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Attorney Jack Osborn, who represents them, declined to comment Thursday. According to prosecutors, the children were given only one rationed meal a day and allowed to shower once a year. They would get in trouble for things like playing in the water while they washed their hands.
Inside the House of Horrors: 2 Years After Escape, New Secrets Emerge About How Turpin Kids Survived
From watching television shows, Jordan Turpin knew she needed proof of the abuse. So when she got ahold of her older brother’s deactivated cell phone, she asked her chained sisters if she could take their photos to use as proof. By 2018, David and Louise Turpin had moved to chaining some of their children to their bunk beds, sometimes for months at a time, according to investigators.
How did the Turpin family escape the "House of Horrors?"
It was Jordan Turpin who managed to escape on Jan. 14, 2018, and call 911, freeing herself and her siblings from the family’s house of horrors in Perris, California. 13 children were held captive by their parents in a survival story like you’ve never seen. Van Wagenen initiated the investigation on Oct. 28, one day after ABC News requested an interview with him to discuss the problems the Turpin children had faced in the four years since they were rescued, his office told ABC News on Friday. But some officials and some of the Turpin children are now speaking out to say they still do not have access to many of the resources and services guaranteed to them. An ABC News investigation has found that some of the Turpin children continue to face challenges and hardships since they were rescued and placed in the care of the county.
Where are the Turpin family siblings now?
As Riverside's district attorney, it was Hestrin who prosecuted the Turpins' parents, David and Louise. They are now serving life sentences in separate California penitentiaries. ChildNet is part of a larger county social services system that experts say had a history of failing to protect abused children even before the Turpins entered the picture in 2018. "I don't really have a way to get food right now," Jordan Turpin, 21, told ABC News' Diane Sawyer when they met in July. At the time, Jordan had just been released -- she says without warning -- from extended foster care with no plan for food, health care, life skills training, or even shelter.
"They're living in crime-ridden neighborhoods. There's money for their education -- they can't access it," Hestrin said. At the time of the escape, two of her sisters were in chains for stealing their mother's candy, and one of them had been chained up for 15 days straight. In July 2022, six of the Turpin siblings filed a lawsuit against the foster parents they lived with after being rescued from their parent’s home. Their attorneys filed suits against Riverside County, ChildNet Youth and Family Services and the Foster Family Network.
MORE: Turpin sisters describe the moment they knew they were free
Donaldson, through tears, explained that basic needs remain elusive, and the kids continue to struggle to navigate a complex and bureaucratic system they have no experience with, despite a global outpouring of support. She said the county dismissed inquires from numerous health care professionals offering free services for as long as the Turpins needed them. Much of the $600,000 in private donations has been kept from the siblings. For Hestrin and advocates for the children, their treatment has been unacceptable -- a tragedy that both shocks and compounds the horrors of their prior life. They say that the very people responsible for actively caring for the Turpins simply did not do their jobs. "They're living in squalor," Hestrin said, referring to some of the adult children.
"Really what we've seen in the cases that we've looked at is, unless you have a child who dies or a child who ends up pregnant as a result of sexual abuse, then nothing happens," Booth said. The head of the county's Public Guardian office, Dr. Matthew Chang, lauded his office's work in a statement to ABC News, saying he "stand[s] by the exceptional work provided within the Public Guardian Program." "It appears that, once ... there ceased national attention, the urgency in providing these essentials to our clients by certain county agencies significantly declined." "When I try to have access [to the money], I have difficulty," Joshua said.
Video Escape from a house of horror - ABC News
Video Escape from a house of horror.
Posted: Fri, 19 Nov 2021 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Before the 17-year-old escaped from the home in a middle-class section of the city of Perris, about 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles, the Turpins had lived largely out of view. "I never intended for any harm to come to my children," the statement said. "I'm sorry if I've done anything to cause them harm. I'm glad we were able to resolve this case without my children being forced to testify."
Turpin said that she was glad that police responded, because she knew that if she had gone back to the home without having successfully called for help, she would have been killed. "They wouldn't care if they knew police were coming. They would just kill me right there." Once the dispatcher determined where Turpin was with the help of the cellphone's GPS and what she was asking for, a deputy was dispatched.
"The last few months it's been really good because I've really learned so much about mental health [and] why everything has affected me the way it affected me." Jordan and her siblings have been carving new lives for themselves ever since. In 2022, she settled into her own apartment in Southern California and told PEOPLE that she remained "very close" to her siblings.
The girl didn't know what month it was or what the word medication meant, but knew enough to punch the digits 911 into a barely workable cellphone and then began describing years of abuse to a police dispatcher. "Maybe a kid someday, a nice car. Graduating college, being a book writer, or a motivational speaker," she said. "When I have kids, I want to make sure I'm in a good place. I have a good job because I wanna give my kids the best life ever." "I’ve told all my siblings the story more than once,” she told him. “And I’m just so thankful because you saved all of us. Thank you so much."
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