Turpins 2- California Torture House (Graphic content discussed)

[BlackSheep]

From this link:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-na-perris-texas-20180120-story,amp.html

Quote (I’m on mobile):

Vinyard said he and his wife considered reporting the couple to Rio Vista authorities. But he had reservations because he had grown up in the town of fewer than a thousand people, at the end of a county road surrounded by pastures, miles from the sheriff’s office.

A deputy was called to the Turpin house in 2001 when a child was bitten by a dog, and Vinyard’s uncle called the sheriff when the couple’s three pigs got loose in 2002. But Vinyard and his wife decided not to alert authorities about suspected abuse.

“We discussed it and we didn’t want to have the repercussions with them,” Vinyard said, especially since Turpin was armed.

End quote.

Does suspecting abuse place a moral obligation upon a person to report it?

Is that moral obligation removed if a person believes that reporting will threaten their own safety and the safety of their family?

Is there a legal precedent of someone who isn’t a mandatory reporter being sued for not reporting suspected abuse and thus potentially ending the abuse sooner?

...Just some of the things that I’m wondering after reading this article. 

24 minutes ago, EmCatlyn said:

And yet, you get a glimmer of what could have been.  In the following account, I notice there was a clever little girl (9 years old? ) who had figured out that though they weren’t allowed to tell people their names, people who heard them call each other by their names could learn their names that way. That’s not a stunted intelligence.  And it shows a natural impulse to go around the “letter of the law” which I find healthy and normal for a kid, especially one who was already being abused and malnourished.

Good points here that I hadn’t considered before!

[lilith]

13 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

Where did they get their PhD? In Clown College? Did they research science at Bible times? Did they develop new theories to prove that Earth is flat? Did they follow an online med research course while protesting outside Planned Parenthood?

But after all you may be right, even the Trumps got their degrees.

I once read a Facebook comment on a No Greater Joy article seeking recommendations for a “biblical non heliocentric homeschool science curricula”. Just when you think people couldn’t get any nuttier.....

[lilith]

12 hours ago, lilwriter85 said:

I agree with others, not all homeschooling parents isolate their kids. I know two homeschooling families that had their kids in outside activities. One family was fundie lite with three sons. The sons played in soccer leagues participated in a bike and hiking club, and went to space camps in Florida for several summers. There were involved in activities at their church too.

The other family were liberal Buddhists. One of their kids did attend school because of a developmental delay. I knew the mother through cat and kitten fostering. We fostered for the same shelter and I hung out their house a bunch of times. The homeschooled kids did community theatre, youth sports, they took language classes that were taught by private tutors, and were in a homeschool co-op group.

The isolated homeschooling families are definitely out there and I think money sometimes plays into why the kids are isolated. I have worked with a guy whose stepdaughter is an ATI homeschooler. She only has three kids and they tried to adopt from agencies a few years back. They couldn't raise money for agency fees and their files and applications got pulled in part because the stepdaughter's husband has a shaky work history. They have constant money struggles which has led to their kids not doing a lot of activities and also their involvement with ATI has turned off people at the mainstream Baptist church they attend. The stepdaughter allowed her oldest kid who is a teen to have a job. He said there were issues at first because the girl had to work with non-religious people and her boss was Jewish. 

 

My sister is a hippie type homeschooler. Following the death of her partner her kids started to get more isolated due to poverty and circumstance. My mother’s reaction was to enrol the school age kids in regular extracurricular activities and to facilitate and pay for their attendance. This served not only to open up their world and social circle, but also to keep my sister (who moves in unschooling circles) somewhat accountable for keeping up with their education. Doing art/theatre/circus/horse riding/dance with other kids of the same age made deficits in basic education readily apparent and shamed/motivated her towards fixing them.

I think that step from my mother really prevented things from going off the rails. Their father was an ex school teacher and had been their main educator until his death, and a combination of mourning, sudden single parenting and an inclination towards nutty educational philosophies on the part of my sister put their education in real jeapordy. 

[Sideways]

22 hours ago, Blahblah said:

And inevitably......

http://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/accused-couple-david-and-louise-turpin-allegedly-had-a-twisted-plan-for-a-reality-tv-show/news-story/b9db69f7820982e450d8b6fa71b97f0b

 

Those are some serious delusional thoughts in Louise Turpin's mind if she thought at 49 she was going to have another bio baby---which would help her get a reality show-- while meanwhile, she was physically, emotionally and psychologically torturing her children...

Louise is a malevolent and covert narcissist.  Covert narcissists, unlike overt, have no inherent self-worth and their malignant behavior is often a manifestation of the gross unworthiness they inwardly feel.    Louise is one of those women who based her entire self-worth on ability to bear children and remain attractive to her husband (thus the 3 vow renewals at the Elvis Chapel, her off-the-shoulder wedding dresses, clinging the illusion of being a  "young bride").   She got married at 16 after running away with her 24 year old future husband, and had no life experience or self-confidence, especially if she came from a home with abuse.  

That being said, malevolent narcissists can have many children, but have no maternal instinct.  Nicole Naugler being another malevolent Narc.    These women enjoy the attention and elevated status for being pregnant, they possibly physically enjoy being pregnant.   Making babies is a badge of honor that gives them status and confidence they otherwise lack.   Perhaps, these mothers enjoy the first months with the newborn, as they still receive considerable attention.   But once the child begins to talk and walk, needs more parental attention, needs to be taught, and especially, when the child begins to differentiate his/her own self from the parent, the kid is disposable, ignored (and in Louise Turpin's children, horribly abused).   Mommy must get her narcissistic fix again with another baby.

I will be curious what psychiatrists have to say about her clinical diagnosis beyond the narcissism.

[lilith]

10 hours ago, Dandruff said:

Monsters of a feather flock together?

I don't see any way they could suffer as much as their kids did, but I wonder whether they might be put in solitary.  I imagine that other prisoners might not respond well to their presence. 

Long or indefinite periods of solitary confinement meet the definition of torture. It’s still used throughout many penal systems, but it shouldn’t be. Nobody should be tortured.

The Turpin parents are likely to spend their lives in protective custody. What that looks like in practice varies from facility to facility, but they will probably have regular, highly supervised, contact with other protected inmates.

[Aine]

4 hours ago, SoybeanQueen said:

YES. So much this.

Even if people are unequipped to help much financially or physically, just reading in-depth about the long-term effects of neglect and abuse would be massively helpful so that one could offer support or understanding to the kids or their adoptive parents, if applicable. Our kids who came to us through adoption have some significant lingering issues, and I cannot talk to very many people about it because they just don't understand, assume that we don't love the kids enough, or assume they're bad kids because of some of their trauma-based behaviors. If I feel that way, I cannot imagine it is any easier for the kids themselves to open up to others when they need extra support. It's tremendously relieving to me when I learn that someone has educated his or herself about neglect and food hoarding, physical abuse and lying, etc.

So, if someone is thinking "I just don't know how I could help...." the library will have books on these subjects. Lending an ear is like a mini respite for many families.

Yes. Yes yes yes. I have always been a highly functioning person with PTSD and even with my mental health training, I didn't really realize I had PTSD until I had to testify in front of a magistrate 2 years ago in my mother's hearing for her termination of parental rights and they literally took me through a 6-inch stack of child protection reports that were almost always not investigated or not done so properly and I had to testify if they were true or untrue (if I could remember what a certain injury was caused by). I'd just started grad school and my world fell apart in terms of my mental health. You'd think graduate psychology students would be the most understanding...but no. Even though I chose not to put my story or anything on anyone, when I'd tell people that I was "struggling" after the child protection testimony, I had many 'friends' and fellow students tell me that "we're all stressed so get on with it." I was sleeping 2 hours a night at the time due to nightmares and flashbacks and was literally hallucinating due to lack of sleep when I finally got help. 

Honestly, people have all this sympathy and anger when they hear stories like the Turpins- and mine wasn't as severe- but the actual day-to-day accepting that someone is struggling and not 'normal'? Most people have very little understanding or tolerance for that and many other behaviors that don't necessarily effect them at all. The vast majority of people do not want to engage with people who have that extent of emotional "baggage"- they want friends that they can talk Beyonce video clips with and episodes of the Bachelor and other 'light' things. It sucks a lot when you're carrying things so heavy but you know the repercussions for sharing with anyone around you (assumptions of incompetence/instability, you're not fun enough to be around, you don't 'get' their same pop culture and television references etc).

[Shadoewolf]

We had to homeschool our son for a short while when we lived in Arkansas because our tiny public district didn't "have the resources" to meet his needs. They basically forced us into it, and I wish I had known that was illegal. Still, we picked the K-12 online program and it worked very well. They sent me everything I needed, I could start his lessons later in the day, or abandon them until later if he was having issues. No having to stay on the same topic for days on end, he could go at his own pace. When he started he was supposed to be in 2nd grade, but had lagged behind to about midway through 1st grade due to his behavior. Within 2 months he was caught up with his peers. K-12 has some degree of accountability in that he still had classes online with real teachers and still had to sit twice a year for the state exams. We also enrolled him in soccer for peer interaction. 

My daughters' cousin is being homeschooled but totally different reason.  She was falling behind in regular school because she's a bit of a brat and refused to listen or do her work.  Instead of having her tested for learning disabilities and getting her the proper assistance, they just elected to homeschool. When she's not doing school work she's basically the maid and has to care for their 2 giant dogs. No extracurricular activities and no interaction with kids her own age. It makes me sad for her.

I think enrollment in some sort of peer interaction activity should be mandatory for homeschool kids. Both for the kid's sake and so there are other adults who interact with them and can spot problems. Also, I think they should have to check in semi-regularly with someone at the local school district. Like once a month maybe? Done right with a good program, homeschooling can work. It's not all bad.

[Aine]

1 hour ago, BlackSheep said:

Is there a legal precedent of someone who isn’t a mandatory reporter being sued for not reporting suspected abuse and thus potentially ending the abuse sooner?

...Just some of the things that I’m wondering after reading this article. 

I'm a mandatory reporter and to my knowledge, there is no legal precedent for a member of the public being in any way in trouble for not reporting. Again, it was a suspicion and we know that suspicion to be right now but it wasn't even one on good evidence. The Child Protection laws in the two countries I've lived in (USA and Australia) give protections to reporters who report due to a feeling of moral obligation, no matter how small the issue, so long as harassment isn't occurring. 

Most child protection reports from civilians that are not malicious are very brave no matter what. Even when the identity is protected, it's often easy to figure out who did it by the questions asked if CPS do even come out to investigate. Without seeing solid evidence, I'd be hesitant if I was somewhere that was a good distance from police dispatch to report. I would probably do it but I don't know. I also have a very profound distrust for CPS.

I'm a mandatory reporter and have been for years and I do my job. A lot of that previously involved home visits with parents with substance use issues. I've seen things that give me nightmares and still CPS didn't even visit. I do not trust the system. I will do what I need to do as a mandatory reported but when things are murky and when I'm in a civilian role, shit gets hard y'all. As well so disheartening. 

59 minutes ago, Sideways said:

Those are some serious delusional thoughts in Louise Turpin's mind if she thought at 49 she was going to have another bio baby---which would help her get a reality show-- while meanwhile, she was physically, emotionally and psychologically torturing her children...

Louise is a malevolent and covert narcissist.  Covert narcissists, unlike overt, have no inherent self-worth and their malignant behavior is often a manifestation of the gross unworthiness they inwardly feel.    Louise is one of those women who based her entire self-worth on ability to bear children and remain attractive to her husband (thus the 3 vow renewals at the Elvis Chapel, her off-the-shoulder wedding dresses, clinging the illusion of being a  "young bride").   She got married at 16 after running away with her 24 year old future husband, and had no life experience or self-confidence, especially if she came from a home with abuse.  

That being said, malevolent narcissists can have many children, but have no maternal instinct.  Nicole Naugler being another malevolent Narc.    These women enjoy the attention and elevated status for being pregnant, they possibly physically enjoy being pregnant.   Making babies is a badge of honor that gives them status and confidence they otherwise lack.   Perhaps, these mothers enjoy the first months with the newborn, as they still receive considerable attention.   But once the child begins to talk and walk, needs more parental attention, needs to be taught, and especially, when the child begins to differentiate his/her own self from the parent, the kid is disposable, ignored (and in Louise Turpin's children, horribly abused).   Mommy must get her narcissistic fix again with another baby.

I will be curious what psychiatrists have to say about her clinical diagnosis beyond the narcissism.

I don't think you're necessarily wrong but I do think deciding she's a covert narcissist when we really don't know much about the parents (besides them being absolute monsters) is premature. You make a lot of assumptions in your post. There are many other explanations, although none excuse her behavior. Also- her behavior could just easily fit other elements of the Dark Triad like psychopathy or machiavellianism. All narcissists don't have an inherent self-worth- that doesn't differentiate covert from overt. One of the hallmarks of narcissism of both types is an unstable sense of self that is unable to take criticism. I'd say *if* she's an overt narcissist, she would have had blogs etc. But even a covert narcissist likely would have drawn attention to herself in some sphere in her life, even if it wasn't parenting.

[EmCatlyn]

53 minutes ago, BlackSheep said:

From this link:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-na-perris-texas-20180120-story,amp.html

 

Thanks for the link.   I am wondering if Barbara Vinyard may have played with different (younger?) Turpin kids, and at a slightly later period than her sister Ashley.  According to Ashley, she played with the three oldest kids alone and they were around her age (9 or 10).  Her sister is 5 or 6 years younger.   And her account of going to the trailer to see if the kids would play is of a later date than when the older sister knew the older kids.  They were still living in the big house then.

(Of course, it is also possible that the Vinyard girls are remembering things creatively and confusing who was where when. It was a long time ago.)

As for whether the parents “should” have called CPS, with hindsight it is clear they “should” have.   But  I am not inclined to judge the neighbors (in Texas or California) too harshly.  They really only knew that the family was weird.  They might have feared that it would turn out that whatever the family was doing was legal, if weird.  

Not wanting to get into a feud with a neighbor is not so unreasonable by the standards of the rural South.  The “moral duty” to protect all children from suspected harm may seem less important than the “moral duty” to protect your family from the possible anger of a neighbor with a gun (that he likes to shoot towards the road).  It is a complicated issue.

If someone hears screams or sees bruises or is told by a child that s/he is being abused, the moral duty is clear because the risk to the child and th abuse are obvious.  Otherwise, anyone might make the wrong call. 

I hope they (the people who didn’t call the authorities) are feeling really bad about it though, instead of enjoying the limelight and being interviewed.  They should feel sick to their stomachs because they could have maybe saved the kids, but didn’t.

[DashwoodDaring]

4 hours ago, SoybeanQueen said:

When all children in public schools are performing to standards on tests, and all of them are achieving passing grades, then I'll be OK with applying the same standards to homeschoolers.

Children who don't do well enough on the public school standardized tests are not held back or given any specialized attention, not in many schools. There's also the issue of grade level. For my son to succeed, I had to go back several grades and re-teach. He wasn't on grade level for 3 school years in public school, and wasn't performing well on the standardized tests. The school just passed him to the next grade. Requiring a "grade level" standardized test would have meant that homeschooling failed him in the same way public school did.

You said the bad homeschool parents wouldn't join an activity group. If it's a requirement in the same way a standardized test is, then there would also be a mechanism for further inspection. Just like some horrible families would skip that requirement, they'd also skip registering their kids, hide them away, and not do the standardized tests. As you said, rules for law abiding citizens don't stop the bad people.

It's clear you have a low opinion of homeschooling families if you think they're trying to be more special than anyone else, or that the majority want to hide from society. Modern homeschooling is not majority fundie, and there are a lot of cool things happening. That's because they're mostly allowed to find better ways to educate their kids, free of the crap tests that bog down public schools.

First, if you’re demanding academic performance first for everyone else before homeschoolers, that IS demanding special treatment. Either performance reviews are universal, or they’re not. I say every child has a right to an appropriate, accountable education.  Right now, we know that approximately 80% of all public and charter students are performing at or above grade level at the national level. (I’ll give you citations when the government reboots.) We have no idea how the homeschool cohort is doing because we have no testing of them at all. All we know is that they vanish from the data. Anecdote is not data. Homeschool advocacy cannot prove it meets or exceeds the public school 80% standard because it doesn’t want to keep records of its failures, while public schools must. If GM has to keep all safety crash records, but Ford is allowed to only keep records on the tests it passes, GM will look like it is less safe when it’s passing 9 of 10 tests (90% pass rate), even if Ford is only passing 2 tests in 10 and discarding the failures (but reporting those 2 as 100%.) You’re demanding to be Ford. That’s not acceptable. 

In fact, I do have an extremely low opinion of homeschooling because it’s so easy to abuse. I’ve been seeing it for thirty years, with almost no successes and a lot of damage. I see a lot of people on the advocacy side claim progress; I have not seen it at the academic level or at the level of data, while also hearing survivors of homeschooling call out the damage done to them. There’s a grim joke amongst educators: the failure mode for homeschool is to put the kid back in public school and make public school take the blame. It’s a statistical truth: if a parent pulls a child and spends a year failing, there’s a good chance that kid has lost that year and more. You and your kid are exceptions, not the rule. Please stop extrapolating your unique circumstance to a universal. 

At the risk of outing myself, I grew up in the town where the primary anti-abortion/anti-contraception press (that also prints several homeschool curricula) is based. It’s a small town, in the middle of nowhere, but with outsized influence for its size and location due to some quirks of history, geography and politics. I went to public school with the children of the homeschool press (yay, irony!), in a town founded by Mormon polygamists; the town still has a (semi)covert polygamist presence and a high, early tolerance for home schooling. The area population then was about 5,000, with about 300 of us in any +/- 2 year cohort. My high school peers included the Evers family (D. Evers was then chief of police), who homeschooled some of their children and  abused their adopted daughter to death a few years later (after they moved to Western CO under odd circumstances; they were an early case in the RAD legal fight), the M_______ (the press and siblings to the Evers), and the Flakes (the Senator is not of my cohort, but his nephews, nieces and cousins are). That town is exceptionally cohesive because almost everyone is related to everyone else. In pre-internet days, the town’s oxygen was gossip. Everyone knew everything, including religious leaders, members of the school board, town officials, doctors. I knew who was homeschooled then; we were a tight group and most ended up as digital pioneers so we’ve remained friends despite scattering. It’s taken my homeschooled friends several extra years to reach self-sufficiency; most will never catch up, even to the ones who only graduated high school at 18. Homeschooling in that environment is one of the best case scenarios, because everyone does the major activities (Stake dances, church, 4H, Young Women’s/Boy Scouts/little theater/sports) which limits social isolation. And yet educational and other abuses happened, regularly. 

My best friends were homeschooled from fourth, third, second, and kindergarten (in age order). I’m a year younger than the oldest, the same age as the second, a year older than the third. My friends had no educational difficulties as children; their parents pulled them for political and personal reasons that are not mine to share. Eight years later, I was teaching the third child 4th grade (fractions) math when I was a junior in high school, and teaching the eldest 9th grade English so xie could pull a passing grade on community college ENG081 (remedial) papers. I love my friends, but their parents wrecked them by pulling them from school. (I disliked the school district for other reasons, but it was academically acceptable in most cases.) 

My best friends are the best success story I can relate from my cohort - they all have stable home lives now, have gotten at least AAs (that took extra years because of remedial work), built careers, and are raising their children — in public school. Which I consider a strong indictment of homeschooling. They’ve also required decades of therapy. Others have died young, in logging accidents and wild fire, because they couldn’t find other work, or of reckless behavior that wasn’t quite suicide, but was flirting with it. My homeschooled cohort has a higher rate of pharmaceutical drug abuse than the the rest of my cohort from the same place. (Alcohol is limited, but LDS.) Since drug abuse correlates tightly to childhood isolation and lack of bonding, it’s a fairly natural case study. 

My friends were a homeschooling failure that was totally visible to the bishopric, the stake, the school board, the police and the community. But they were also invisible because it was within their parents’ legal right to teach them nothing beyond how to care for chickens, sew pioneer dresses and tap dance. Nobody sees home schooling failures because we don’t have any way of accounting for the 1% or 4% of children who are born and never appear in kindergarten, or who finish third grade and never show up for fourth. Most are okay. We think. We hope. But we don’t know. We do know those children don’t apply to their state universities because they don’t take SATs or build portfolios. What we think happens most often is they spend five or six years at a community college, doing a year of GED work, two years of remedial work, then another three years doing a two year AA, while working poorly paid retail and service jobs. They slide into the service economy and disappear as GED/Some College. Your child? Yours is a best case scenario. The Turpins and the Wolfpack children? They’re the almost worst case scenarios, assuming everyone got out alive in the Turpin household. My friends? They’re the median scenario, at adulthood +20 years. And your kids are in better shape because there are not seven or ten or thirteen of them. A school teacher may have 25 kids in xir class, but they don’t need to wash and buy 25 sets of clothes, ensure they have 25 grocery lists, get them all vaccinated, repair their roofs, pay their bills. Teachers are stretched thin, but not as thin as a super-size family homeschool. 

I did leave; I’m a researcher (still technically) associated with a very large public university. My area of focus is PTSD, specifically complex PTSD. (I’ve also done some geriatrics and OCD cluster work, because my tight focus is psychoinformatics, or the data science around and about psych, and psychs who are also data geeks used to be pretty rare.)* For the past six years, I’ve worked with abused children and the adults they become. I see more than a few homeschool successes  (we never see the failures because nobody does) come through our undergrad academic (not therapeutic) program every year. We require first year students to live on campus, and this is entirely to these very young adults’ benefit, but the homeschooled ones are generally more overwhelmed, anxious, and have poor coping and interpersonal skills compared to their academic peers. (Though to be fair, the best preparation for both dorm life and a large university is a 3.5 GPA (B+/A-) from four years at a very large, diverse, academically acceptable but not superior public high school. Academic superstars from highly competitive high schools actually fare worse in very large public and private universities.) 

Emotionally, homeschoolers are... tender and so very vulnerable. They require a higher degree of non-tutorial academic support (dealing with TAs, when to turn in papers, how to cite, how to manage their time) than even young people from academically sketchy schools. I’ve noticed that homeschoolers may be self-starters, but self-direction and self-finishing are not necessarily strengths. They’re often uncomfortable with deadlines or fragmented working conditions. Those are all skills learned in large group environments.

Their parents are also significant irritants as an employer (I have supervised work study) and professional. The parents go one of two ways: either so intensely helicopter that these students have no independence even at a distance (no 19 year old needs to call/text xir parent on the opposite side of the state before and after each class, and upon arriving at xir next destination on campus, or have their parent email me a sick note from the other side of the continent), or these young adults are entirely abandoned down to requiring FAFSA exemptions and loans to pay for toilet paper and tampons because they decided to leave home. While I see other maladaptive behaviors from parents of school graduates, I rarely see either extreme degree, and I don’t see the middle tones that are common to school graduates from homeschool parents. Neither enmeshment nor abandonment are healthy reactions to a child reaching adulthood.

So yes, I want more regulation of home schooling. I have never seen an unqualified success story at age 33. I’ve seen precious few at age 26, from the child’s perspective. There’s too much room for dysfunction. And survivors of home school are saying this themselves, now that enough of them are old enough to advocate for themselves. I listen to the ones who have the experience. When adult former homeschoolers tell me their situation was bad, I believe them, not the people who created their situation.

 

 

*and the reason I’m here instead of doing math in my spare time is my funding ran out 12/31/17; we knew last January we weren’t getting re-upped; I closed my project, am writing the paper, and there’s no research money anywhere right now. There are companies I won’t work for, and companies that won’t hire me because of academic work I’ve done. I’m privileged enough to get to be selective for the first time in my life. So it goes... Midlife career changes are fun!

[SoybeanQueen]

3 hours ago, Aine said:

Honestly, people have all this sympathy and anger when they hear stories like the Turpins- and mine wasn't as severe- but the actual day-to-day accepting that someone is struggling and not 'normal'? Most people have very little understanding or tolerance for that and many other behaviors that don't necessarily effect them at all. The vast majority of people do not want to engage with people who have that extent of emotional "baggage"- they want friends that they can talk Beyonce video clips with and episodes of the Bachelor and other 'light' things. It sucks a lot when you're carrying things so heavy but you know the repercussions for sharing with anyone around you (assumptions of incompetence/instability, you're not fun enough to be around, you don't 'get' their same pop culture and television references etc).

Eloquently put. I'm sorry you had that experience. My teenage daughter who has a traumatic past is struggling a lot with this right now. I don't tell too many people about it, and she will, but kind of glossed over. Most people just say "teenager problems" and want to move on. It's so much more than that!

[FilleMondaine]

4 hours ago, Aine said:

I'm a mandatory reporter and to my knowledge, there is no legal precedent for a member of the public being in any way in trouble for not reporting.

In my profession (social work) and my state, you will lose your license if you do not report. Ergo, you are out of a job, and unlikely to be hired elsewhere, even if your license is reinstated.

[FecundFundieFundus]

@FilleMondaine The OP was asking if there was a legal precedent for a random citizen being prosecuted for not reporting a suspicion. Aren't social workers mandatory reporters? 

[FilleMondaine]

4 hours ago, Aine said:

Most child protection reports from civilians that are not malicious are very brave no matter what. Even when the identity is protected, it's often easy to figure out who did it by the questions asked if CPS do even come out to investigate. Without seeing solid evidence, I'd be hesitant if I was somewhere that was a good distance from police dispatch to report. I would probably do it but I don't know. I also have a very profound distrust for CPS.

I'm a mandatory reporter and have been for years and I do my job. A lot of that previously involved home visits with parents with substance use issues. I've seen things that give me nightmares and still CPS didn't even visit. I do not trust the system. I will do what I need to do as a mandatory reported but when things are murky and when I'm in a civilian role, shit gets hard y'all. As well so disheartening. 

 

We have to remember that CPS folks are paid poorly and over-worked. It's a situation ripe for burnout.  I also have to call them often for my job, and it is appalling how I keep working with the same ones. Appalling because there are so few people despite the large number of children in need. Depression and secondary trauma among CPS is high.

There have been calls for increased support for CPS: Money for salaries and new-hires, time-off, new facilities, etc. And I am going to say it: so-called "Conservatives" are actively slashing our safety net, despite the obvious and statistically-proven outcomes. By slashing human services, budget, education funds, they are leaving children high-and dry and overworked staff without support. I believe that it is pure evil. In some cases (looking at you, McConnell), it is gleeful evil.

So please remember to Get Out the Vote, and to vote progressively. Your votes save children's lives. So please pass those levies, support progressive causes. It's not a silver-bullet, and bills/politicians can be imperfect. But hot-dog, it will do the most good and save the lives and hearts of the most children.

Just now, FecundFundieFundus said:

@FilleMondaine The OP was asking if there was a legal precedent for a random citizen being prosecuted for not reporting a suspicion. Aren't social workers mandatory reporters? 

Woops! This is what happens when I don't drink my coffee. Yes, social workers are mandatory reporters. Don't know the legal in-and-outs of private citizens. I do know that in my state, I am not REQUIRED to make the call if I see something in my off-time, but I am still protected against lawsuits if I see something and call during my off time.

There is a super-experienced social worker here on these threads who will know the answer.

Thanks for clarifying! (And gently, too)

1 hour ago, SoybeanQueen said:

Eloquently put. I'm sorry you had that experience. My teenage daughter who has a traumatic past is struggling a lot with this right now. I don't tell too many people about it, and she will, but kind of glossed over. Most people just say "teenager problems" and want to move on. It's so much more than that!

Sad to hear about your daughter. Lucky she has a mum like you. Hugs.

[SoybeanQueen]

4 hours ago, DashwoodDaring said:

Emotionally, homeschoolers are... tender and so very vulnerable. They require a higher degree of non-tutorial academic support (dealing with TAs, when to turn in papers, how to cite, how to manage their time) than even young people from academically sketchy schools. I’ve noticed that homeschoolers may be self-starters, but self-direction and self-finishing are not necessarily strengths. They’re often uncomfortable with deadlines or fragmented working conditions. Those are all skills learned in large group environments.

Their parents are also significant irritants as an employer (I have supervised work study) and professional. The parents go one of two ways: either so intensely helicopter that these students have no independence even at a distance (no 19 year old needs to call/text xir parent on the opposite side of the state before and after each class, and upon arriving at xir next destination on campus, or have their parent email me a sick note from the other side of the continent), or these young adults are entirely abandoned down to requiring FAFSA exemptions and loans to pay for toilet paper and tampons because they decided to leave home. While I see other maladaptive behaviors from parents of school graduates, I rarely see either extreme degree, and I don’t see the middle tones that are common to school graduates from homeschool parents. Neither enmeshment nor abandonment are healthy reactions to a child reaching adulthood.

So yes, I want more regulation of home schooling. I have never seen an unqualified success story at age 33. I’ve seen precious few at age 26, from the child’s perspective. There’s too much room for dysfunction. And survivors of home school are saying this themselves, now that enough of them are old enough to advocate for themselves. I listen to the ones who have the experience. When adult former homeschoolers tell me their situation was bad, I believe them, not the people who created their situation.

As you said, anecdotes are not data. Yours do not carry any more weight than the ones you want to ignore. Your expectations for homeschooled students go well beyond their academics. How does academic testing address their social needs, as you see them? Are those needs tested among public schooled kids? If not, you're doing the same thing you accused me of doing with regard to academics, only on the social/emotional side. There are socially weird homeschoolers, and socially weird public schoolers. Their schooling environment isn't likely the main reason for their social behavior, particularly since most homeschoolers are not like the Turpins, where the children are completely isolated.

Also, there are several states that do require testing and/or professional monitoring, so there is data available that can be extrapolated. I could match your anecdotes of helicopter parents and socially awkward students with success stories, and could also match them with public school student stories. But none of that would convince you because you're already convinced that homeschooling is always a failure, and only your anecdotes count, apparently.

I have a masters degree in education. I'm not unfamiliar with the research. In fact, I did some research on homeschooling while in grad school. In developing secular homeschool curricula, I've had the opportunity to work with quite a few homeschooled students and their parents. Overall, my experience is that they're weird or "normal" at about the same rate as public school students. But, I didn't come into my research with overtly negative feelings about homeschooling. I'm able to look at each case on its own merits. The people who are successfully homeschooled don't always announce that they were, either, so you'd have no way of knowing which "normal" students fall into that category unless they volunteered the info.

Having also worked in higher education, and having graded zillions of essays, and having worked as a TA, I would say that college students in general struggle with citing, dealing with TAs, and time management. Unless all of my university-level students just happened to be homeschooled....  but that's pretty unlikely. Public schools are currently failing students on much of that, in my opinion, and certainly some homeschoolers along with them. The utter failure in essay writing and critical thinking skills overall is a topic unto itself. When I teach my homeschool writing class, I require my students to argue both sides of a topic and cite their sources. <--- this is merely a statement, not extrapolated beyond my students.

Edited to add that perhaps we should have a separate thread to discuss homeschooling in general outside of the Turpins, so this thread can remain focused on the horror of their particular situation.

[BlackSheep]

Thank you to those who offered insight on the duty to report suspected abuse by mandatory reporters and by private citizens.

For private citizens, the factors to consider can be complex, weighing, among other issues, the safety of one's own family. And hindsight is 20-20. Even with high levels of oversight, even with regular checks from CPS, abused children can and do slip through the cracks.

The Turpins' abuse of 13 children went on for decades, with part of that time being in a high-density suburban neighborhood. Consider how much easier it would be, relatively speaking, for a single abused child to be unknown to neighbors. The thought is chilling.

Furthermore, the Turpin children had each other, and escape still took two years to plan. Once it was in motion, one sibling turned back out of fear. For an only child, it could be much more difficult to plan an escape and seize an opportunity when the parent(s) are sufficiently distracted.

[SoybeanQueen]

On the Turpins specifically, I am not convinced that increased homeschool regulation would have caught them. Consider the children in the last few years who were "lost" in the foster care system. The state allegedly regulates foster care and the whole point is to protect children and keep them from abuse and neglect. How are kids slipping through the cracks? Some of those kids were dead for years before the state even realized they were missing. I think monsters find ways to get around the laws.

I mentioned that some of my kids came to us through adoption. They were removed from their bio mom and placed in foster care, and ended up in an abusive foster home for FOUR years. They had monthly check ins with a social worker. They had a case manager. They had therapists and doctors, weekly or monthly. I believe they were simply over-worked rather than malicious, but still, the result was abuse and neglect happening right under their noses.

Foster care and social work systems are overworked and not swimming with cash. The public school system is kind of the same, no? I completely understand the desire to protect kids that slip through the cracks. I just don't think any of the proposed methods targeted to homeschoolers will work to do that.

[upkacrane]

7 hours ago, Aine said:

I'm a mandatory reporter and to my knowledge, there is no legal precedent for a member of the public being in any way in trouble for not reporting. Again, it was a suspicion and we know that suspicion to be right now but it wasn't even one on good evidence. The Child Protection laws in the two countries I've lived in (USA and Australia) give protections to reporters who report due to a feeling of moral obligation, no matter how small the issue, so long as harassment isn't occurring. 

Most child protection reports from civilians that are not malicious are very brave no matter what. Even when the identity is protected, it's often easy to figure out who did it by the questions asked if CPS do even come out to investigate. Without seeing solid evidence, I'd be hesitant if I was somewhere that was a good distance from police dispatch to report. I would probably do it but I don't know. I also have a very profound distrust for CPS.

I'm a mandatory reporter and have been for years and I do my job. A lot of that previously involved home visits with parents with substance use issues. I've seen things that give me nightmares and still CPS didn't even visit. I do not trust the system. I will do what I need to do as a mandatory reported but when things are murky and when I'm in a civilian role, shit gets hard y'all. As well so disheartening. 

I don't think you're necessarily wrong but I do think deciding she's a covert narcissist when we really don't know much about the parents (besides them being absolute monsters) is premature. You make a lot of assumptions in your post. There are many other explanations, although none excuse her behavior. Also- her behavior could just easily fit other elements of the Dark Triad like psychopathy or machiavellianism. All narcissists don't have an inherent self-worth- that doesn't differentiate covert from overt. One of the hallmarks of narcissism of both types is an unstable sense of self that is unable to take criticism. I'd say *if* she's an overt narcissist, she would have had blogs etc. But even a covert narcissist likely would have drawn attention to herself in some sphere in her life, even if it wasn't parenting.

According to Richard Grannon, the main difference between a covert and an overt NPD is, in a nutshell, that the world generally agrees with the overt NPD's inflated sense of self that the NPD is indeed awesome, admirable and all sorts of special (until someone disagrees with them or challenges them in any way and the mask slips), but the world doesn't generally think that the covert NPD is that awesome at all. Neither the covert nor the overt NPD possess an actual self, and are, therefore, constantly busy trying to keep up the false self that they are trying to sell to the world. However, while the overt NPD can act out and upon their completely exaggerated sense of self because their audience is cheering them and providing them with first class Narcissistic supply (which is what they need to fuel their artificial, hologrammatic self), the covert NPD, on the contrary,  has to work a lot harder to get their Narc supply and will generally have to resort to projecting a public self that is opposite to the false self that they privately identify with. In other words, the overt NPD does usually have enough talent, or charm, or brains or beauty or social status/money so that they can openly say "Look at me! I'm so wonderful that I deserve to get everything I want and I want everything and you will give it to me" and some, if not many (it depends on how good the NPD's con act is) people will actually go "Of course you're wonderful! Please, allow me the honour of giving you what you want!". The covert NPD, on the other hand, has realised that people do not buy their "I'm wonderful" act and are consequently forced to use the "I'm a victim! Please protect me and take care of me 'cause I'm an innocent sweet little lamb" act. In their heart of hearts they picture themselves as these glorious lions, just like the overt NPDs, but they slip on the "poor me" wounded little lamb's skin to attract the sympathy of everyone who will listen to them and thus garner as much Narc supply as the overt Narc gets through their more 'in your face' strategies. Many covert Narcs will suddenly become very overt if and as soon as the circumstances allow them, just as someone who had been an overt NPD all their life would start to become more covert as they age (think elderly Hollywood starlet). In short, most NPDs will altern between covert and overt façades depending on which one will give them the most supply (positive or negative, but preferably positive).

I agree that we have too little info to provide even an armchair diagnosis, but I think the evidence so far is so overwhelmingly poiting in the direction of depravity and sheer evil, that, as I have already mentioned upthread, Monster 1 & 2 must needs be in te dark triad/tethrad. And, as far as I know, you need to be on the malignant end of the spectrum of NPD/ASPD/BPLD to qualify as a dark triad/tethrad-type, but if you know of any other way that one can end up in the dark triad camp, please do tell us: I'd really love to know.

Given how stellar Monster 2's phone accounts of her life were, according to her sister Teresa, and taking into account the many "look at what a great family we are and the fun we're having on this expensive trips!", I'd sooner label her as an overt malignant NPD than a covert one. This could also explain why her family never suspected anything: an overt NPD will lie like nobody's business to have people believe the completely fabricated persona that the Narc him/herself is so desperate to believe. I, too, find it really odd that nobody questioned the fact that so many adult children, actually ALL the adult children were still living at home with no jobs, but we must remember that if an NPD's mouth is moving, they're lying. Who knows what sort of amazing accounts of the adult children's brilliant careers/personal lives/enourmous social success were being fed the family over the phone. I'd still find it weird that my nephews and nieces would never contact me or have social media profiles, but, again, maybe Monster 2 had always a reason up her sleeve, perhaps something along the lines of "My oldest son is sooooo busy with his postgraduate school work that he feels social media would be a distraction blah, blah, blah". Of course, this is all pure speculation.

Back to the covert vs. overt NPD discussion, things might take a 180º turn now, as she might suddenly become a covert, a.k.a. "fragile" NPD. My money is on a big fat "I was just a battered wife terrorised by a monstrous husband!" line of defense. I find it interesting that it is Monster 2 who got the private lawyer...mmmmhh...who's paying for that? Wasn't Monster 1 the only one with a paid job? Why would he give his wife the money to hire a lawyer while he went with a public defender? Is Monster 1 living up to the promise he allegedly made Monster 2 when they eloped, to give her "everything she ever wanted"? Still pure speculation on my part, but the very fact that they have chosen to have two separate legal defences could be interpreted as a first step in the direction of a "it wasn't me, it was him/her" line of defense. And I can't help but noticing that the one who went and hired a lawyer is Monster 2...I wish I could unsee the way she beamed at her lawyer in court. Both the carefree-ness of that smile and the Nark smirk on her mug pic have been haunting me for days.

Let me insist one more time that all of the above, including whether Monster 2 is an NPD or what variety is pure speculation. I am trying to distance myself emotionally from this horror by taking a more cerebral stance, as I myself was an abused child (nothing so extreme, though my momster was pretty sadistic too) and I'm still battling CPTSD. I should probably stay away from this thread altogether. I have managed to take long "leaves of absence" from the Rodrigui and even the Nauglers, but I always seem to come back and I really don't think it's helping me in my recovery.

Sorry about the wall of words!

[SapphireSlytherin]

1 hour ago, BlackSheep said:

For private citizens, the factors to consider can be complex, weighing, among other issues, the safety of one's own family. And hindsight is 20-20. Even with high levels of oversight, even with regular checks from CPS, abused children can and do slip through the cracks.

When I was a very young, newly married woman, I moved 500 miles away from family. I lived in an apartment building, and shared a landing with one other apartment. The young family who lived there (husband/wife/HER son) was expecting a baby.

One afternoon, I saw the wife and the little boy outside, and we chatted - we were friendly enough, as neighbors. I noticed the little boy had two black eyes. I asked him if he fell off the swing and landed on his head - because that had literally happened the week before to another friend's child. He said, "No. Dad hit me." I was totally shocked. His mother said, "Yeah, Tom was mad because Jason won't learn his ABC's."

The child was TWO. TWO YEARS OLD.

I called and reported them. After Tom got home from work (military), three police cars, a sheriff's car, two military police cars, and an ambulance showed up en masse. Tom was arrested. Jason was taken to the hospital. 

The next morning, the mom knocked on my door and asked me to come over. I was terrified that she knew I was the one who called the police. She didn't - and she told me both she and Tom suspected the people who lived below them.

Regardless - Tom was out of jail and back in the apartment THAT NIGHT. I was SO scared that I propped my apartment door shut with my sofa AND one of my chairs. I was alone because my husband had been deployed overseas for a "war" action. 

Would I do it again? Yes, for visible bruising and wounds. For suspicion? No. It's TERRIFYING to report someone who could hurt you.

Follow-up to the story:

That family eventually moved out after their new baby was born, and the mom stayed with Tom. I Googled them last year, and found out that Jason is following in Tom's footsteps with regard to the way he treats his children, but Tom died - unexpectedly. I was not sad.

[SapphireSlytherin]

1 hour ago, upkacrane said:

Nark smirk on her mug pic

She reminds me SO MUCH of Bellatrix Lestrange.

[BlackSheep]

20 minutes ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

Regardless - Tom was out of jail and back in the apartment THAT NIGHT.

When I read this, my stomach twisted. I would have been terrified too!

21 minutes ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

That family eventually moved out after their new baby was born, and the mom stayed with Tom. I Googled them last year, and found out that Jason is following in Tom's footsteps with regard to the way he treats his children, but Tom died - unexpectedly. I was not sad.

And the cycle of abuse continues.

One evening last year, I was in the front yard with our dogs. A car stopped by our neighbors' house and a guy got out of the passenger seat. He ran across our neighbors' yard, opened their daughter's car door, took something from inside, quietly shut the car door, and sprinted back to the car that he arrived in. The car sped off.

I was dumbfounded that someone had just stolen something right there in front of me. He and the driver had to have seen me and our dogs, but that didn't stop them. I stood there wondering if I should tell our neighbors. The guy obviously knew what he was looking for and where to find it. Did he know the family? Should I get involved?

The biggest concern: Someone who is so bold might be driven by the need for drugs or money for drugs, and that brings along its own set of problems.

I hustled the dogs inside and consulted my husband. He wasn't sure what was best. I decided to tell them. I went to their house and described what had happened. They were mystified as to who it may have been and what he took.

Later, one of adult children told me that the guy was a friend of one of the daughters, that the parents didn't approve of him, and that he was somehow sapping off the daughter - borrowing her car and other things. I don't know what he took from the car. I haven't seen him since.

So it turns out that the issue was minor, apparently not an actual crime, but merely sneakiness driven by family drama. In hindsight, should I have done what I did? I think so. You see a stranger take something from a neighbor's car in a furtive manner, so you say something. I know that if I hadn't said something, I'd still be wondering what it was all about and if my inaction had allowed other (possibly worse) things to take place because the family hadn't been alerted.

I guess that it's not surprising that the Turpins' neighbors in various neighborhoods didn't act on their suspicions. I saw something happen right in front of me and was uncertain what to do. Even once I'd made my decision to act, as I walked to my neighbor's house I was still wondering, "Is this even worth pursuing? It's probably nothing. But I'll do it just in case." 

[BullyJBG]

21 minutes ago, BlackSheep said:

When I read this, my stomach twisted. I would have been terrified too!

And the cycle of abuse continues.

One evening last year, I was in the front yard with our dogs. A car stopped by our neighbors' house and a guy got out of the passenger seat. He ran across our neighbors' yard, opened their daughter's car door, took something from inside, quietly shut the car door, and sprinted back to the car that he arrived in. The car sped off.

I was dumbfounded that someone had just stolen something right there in front of me. He and the driver had to have seen me and our dogs, but that didn't stop them. I stood there wondering if I should tell our neighbors. The guy obviously knew what he was looking for and where to find it. Did he know the family? Should I get involved?

The biggest concern: Someone who is so bold might be driven by the need for drugs or money for drugs, and that brings along its own set of problems.

I hustled the dogs inside and consulted my husband. He wasn't sure what was best. I decided to tell them. I went to their house and described what had happened. They were mystified as to who it may have been and what he took.

Later, one of adult children told me that the guy was a friend of one of the daughters, that the parents didn't approve of him, and that he was somehow sapping off the daughter - borrowing her car and other things. I don't know what he took from the car. I haven't seen him since.

So it turns out that the issue was minor, apparently not an actual crime, but merely sneakiness driven by family drama. In hindsight, should I have done what I did? I think so. You see a stranger take something from a neighbor's car in a furtive manner, so you say something. I know that if I hadn't said something, I'd still be wondering what it was all about and if my inaction had allowed other (possibly worse) things to take place because the family hadn't been alerted.

I guess that it's not surprising that the Turpins' neighbors in various neighborhoods didn't act on their suspicions. I saw something happen right in front of me and was uncertain what to do. Even once I'd made my decision to act, as I walked to my neighbor's house I was still wondering, "Is this even worth pursuing? It's probably nothing. But I'll do it just in case." 

That's probably best. I'm sure this story will give people something to talk about. And to communicate as to suspicions. Then you can say "well, due to that family, you can't not act on whatever concerns" and then follow up with "I'm glad you're all right". Easier said than done, right? Thanks for sharing and inspiring.

[Flossie]

People often don't thank you for calling in a problem.  The man who used to live across the street was convinced I spent all my time peering out of windows because I was standing outside my own home having a cigarette when they got a late night visitor.  He couldn't believe I wasn't out enjoying the cool of the evening after a hot day.  In his mind I was spying on my neighbors.  

So one day when I saw two men in a pickup truck stop on the road, get out, and take a boat engine out of my neighbors pickup and drive off, I took down the license plate of the truck and tried to remember as much as I could about the two men who took the engine.  I went over and told my neighbor what I'd just seen and he mocked me.  He said he'd sold the engine and told the guys to come pick it up when they had time, and that was why he had his truck parked up by the road.  He spread stories around the neighborhood about me spying on people, and although it seemed no one believed him for sure, it kind of messed with my head.

Maybe if I weren't so afraid to look out my front windows, I'd have seen the person who actually did come on his property and steal some stuff a couple of years later.  In fairness to the asshole, over time it became obvious he did have some mental issues that, among other things, caused him to be paranoid to the point that he spent much of his later years in and out of mental hospitals.

[upkacrane]

So, according to M2's youngest sister, M2 gleefully told her that M1 was ok with her, M2, having sex with a man that she had met online and even drove her to the hotel (many miles from their home, IIRC) where the affair was to be consumed. Apparently she, M2, was super excited about the whole thing and wouldn't listen to her sister's advice not to do it...

[foreign fundie]

6 minutes ago, upkacrane said:

So, according to M2's youngest sister, M2 gleefully told her that M1 was ok with her, M2, having sex with a man that she had met online and even drove her to the hotel (many miles from their home, IIRC) where the affair was to be consumed. Apparently she, M2, was super excited about the whole thing and wouldn't listen to her sister's advice not to do it...

Hope the man who had an affair with her realizes who she was and learns not to drive off with unknown women. Can’t be proud of this conquest.  Ieww.