flores, who lived with the family briefly when they lived in Texas, said the parents were “really strict but I didn’t see any type of abuse”.
She did reveal, however, that Mr Turpin engaged in creepy behaviour when she moved in.
“If I were to get in the shower, he would come in while I was in there and watch me,” she told Good Morning America on Wednesday.
“It was like a joke. He never touched me or anything.”
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