Turpins 2- California Torture House (Graphic content discussed)

[wondering18]

55 minutes ago, elliha said:

Because I am used to kilos over pounds it wasn't until now that I typed in 82 pounds into the converter and... wow, that is tiny. My heart breaks for them. My five year old weighs about 50 pounds and she is FIVE. 

My 11 year old is 55kg. I believe 82 pounds converts to 35ish kg?

very very heartbreaking.

im not sure why but I feel the mother was the ringleader in it.

she seems to have a dark smirky evil look in her eye.

[ven]

After going down this rabbit hole via  twitter  , i came across an interview from the people who bought their texas home (that got foreclosed). Among the heaps of garbage there was apparantly a massive amount of empty hotdog cans . Is it possible that they were extremely impoverished and only fed the kids hotdog sausages for years on end? Did god not provide enough  to feed every mouth? maybe they only had enough to sustain themselves but not enough for everyone (as we have seen before , well fed parents but the children not so much).Did the extra chicken leg just not cut it?  

[meee]

I just had a horrible thought, and I dearly hope I'm wrong. There's no way, is there, that any of the older Turpin kids would be charged with neglect or failure to report or anything like that, just by virtue of them being legal adults? I mean, they absolutely shouldn't be, they were victims too, but the legal system is going to see it that way too, isn't it? Please?

Also, does Wikipedia have their ages right? If so, that is a bigger gap between the youngest and next-to-youngest than I thought, and it is plausible that they'd stopped having children for awhile before choosing to have one more -- before, I was pretty convinced that L thought her fertile years were over and was surprised by the baby, but one's fertile years don't generally seem to end suddenly at 36, do they?

And the more I read the more I'm convinced that they were about to either kill those kids or leave them there to die.

[Liza]

32 minutes ago, meee said:

aby, but one's fertile years don't generally seem to end suddenly at 36, do they?

Fertility goes down gradually after age 35. 

More so after 40.  But,pregnancy at age 47?  I think that is a stretch.  That would be very close to menopause, no?   In any case, I strongly suspect (hope not) that there was sexual abuse going on in that home

https://www.babycenter.com/0_age-and-fertility-getting-pregnant-in-your-40s_1494699.bc.

"At 45, a woman's likelihood of getting pregnant is no more than 3 or 4 percent. That's not to say it's impossible, but assisted reproductive technologies are almost always necessary, with IVF the most common. "The few eggs you have left may have chromosomal abnormalities, so screening before IVF is critical," says Dr. Copperman. Success rates are 0 to 1 percent, and most clinics recommend using eggs donated by a younger woman for those who want to conceive between ages 46 and 50.'

32 minutes ago, meee said:

just had a horrible thought, and I dearly hope I'm wrong. There's no way, is there, that any of the older Turpin kids would be charged with neglect or failure to report or anything like that, just by virtue of them being legal adults? I mean, they absolutely shouldn't be, they were victims too, but the legal system is going to see it that way too, isn't it? Please?

Oh I hope you are wrong, also.  

[foreign fundie]

Something dawned on me, while thinking about L’s wish to have a Duggar style reality show and trying for more babies to make that happen. 

If you want a reality show, you need a house full of kids, cute little kids preferably. Thirteen kids may be a lot, but if seven of them are grown and live their own lives perhaps in different states, there is never going to be any interest. Running a six kid household is way too common. Maybe L’s (vastly unrealistic) wish of having a reality show prompted her to make sure she had a string of adorable little girls, none of whom looked over 14 years old. Of course to make this happen she had to starve and control them almost to the point of death because if the girls would have grown up and left that would have been the end of her imagined future fame and riches. Just a thought. 

[FecundFundieFundus]

Kinky sex is in no way related to abuse, torture, or molestation. I do find it interesting that DT was playing around with submission, though. It just seems so odd.

[anjulibai]

2 hours ago, meee said:

I just had a horrible thought, and I dearly hope I'm wrong. There's no way, is there, that any of the older Turpin kids would be charged with neglect or failure to report or anything like that, just by virtue of them being legal adults? I mean, they absolutely shouldn't be, they were victims too, but the legal system is going to see it that way too, isn't it? Please?

I sincerely doubt it, for two reasons: 1) They were obviously victims themselves and incapable of reporting anything; and 2) the prosecutor would have to want to file charges, which is just not going to happen because there would be a public uproar. 

[BlackSheep]

CCTV video of some of the children getting into the family's van as police arrive:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/turpin-family-latest-escape-video-cctv-children-siblings-leave-house-a8173666.html

I counted 7 people getting into the van (including a young child that's being carried), but 1 person appears to go back into the house just after the van leaves. It's difficult to discern exactly what was going on.

So the timeline has expanded.

Saturday night - David and Louise tell a friend that they're moving.

Sunday morning - A daughter escapes and calls 911. Kids are seen getting into the van. As the van backs out of the driveway, the video skips forward, and a vehicle that looks like a police SUV is now near the end of the driveway, and another police car arrives.

[Queen Of Hearts]

I might be wrong, but in the video it looks like it was a police officer who walks back to the house after the van leaves.

[nausicaa]

11 hours ago, Crazy Enough to Join said:

My personal theory is that unlike the classic abusive male patriarch situations that FJers study every day, M2 was actually the initiator of abuse in the Turpin household. Now of course both parents are depraved or they would have called the cops on their spouse. But my theory is that the abuse was all M2's idea. This torture case has been "weird" since the beginning and not matched the classic Ariel Castro holding those 3 girls captive style cases. My theory is that this case is different because, unlike the Ariel Castro style cases we've been discussing, it's been a female perpetrator rather than a male perpetrator dreaming up the depravity. Even the abuse pictures on their FB are very "female" oriented. I'm genderstereotyping here, but normally women are more into the everyone dresses up for a vow renewal, or family photos at Disney, or expecting a new sibling pics. 

I also find it interesting that there are stereotypically feminine and masculine aspects to the case and there isn't a consistent pattern. I agree that the three vow renewals with matching dresses, the child hoarding, and the Disney trips all seem very feminine. However, hog tying and strangling just immediately makes me think of a man. 

Also, I discovered that LT is only 5'1". While her children were obviously malnourished and small, several of them are taller than her and we haven't heard any stories yet of firearms being used to threaten them into submission. I have a hard time believing such a petite woman would expect to be able to dominate so many adult children. 

I suspect the answer is that this is a case where two dominant and twisted personalities came together: a baby-hoarding narcissist and a sadist. It's one of the reasons the abuse is so much worse than the majority of child abuse cases. Most cases seem to have an abusive spouse and a passive spouse who permits the abuse to continue by not intervening. In this case both parents were actively abusive in their own ways and encouraged the other's abuse. 

As to there being only one charge of molestation-- I think more is going to come out about that as time goes on. Maybe investigators are trying not to push the kids too much right now? Some of them don't even have the words to explain what happened to them.

And there are photos of the mother pregnant with the youngest child, so it appears it is biologically hers. Fertility is nasty and capricious sometimes. 

[Italiangirl]

ok after reading pretty much all the 2 thread (i just skip a part of the first cause i cant read it, it was too much i have to take a break) i have a question, is all the younger kids born at home? or was L in a hospital and somehow able to made the kid disappear? i mean from what i understand nobody knows there were 13 kids right?  i just can put my head around this people, it seems that somehow the abuse was discontinuous?

i have to say i don't really know the US reality, so I don't know how they were able to hide the kids even from authorities. Did I understand right that there wasn't any certificate or legal paperwork of this children? or I'm mixing up things? anyway  more i read about this case and more i'm horrified

[woonaluna]

Haven't read the entire thread, so this may be old news at this point, but the grandparents knew how many children there were, and expressly stated that the parents were Quiverfull by definition but not label. See the second-to-last paragraph of this article: "Betty Turpin [paternal grandmother to the Turpin children] says her son told her he had so many kids because God wanted him to. She says her son shared her Pentecostal Christian faith but he wasn't affiliated with a church in California."

Also after watching that video, I'm even more disgusted and horrified that they're in a fairly urban location. Those neighbors are close, how did they not hear screaming? For some reason up until I saw that footage, I was imagining a rural, possibly wooded farm out in the plains of southeast California. But they're closer to LA than I thought. Seriously everyone who heard a single scream has blood on their hands in my opinion. 

[FecundFundieFundus]

Why do you think there was screaming, @woonaluna? Their torture was being tied in chains and starved. 

[Hisey]

I have lived in neighborhoods like that. If a family is very reclusive, it's possible to know very little about them, other than when they go in and go out. However, 13 children? It is hard to believe no one suspected anything.

Growing up, my father was abusive and I know our neighbors knew something was going on. I think they did nothing due to a combination of these factors: didn't know to do/kind of afraid of my father/no CPS at the time/didn't want to get involved/gave my parents the benefit of the doubt. It was wrong, so I have tried to right that wrong as an adult. 

If I see an adult who seems angry, overwhelmed, talking meanly to a kid, I go up to them and praise the kid. "What a beautiful boy!" or something like that. It takes the parent aback. Helps them to see the beauty in a kid. Makes them feel good and I feel that helps the kid. Yes, I'd rather yell at the parents but I feel that ultimately hurts the child, who has to go home and be alone with that angry parent.

That doesn't apply to situations like the Turpins, of course.

For more serious cases, I have called CPS (I'm a mandated reporter), but I have never once seen anything result from it. Once, when a boy showed up to school with a handprint on his face, CPS showed up and tried to blame the kid!

[woonaluna]

11 minutes ago, FecundFundieFundus said:

Why do you think there was screaming, @woonaluna? Their torture was being tied in chains and starved. 

The torture also included severe beating. It's possible that they were trained to endure it without screaming, were gagged, or simply had no hope whatsoever that anyone who might hear would care. 

Perhaps it's my own bitterness and anger talking, but I've seen far too many cases of people looking the other way. The grandparents denying they knew anything at all, the neighbors denying they saw or heard anything, the parents themselves pleading not guilty, everyone's just watching their backs and trying to avoid being blamed. 

Speaking of, I have yet to find anything that details on what ground the parents are pleading not guilty, or if that has officially been presented yet. The total denial is unfathomable. 

[wild little fox]

My theory is the newest baby was the catalyst for the escape plan. The plan to escape started two years ago and the youngest is two years old now. So many times people in severe abuse situations cannot see how to save themselves but add another victim and it propels action that the victim with history wasn't able to find for the themselves. At the age of two children start exploring their own independence which can be seen as incorrigible and rebellious with abusers. So, the baby starts moving from golden child to being the subject of abuse.

 

Being subjugated to such heinous abuse and torture can break a person's will to fight back, especially with the starvation and its affect on the brain and body, would leave them with very little ability to fight but the deep empathy for another could be what gave them the courage to literally risk their lives.  

[woonaluna]

2 minutes ago, wild little fox said:

My theory is the newest baby was the catalyst for the escape plan. The plan to escape started two years ago and the youngest is two years old now. So many times people in severe abuse situations cannot see how to save themselves but add another victim and it propels action that the victim with history wasn't able to find for the themselves. At the age of two children start exploring their own independence which can be seen as incorrigible and rebellious with abusers. Being subjugated to such heinous abuse and torture can break a person's will to fight back, especially with the starvation and its affect on the brain and body, would leave them with very little to fight back but the deep empathy for another could be what gave them the courage to literally risk their lives.  

That's awful but totally plausible. I don't know the age gaps, but it's a theory that would make even more sense if it took a while for the last one to come along and the others were unable to endure watching a baby go through that.

[FecundFundieFundus]

Ah, I didn't read about the beatings. If I had to guess, they were probably well trained in keeping silent. Since they were on a nocturnal schedule and hid their children, I wouldn't be surprised if the neighbors heard nothing at all through the timing of the beatings and possibly the location (basement or sound barriers to prevent being overheard). 
I completely agree that there are too many people unwilling to acknowledge abuse, @woonaluna. It's too easy for people to look the other way.

[Bad Wolf]

I think it's not unusual to plead not guilty at the first hearing. Here, the three abusers had different lawyers, and eventually pleaded guilty and did not go to trial. The victims made statements in court, as did the medical professionals who cared for them. I would not be surprised if this didn't go to trial. With the amount of evidence against them, they have no credibility.

[woonaluna]

3 minutes ago, Bad Wolf said:

I think it's not unusual to plead not guilty at the first hearing. Here, the three abusers had different lawyers, and eventually pleaded guilty and did not go to trial. The victims made statements in court, as did the medical professionals who cared for them. I would not be surprised if this didn't go to trial. With the amount of evidence against them, they have no credibility.

Thanks for clarifying. My knowledge to the legal system is limited, so that makes sense. So if there's no trial, is it just an automatic sentence? 

[church_of_dog]

They don't needs grounds to plead not guilty -- legally, they are innocent until proven guilty.  The burden of proof is entirely on the prosecution.

That said, as has been mentioned, it's standard to plead "not guilty" at first even if they will later change it to guilty (with or without a plea deal), or to "not guilty by reason of insanity" or what have you.

In some cases, hopefully rare, the police make a major goof (such as tainting key evidence by not wearing gloves or booties, etc, or by forgetting to read the suspect their legal rights at the proper time, etc).  From the defense's perspective they don't want to plead guilty before those possibilities of dismissing the case have been ruled out.

On the flip side, this is why the police often file as many charges as possible, even trivial-seeming ones, so that if the big charges get dismissed on a technicality, there are other charges they can prosecute to ensure the person doesn't go free.

In the local case I am following, a man is accused of a brutal murder.  But his charges also include burglary (because he allegedly used his victim's car to move the body) and also arson because he tried to burn the house down to hide the crime.  Assuming the murder charge holds up, I can't imagine he'll be prosecuted on those other charges, but they are there waiting if by some legal glitch he is dismissed or not convicted on the murder charge.

[IntrinsicallyDisordered]

1 hour ago, Hisey said:

 

For more serious cases, I have called CPS (I'm a mandated reporter), but I have never once seen anything result from it. Once, when a boy showed up to school with a handprint on his face, CPS showed up and tried to blame the kid!

My sister once went to school with our father's handprint taking up half her face, her teacher (4th grade) asked her what happened and my sister told her she fell down the stairs and landed on a baseball glove.  At the time my sister was relieved she got away with the clever lie and wouldn't get in more trouble, as an adult she has a great deal of bitterness towards her formerly favorite teacher.  

@wild little fox that was my thought as well.

 

[EyesOpen]

I wish they would update how the kids were doing... just... they’re recovering. No one went in to shock, gaining strength... something. I’m sure there’s confidentiality and privacy rules and that they deserve 10000%... I just keep thinking of them and willing them to get better

[BlackSheep]

42 minutes ago, EyesOpen said:

I wish they would update how the kids were doing... just... they’re recovering. No one went in to shock, gaining strength... something. I’m sure there’s confidentiality and privacy rules and that they deserve 10000%... I just keep thinking of them and willing them to get better

It would be good just to know that everyone is stable physically.

Between HIPAA regulations and the ongoing investigation, it makes sense though that there’s a clampdown on info.

[Beermeet]

I was pleasantly surprised to see them walking. Saying they are so starved they could die made me think not ambulatory.