Turpins - 13 shackled kids

[Flyingcat]

I'm going to give Grandma the benefit of the doubt. She lives across the country, correct? She's in her early eighties? Gotta say that many people that age are not as sharp as they once were. I'm thinking of my own parents, who are 86 and 83. If I wanted to keep them out of my life, or keep major secrets from them, it would be easy, sad to say. They are kind, wonderful people, but there is a sense of helplessness about them that I never saw until recently, and sometimes a bit of denial about certain things as well. I'm going to reserve judgment on the grandparents, for now.

[VVV]

6 minutes ago, Flyingcat said:

I'm going to give Grandma the benefit of the doubt. She lives across the country, correct? She's in her early eighties? Gotta say that many people that age are not as sharp as they once were. I'm thinking of my own parents, who are 86 and 83. If I wanted to keep them out of my life, or keep major secrets from them, it would be easy, sad to say. They are kind, wonderful people, but there is a sense of helplessness about them that I never saw until recently, and sometimes a bit of denial about certain things as well. I'm going to reserve judgment on the grandparents, for now.

I'm not.

My 91-year-old mother with a history of stroke is appalled.

[KeepingSweet]

3 hours ago, acheronbeach said:

 

That sounds incredibly cheap for a house to me!  Small stand-alone homes go for an average of one million Canadian around here.  

 

Holy crap, are you in Ontario? I'm in NB, and in the capital city you can buy a beautiful home for anywhere between $150/250k with usually a few acres of land as well.

[Rachel333]

18 minutes ago, JesusPony said:

I hope this isn't true. If some of it is, I feel like there were missed opportunities for the neighbors to notify authorities. 

And I just realized who the dad and boys' haircuts remind me of: Adam Lanza (the Newtown killer.)

I also thought of Dylann Roof, the Charleston murderer. It seems like the bowl haircut is popular with evil men.

[Flyingcat]

6 minutes ago, VVV said:

I'm not.

My 91-year-old mother with a history of stroke is appalled.

Bless her heart.

[FecundFundieFundus]

9 hours ago, luv2laugh said:

It’s wickedly selfish to go to Vegas for a vow renewal in 2011, 2013, and 2015. I mean, really? That should have been a red flag something was off.

I'm trying to fall asleep but I keep wondering... How are vow renewals a red flag for torture? 

[iweartanktops]

15 minutes ago, VVV said:

I'm not.

My 91-year-old mother with a history of stroke is appalled.

I'm not, either. My grandparents would have lost their minds if they hadn't seen us in years, and we lived across the country for most of my life while they were alive. And my living grandparent still freaks out if she doesn't hear from me. I'm in my 30s. 

I understand that some people are estranged from their parents, which would mean their kids would probably not be in contact with them. It sounds like these monsters were in contact with the parents. What the hell? 

[lilith]

1 hour ago, FiddleDD said:

I don’t know how much we should trust this article, but they interviewed a former neighbor here: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5276835/amp/Neighbor-says-Turpin-children-marched-circles-hours.html

That’s such a weird interview.

”My weirdest thought was that they were selling the kids, sexually or whatever. That was the weirdest thing that popped into my head because why would you be driving half a dozen kids out in the middle of the night?'

yet

”He said: 'I never saw anything that made me feel, I need to call somebody. I never saw anything like that.”

You thought the kids (who you keep referring to as “mentally handicapped” might have been being sold for sex, but you never saw anything that made you think you should call the authorities to check on them? What the everloving fuck?

Ok, going back and finishing thread now - this has probably already been raised. But, again, wtf????

3 hours ago, Firebird said:

The talk of properties costing so much is mind boggling. I paid $85,000 for my house in Western NY (near Buffalo) it's 3 beds and 1 bath on 1.5 acres. 

All the Sydney, Australia folk are sitting here in their million dollar average suburban homes and thinking “$350,000? That’s a lovely home for under $350,000”. House prices/property markets are so variable (and Sydneysiders, in one of the most expensive residential markets in the world, tend to be obsessed by them).

[FecundFundieFundus]

He thought (or says he thought at the time) they were being sold because the family left for trips at 1 am. As a stand alone fact, it's nothing too weird. Or if it is, we do it too. It's easier for the kid to sleep in the car and wake up at our destination than deal with traffic and a wiggly awake child for the duration. 

IMHO the biggest red flag that was raised with neighbors was their isolation and teaching the kids to ignore outsiders entirely. I can't honestly say I'd have called for a wellness check based on that either. Count me in as another in favor of mandatory yearly doctor checks for homeschooled students. 

[lilith]

4 minutes ago, FecundFundieFundus said:

He thought (or says he thought at the time) they were being sold because the family left for trips at 1 am. As a stand alone fact, it's nothing too weird. Or if it is, we do it too. It's easier for the kid to sleep in the car and wake up at our destination than deal with traffic and a wiggly awake child for the duration. 

IMHO the biggest red flag that was raised with neighbors was their isolation and teaching the kids to ignore outsiders entirely. I can't honestly say I'd have called for a wellness check based on that either. Count me in as another in favor of mandatory yearly doctor checks for homeschooled students. 

I don’t think taking the kids out in the early hours of the morning is strange or indicative of something dodgy going on. But the neighbour, apparently, does. Yet even though he says he thought the kids might be being sexually exploited (and I do think that’s an odd conclusion to jump to), he also says that he didn’t see anything that made him think he should call the authorities. Which, quite frankly, baffles me.

If I thought the “mentally disabled” kids next door were being sexually exploited, the same kids who seemed strangely isolated and who didn’t speak to anyone, the same kids I had seen marching in circles for hours on end in the upstairs bedroom, I would be calling someone to come and check on their well-being. And I’m generally extremely opposed to nanny state style oversight and meddling. But if I was having the thoughts this guy did about what might be happening to the isolated kids next door even I would consider it a situation where things needed to at least be checked out.

[FaithAndReason]

This is an awful situation. 

I'm late to the party with this comment but re; the mom giving birth to a child at 47. It's certainly possible. My GG grandfather was born when his mother was 49. He was child 9 or 10 with a large span between him and the child before him. I think some families just have a genetic tendency towards long lasting fertility. My cousin had her only two children in her 40s with no fertility issues. I am 45 and as "regular" now as I was when I was 20. (Sorry if that's TMI). I often joke that if we were fundie or living in the old days of my German farming ancestors, I'd have 20 kids, be pregnant now, and might have 1 or 2 more.   And I hope, for the sake of those poor older daughters, that the youngest is the mother's child.

[Beermeet]

40 minutes ago, FecundFundieFundus said:

 

IMHO the biggest red flag that was raised with neighbors was their isolation and teaching the kids to ignore outsiders entirely. I can't honestly say I'd have called for a wellness check based on that either. Count me in as another in favor of mandatory yearly doctor checks for homeschooled students. 

I know what you mean and I agree.  Then, I think about freedom and as little government involvement in ones family and especially a woman's body.  It's tricky, isn't it?  

[KnittingOwl]

2 hours ago, Flyingcat said:

I'm going to give Grandma the benefit of the doubt. She lives across the country, correct? She's in her early eighties? Gotta say that many people that age are not as sharp as they once were. I'm thinking of my own parents, who are 86 and 83. If I wanted to keep them out of my life, or keep major secrets from them, it would be easy, sad to say. They are kind, wonderful people, but there is a sense of helplessness about them that I never saw until recently, and sometimes a bit of denial about certain things as well. I'm going to reserve judgment on the grandparents, for now.

I don’t know...the 29 year old apparently looks like a child or teenager based on size. That didn’t happen in the four or five years since grandma last saw the kids. She didn’t notice anything was wrong before? Or were one of the parents also food restricted growing up and took it to the extreme?

I can guarantee that my mother would not go four or five years without seeing her grandchildren. 

[nausicaa]

2 hours ago, adidas said:

I can’t drag myself away from the news articles about this case. It has upset me so much. 

The next couple come from the Daily Mail, which is the armpit of ‘journalism’ but in the first one, if you scroll down to the vow renewal photo it shows the older girls wearing different shoes than the stiletto style heels they wore to walk down the aisle. 

Those are two different vow renewals. In the 2013 renewal, the girls wore stilletos. In the 2015 renewal they wore the shorter sandal type shoes. 

They wore the same dresses for both events. Because none of the kids grew enough in two years to need new clothes... 

[Bad Wolf]

2 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

Those are two different vow renewals. In the 2013 renewal, the girls wore stilletos. In the 2015 renewal they wore the shorter sandal type shoes. 

They wore the same dresses for both events. Because none of the kids grew enough in two years to need new clothes... 

But their mother had a new wedding dress for each renewal. I hope social services can be flexible. In the case here, they let the kids start in lower grades, due to size and ability. The 12 year old boy played t ball with 5 year olds. Everyone was concerned and kind. I'm sure this will happen for the Turpin kids.

[adidas]

31 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

Those are two different vow renewals. In the 2013 renewal, the girls wore stilletos. In the 2015 renewal they wore the shorter sandal type shoes. 

They wore the same dresses for both events. Because none of the kids grew enough in two years to need new clothes... 

Oh my

[FiddleDD]

34 minutes ago, KnittingOwl said:

I don’t know...the 29 year old apparently looks like a child or teenager based on size. That didn’t happen in the four or five years since grandma last saw the kids. She didn’t notice anything was wrong before? Or were one of the parents also food restricted growing up and took it to the extreme?

I can guarantee that my mother would not go four or five years without seeing her grandchildren. 

The interview with the mother’s sister said that the grandparents (her parents) had flown out several times to try and visit the family but the parents wouldn’t tell them the address. I don’t know why they (or the sister) didn’t contact someone in 19 years, but at least the maternal set seemed to have tried. 

Then again, I know a family where the biological grandparents literally ignored their grandchildren, to the point that one of the few times they saw the kids one of them asked “who those people” were. 

So there’s a wide range of possibilities as to how close the grandparents were or wanted to be to the children, but the paternal set seem to have kept in touch regularly and just ignored any warning signs. 

This whole thing makes me sick to my stomach.

[acheronbeach]

6 hours ago, TSOWOATNK said:

A couple people quoted my statements and replied, but i have no inclination to go back and quote each one to respond to (I think it would make the post too long).

[snip]

I'm probably talking to air since in my experience you all just want to tar and feather anyone that thinks differently than you. Why I am being chastized for forming a hypothesis, but someone else can say that the baby might not be from the mother/father is completely acceptable is beyond me.

This in no way responds to what people were asking you.  It, in fact, just compounds your earlier tastelessness.  

You just invented - without any basis, or even logical inferences - a detailed fantasy history of a family who truly exists.  The baby thing at least had logical inferences underpinning it. 

These are real people with their own story of what happened.  These are children who have been tortured.  These are sick parents, and we don't know why.  This is a family who will be investigated, prosecuted, and fractured for years if not forever. They're not an opportunity for your imaginative fiction.  That's why your posts come across as distasteful, not because we "want to tar and feather anyone who thinks differently."  

[acheronbeach]

4 hours ago, KeepingSweet said:

Holy crap, are you in Ontario? I'm in NB, and in the capital city you can buy a beautiful home for anywhere between $150/250k with usually a few acres of land as well.

Not anymore.  I'm around Vancouver... which makes my old GTA hometown look like a bargain, with it's 700k-average homes.  I'm jealous of NB-ites.  One of my colleagues got transferred to Moncton from Richmond a couple months ago.  He was living in a rental studio in Van.  For the same price per month he's got a 3-bedroom HOUSE in New Brunswick.    

[KeepingSweet]

9 minutes ago, acheronbeach said:

Not anymore.  I'm around Vancouver... which makes my old GTA hometown look like a bargain, with it's 700k-average homes.  I'm jealous of NB-ites.  One of my colleagues got transferred to Moncton from Richmond a couple months ago.  He was living in a rental studio in Van.  For the same price per month he's got a 3-bedroom HOUSE in New Brunswick.    

Yeaaah, that's crazy. In the $250k range you can get a 4 bdrm house with at least 2 bathes and a 2 car garage. To rent a 3 bdrm house would probably only be a grand or so a month depending on the location. I grew up in NS and it's the same, if not cheaper there. You need to relocate! It's a little bit colder but the scenery is to die for  

[Sideways]

6 hours ago, of_the_lioness said:

According to this article, the family lived in Murrieta, CA during the intervening years. 

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5276835/Neighbor-says-Turpin-children-marched-circles-hours.html

 

@Sideways, do you have a link to the story about their time in Texas?

Yes, I found this today.   The video news report is very unsettling.  It shows the home, presumably where they lived in TX.  A neighbor stated it was filthy when they left, broken windows, and scratch marks on the inside of the bedroom doors that she attributed to pets

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/video/category/news/3793664-before-california-the-turpin-family-lived-in-north-texas/

[bird]

I wonder if I may ask a general question here. I have never lived in America and only have a theoretical knowledge of the culture from reading and the PR version from Hollywood. But I am very interested in the more personal reasons for why Americans appear to be set against government "intrusion" in their personal lives. For example, I find it hard to understand how children can be born and no one knows they exist, can be schooled without any checks/ standardised tests, can be raised without health care etc. Obviously I understand these cases represent the extreme but rational people still defend the rights of people to live this way. In the country I live in now I have been surprised by the opposite- that the government dictates so much about how people live and I'm always trying to figure out why everyone generally seems happy to go along with the "nanny state". But this is even more fascinating to me. I'm hoping someone is also having a slow day and feels like giving an opinion.... 

I hope I've worded my question properly! 

[Platipus]

FJ's banner drawing is sadly fitting for this story.

[pelerine]

@bird Okay, I'll bite...

For me personally, I oppose government involvement in my personal life because where does it end?  Once there's a precedent that it's okay for the government to get involved, how do we maintain boundaries?  Who decides what's okay and what isn't?  There are a lot of people in the United States, the national government can't possibly know what's best or right for all of us.  Even the state and local governments can't know what's best or right for us all.

That said, these people are disgusting beyond words and deserve to be punished SEVERELY.  My general political philosophy really boils down to "As long as you're not hurting anybody, you do you."  This family was clearly hurting their children.  The problematic areas are those borderline areas where you get good people on both sides.  I mean, most people agree that beating your children is bad and people who beat their kids should get in trouble.  But lots of people are okay with spanking.  But when does spanking become beating?  Lots of people, most of whom are not bad parents, are going to draw that line in different places.  The same thing goes for, say, education.  I was homeschooled.  My education looked nothing like public school education (year-round schedule, emphasis on the classical humanities, using actual books for history and literature instead of textbooks) but obviously it worked (scholarship to private university, two master's degrees, very successful career).  Still, there are "homeschoolers" who are doing nothing but failing their children in terrible ways.  But I would hate for those who homeschool the way I was to have to stop and teach to the standardized test just because some people do a bad job.  

(Actually, that's what irks me in life more than just about anything: when a few bad apples ruin something for everyone else when everyone else is actually doing a good job.)

Speaking more broadly of American culture and political philosophy, well, our entire country was founded on the idea that the government doesn't get to tell us what to do if we don't like what they're telling us.  (I jest, but only a little.  Speaking as a historian, I don't think most people in the US have as good a grasp of American history as I would like, but the idea that we don't have to submit to tyranny has stuck with us.  Most people just have a... somewhat odd sense of what constitutes tyranny.)

I hope this makes sense.  I'm still pre-coffee.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

On 16/1/2018 at 10:21 AM, FunFunFundie said:

I can still see their Facebook.

I was trying to pick out which kids were adults and realized that, it’s hard to tell because of the infantilizing dresses, but it looks like none of the girls have any hint of breasts - I don’t think they’ve gone through puberty. :(. 

First of all this turn of the conversation is really creepy. Secondly we clearly looked at different pictures.

As a 5 feet tall 100 pounds, very pale and rail thin woman I can understand how a 29 yo can be mistaken for a teen. But not how all 7 kidults look like teens.

13 hours ago, TSOWOATNK said:

A couple people quoted my statements and replied, but i have no inclination to go back and quote each one to respond to (I think it would make the post too long).

 

My theory is based upon my experience. Did anyone hear about that Ethiopian girl that basically died of exposure in WA state? While I didn't know the family, I know people that knew that family. They were defending the couple until the truth was revealed. The defenders were very nice people, with great families that were completely taken in by the story that couple gave. The way that girl died was horrific, they way she was treated was horrific; her death was forseeable and preventable. Yet, their friends/community came to their defense because the "reasons" for how she was treated before her death were explainable. They didn't see the worst of the abuse, but they did see signs of things being "off" and excused it. Many very good people will defend a "friend" against what they think is unfair persecution based upon the fact that they didn't see it coming, so it couldn't be true. I disagree with these people defending the abusers of course, but I can also see how they were taken in by the story. Most people don't question what they see/hear automatically, so if there is a seemingly reasonable explaination they will happily take it. This isn't limited to friends/family either, that is how child services missed all the warning signs with Josh Powell. I knew someone that was good friends with Jane Laut, who defended her and said she couldn't have shot her husband over-and-over again. She was livid that they would accuse Jane of the shooting, and swore up and down that she couldn't have done it because she knew her so well. Then once Jane admitted to doing it, she defended her friend as acting in self defense.  My larger point is that this horror house passed unnoticed, yet these people clearly had relationships with people IRL. The only way that could occur is if their community thought their odd behavior was somehow justified.

Large families gather together a great deal. I've left innumerable large family online groups because they often get just nutty (although groups that are mostly from outside the US tend to be better for some reason?) If someone came into the group saying they were reported to a child protection agency, more often than not someone would come along giving them the horrible advice to lockdown the family, and refuse to cooperate so no more reports could come in. This isn't limited to large families either. Look at the entire website "Medical Kidnap" to see what I mean. These nutters honestly think the best way to deal with government investigation is to fight back and get hostile. 

There are plenty of horrible large families, and there are plenty of good large families. They all tend to congregate together and talk about their experiences. Some large families will be investigated for abuse merely because there are people out there that can't comprehend that a family that large could be healthy. Some large families are never investigated simply because it is assumed they know what they are doing. In either case (and even in the case of other family situations like a mother with multiple children by multiple men, but I won't address that here) there are assumptions made about the family unit based upon the size/structure alone. Many of these large family groups are down right paranoid about anything and everything. Watch the videos of Nicole Naugler as a good example of this. An officer came to see if her daughter was OK after being seen wandering on the road, and NN flipped out and made it into a "mah rights" issue. She immediately started screeching about how persecuted they were, and told her kids that the police kill people. Being pulled over for a kid not in a seatbelt almost turned into an arrest at another time. The Ns are permanently set to attack mode if anyone that seems to be in authority so much as looks at them sideways. I think the only reason they haven't locked up their kids similarly is because it would require too much effort to maintain.

At least one of their behaviors really isn't all that abnormal; dressing similarly on outings isn't automatically crazy. When you go out in a large group in a crowded area (like Disneyland or the fair) with small children it *is* a good idea to dress similarly so you can readily see where people are. There is a reason that school groups often have kids wear the same shirt/vest on field trips. It isn't always insane control of everyone. I've done it myself both in a professional manner, and with my own family. If you have a group of 8 kids with you all wearing the same color it is easy to scan the crowd for that color and count. Similar attire can allow the kids to have some measure of freedom and distance while maintaining a visual. Having similar outfits for professional photos isn't entirely abnormal either. It's unnecessary to be identical. In general it is always a good idea to make sure everyone is wearing something that meshes well with everyone else in photography. You wouldn't want to have 1 person wearing hot pink, and everyone else wearing muted grey in a photo for a variety of reasons. 

These people are clearly wrong on so many levels. Yet, I don't think that every-single-aspect of their existence points to something nefarious either. Nor do I think the fact that they went unnoticed means that no one every saw the warning signs because they were just that good at hiding it. The most reasonable explaination is that they had a ready excuse for their behavior, and that they didn't start absolutely batshit crazy-something triggered them to overreact. 

I'm probably talking to air since in my experience you all just want to tar and feather anyone that thinks differently than you. Why I am being chastized for forming a hypothesis, but someone else can say that the baby might not be from the mother/father is completely acceptable is beyond me.

It's amazing how many people you know and the amount of incredible stories they have to share.

BTW I agree with the thesis you espouse in this post. The thing is that it doesn't explain and much less gives substance to the piece of fan fic you wrote upthread.