An emaciated girl’s window escape opened door to nightmarish scene

By Paloma Esquivel and Hailey Branson-Potts Los Angeles Times • January 16, 2018 7:00 pm
Neighbors stand outside the day after a Perris husband and wife were taken into custody on suspicion of torture and child abuse at a home on 100 Block of Muir Woods Road, in Perris, Calif., on Monday. Inside the house, officers found “several children shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings,” the statement said. The youngest was 2 years old. Like their sister, the 12 siblings in the house appeared to police to be minors and malnourished, but authorities determined seven of them were in fact adults from the ages of 18 to 29, police said. (Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)
Neighbors stand outside the day after a Perris husband and wife were taken into custody on suspicion of torture and child abuse at a home on 100 Block of Muir Woods Road, in Perris, Calif., on Monday. Inside the house, officers found “several children shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings,” the statement said. The youngest was 2 years old. Like their sister, the 12 siblings in the house appeared to police to be minors and malnourished, but authorities determined seven of them were in fact adults from the ages of 18 to 29, police said. (Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)

By Paloma Esquivel and Hailey Branson-Potts

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — When Riverside County sheriff’s deputies entered the Perris, Calif., house where a married couple was said to be holding their 13 children captive, they found a horrific scene.

There was a strong, foul smell. The house was filthy. Three young people were chained to pieces of furniture. Children were badly emaciated.

And yet, Riverside County Sheriff’s Capt. Greg Fellows said Tuesday, the children’s mother was surprised to see authorities.

“It seemed that the mother was perplexed as to why we were at the residence,” Fellows said.

Sheriff’s deputies had never received a call from the house or about suspected child abuse, Fellows said at a news conference. A county child protective services official said this was the “first chance we had to intervene.”

Authorities on Tuesday released more details about the nightmarish scene they found at the house on Muir Woods Road and about the conditions of the 13 siblings who appeared to have undergone years of abuse.

A 17-year-old girl called 911 early Sunday, saying she had escaped from her family’s home, where her parents had been holding her captive.

On Tuesday, Fellows, commander of the sheriff’s Perris station, said the girl escaped from a window in the house and called 911 from a deactivated cellphone.

Riverside County sheriff’s deputies who found the girl were struck by her small size and emaciated appearance. She looked to be only 10, authorities said, and she had photos to back up her claims.

When deputies arrived at the house, they found a scene as nightmarish as she had described.

The parents, David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49, were arrested on suspicion of torture and child endangerment, and each was being held in lieu of $9 million bail.

The youngest child is 2. Deputies at first assumed from their frail and malnourished appearance that all in the group were minors, but they later determined that seven of them were adults ages 18 to 29, a Sheriff’s Department statement said.

The children are believed to all be the couple’s biological children, Fellows said. County adult and child protective services workers and medical professionals are assessing the siblings, he said.

Fellows said the parents showed “no indication of mental illness at this time.”

He said the children’s recovery would be long and praised the courage of the teenager who called 911.

“If you can imagine, being 17 years old and appearing to be a 10-year-old, being chained to a bed and being malnourished and injuries associated with that — I would call that torture,” he said.

The children were home-schooled at the house, and the family had lived in Perris since about 2014, Fellows said.

“I can truly say that I am devastated at this act of cruelty,” Perris Mayor Michael Vargas said, adding that his heart went out to the victims.

“I can’t even begin to imagine the pain and suffering that they have endured.”

Susan von Zabern, director of the Riverside County Department of Public Social Services, said county children’s services officials are seeking court authorization to care for the siblings, “including the adult children to the extent that that’s necessary.”

Von Zabern said she could not comment on whether there were prior calls from or about the family but said the 911 call received Sunday — which was cross-reported to social workers — was “the first opportunity we had to intervene.”

It is too early to know how long the siblings have been malnourished or subjected to abuse, she said, but “their condition indicates it has been a prolonged period of time.”

Social workers, as is custom, will try to identify relatives who could care for the children, she said. They would “be subject to all kinds of background investigations to make sure they’re suitable and stable.”

Mark Uffer, chief executive of the Corona Regional Medical Center, said seven of the adult children — five females and two males ages 18 to 29 — are patients at his hospital.

“It’s hard to think of them as adults when you first see them because they’re small and their malnutrition,” he said. “They’re stable; they’re being fed.”

Uffer said the siblings are staying in a secured area where they are together. They are being treated with a team of nurses familiar with the case.

“They’re very friendly. They’re very cooperative, and I believe very hopeful that life will get better for them after this event,” he said.”

Uffer said hospital staff members were “horrified” by the case and the young people’s conditions.

“I’ve been CEO for a long time,” he said. “I’ve been in health care a long time. I’ve never seen this.”

Public records show the couple own the tract house where the children were found. Its address is also listed in a state Department of Education directory as the location of the Sandcastle Day School, a private K-12 campus. David Turpin is listed as the principal.

During the last school year, the school was listed in state records as a nonreligious and co-ed institution. There were six students enrolled — one each in the fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth, 10th and 12th grades.

Kimberly Milligan, 50, who lives across the street from the Turpins’ single-story house, said a lot about the family struck her as strange. The children she saw were very pale — an observation several other neighbors made as well. And she often wondered why, if there were so many children in the house, they never came out to play.

“I thought the kids were home-schooled,” she said. “You know something is off, but you don’t want to think bad of people.”