The girl told dispatchers her 12 siblings were in need of help, and when deputies arrived, she presented them with photographs documenting conditions inside the residence, the captain said.
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Investigations are ongoing at the Turpin house in Perris, California. They were married in 1985 in Pearisburg, Virginia, when she was 16 years old and he was 23. Louise Turpin identified herself as a housewife in a 2011 bankruptcy filing. The couple has since renewed their vows multiple times, including recently by an Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas. Brenda Taylor, Louise Turpin’s aunt alluded to the façade held up by the couple on social media, where the two posted pictures of the family with their children all apparently clean and happy.
Detectives are considering sending the dogs inside the property in Perris, California, where the Turpins’ 13 starving children were found after one managed to escape. Seven of them are adults.
“Their brains are still adapting, they’re still forming, they’re still developing their understanding of the world”, Costales said of the younger Turpin children.
A 12-year-old recorded the weight of a seven-year-old while the eldest, 29, weighs just 37kg.
Sharon Ontiveros, 63, stopped by the house with her 3-year old granddaughter, who left a stuffed animal with dozens of others on the front walkway. The children were reared on the graveyard shift, with the family staying up all night and going to bed shortly before dawn, Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said.
The dogs were seized by authorities who raided the home after a 17-year-old girl escaped and alerted police to the situation inside.
The “event” is one that has reportedly spanned not only years of these children’s lives but two states. They were allegedly only fed once a day and none of them had ever gone to see a dentist.
What the children were allowed to do was write in journals, hundreds of which are being examined by police.
“As a prosecutor, there are cases that stick with you, that will haunt you”, District Attorney Mike Hestrin said.
“Only last month Louise told me her and David were planning to have another child”, Lambert said. Punishments included being beaten and choked, Hestrin said. “She used to say how they would be flawless for TV and would often mention they would be bigger than the reality show Kate Plus 8”, the siblings’ uncle added. “They’re going to experience a culture shock even apart from the trauma they have undergone”, said Costales, who has treated kidnapping victims.
Police found the siblings, aged between two and 29, shackled to beds at the filthy home in Perris on Sunday along with two healthy and friendly Maltese-mix puppies.
From the outside, the brown-and-beige four-bedroom home in a quiet residential neighbourhood looked fairly orderly.
“When we come into this world, our attachment figures are our primary sources of safety and security, no matter how abusive they are”, she said. Hestrin said that the Turpin parents would only let the children shower once a year, and if they washed their hands above the wrist, they would be punished for, quote, “playing in the water”. It is alleged that the Turpins would buy food like apple pies and leave them uneaten on a counter to taunt the children who were frequently tied up with rope. Breaking down in tears, she said that she never thought to go to police to have them check in on her nieces and nephews because her sister and brother-in-law were notoriously “private” people.
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In the 2016-17 school year, it had an enrolment of six with one student each in the fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth, 10th and 12th grades.
