Turpins 3: 2 Monsters, 13 Victims (WARNING abuse and torture)

[EmCatlyn]

2 hours ago, Sideways said:

As to health insurance for the children, we know that the kids never ever saw a dentist, and did not see a doctor in the last 4 years.   It may be that Turpin took company paid insurance for himself and his wife, and a newborn, but not the other 12 kids, as this would cost him premiums.  In any case whatever employment he had when he was arrested, is now likely terminated.  

It might be that the kids were put on emergency Medicaid upon their rescue.  Whether that continues is a good question.  The trust fund might make the kids ineligible, which would be a terrible shame.

My experience has been that health insurance through employer is either "individual" or "family."  In any of the plans of which I have knowledge, if you cover your spouse you also cover your child(ren) and if you cover one child, you cover them all. (There may be a limit to how many before the rates go up. I only know  about people with 4 kids or less.)   [ETA:  I see that someone with experience of the same company that DT worked for reports that the option of "self and spouse" exists for them. If you ask me, that is the most likely coverage they had.]

This may vary from state to state and company to company, but  FWIW,  My husband is an engineer who was with a major company most of his life, in several different states, and this is how his insurance was until he qualified for Medicare. 

The insurance covered everyone who was eligible until the end of the month when he stopped working (retired) even though he retired officially in the middle of the month.  Also, when one of my adult offspring switched jobs, he was covered by the old insurance for the two weeks that he had already paid for in the second job and did Cobra for a month before he got into the new job's plan.  Therefore, I assume that being fired from a job doesn't necessarily mean that you lose your benefits immediately. (The only time I think a person lose benefits immediately is with divorce, and what is going on is that as you are no longer married, you are not covered, not that the coverage ends because someone stopped working.)   

As I said, it may be different in different places, but I thought there was a fair chance that David Turpin's "family insurance" plan still covered the minors for the two weeks or so between his arrest/being fired and the end of the month.  (ETA: Now that I see that he could have just had coverage for him and spouse, I think this is more likely.  It is also possible that he only had the basic coverage for himself that the company may have paid for. My ex husband was with a company that had such a plan.)

All this is just speculation and not very important, but I am more concerned about the other question about whether the trust fun would make the kids ineligible for Medicaid until it is used up (which would happen very quickly).  I know that most people who have made donations meant for those donations to be extra, not to have the donations pay for the medical care and so forth that the state is supposed to supply.  So yeah, it would be a shame.

 

[EmCatlyn]

Has anyone come across a tweet or post or response to an article by a "Kathy Hall Flores" who claims to be Elizabeth Flores's mother-in-law and states:

"Elizabeth Flores . . . has had her children, 7, removed several times.  And both of these broads [Elizabeth and her sister who have been doing all the interviews] knew Louise was insane and that those kids were in danger.  They have laughed about her chaining misbehaving children to the dog house and withholding food."

The message continues "They [the authorities] also need to start looking for bodies because they had the same number of kids at least 10-15 years ago."

I found this copied as a picture/screen-cap attached to a tweet in one of the Turpin Family twitter discussions, but I haven't been able to locate the original, much less verify the source and/or reliability of the information.

It could all be made up, and in any case, mothers-in-law are not always objective, but the business about chaining kids to the doghouse is either a new piece of information (connected perhaps to the Texas years?) or a confusion of what she heard (if it is not complete fabrication.

As for the number of kids, given the ages of the kids, they had 12 kids 10 years ago, and I would not automatically assume that they have had a kid or two a year since then but killed some of them off.  So that seems a bit far fetched.   However, it wouldn't surprise me if they find one or two kids that "didn't make it" because they were starved as infants, and the solution became not to starve them until they were past infancy?

This is all like some strange soap opera, really.

 

[nelliebelle1197]

On 1/30/2018 at 5:48 PM, seattlechic said:

Ain't it  peachy how all these assholes suddenly grow a conscience and want to take these victims in? Uncles, aunts, where the fk where they when the kids were chained to their beds?

Didn't previous interviews state the extended families were cut off before Texas?

4 minutes ago, EmCatlyn said:

Has anyone come across a tweet or post or response to an article by a "Kathy Hall Flores" who claims to be Elizabeth Flores's mother-in-law and states:

"Elizabeth Flores . . . has had her children, 7, removed several times.  And both of these broads [Elizabeth and her sister who have been doing all the interviews] knew Louise was insane and that those kids were in danger.  They have laughed about her chaining misbehaving children to the dog house and withholding food."

The message continues "They [the authorities] also need to start looking for bodies because they had the same number of kids at least 10-15 years ago."

I found this copied as a picture/screen-cap attached to a tweet in one of the Turpin Family twitter discussions, but I haven't been able to locate the original, much less verify the source and/or reliability of the information.

It could all be made up, and in any case, mothers-in-law are not always objective, but the business about chaining kids to the doghouse is either a new piece of information (connected perhaps to the Texas years?) or a confusion of what she heard (if it is not complete fabrication.

As for the number of kids, given the ages of the kids, they had 12 kids 10 years ago, and I would not automatically assume that they have had a kid or two a year since then but killed some of them off.  So that seems a bit far fetched.   However, it wouldn't surprise me if they find one or two kids that "didn't make it" because they were starved as infants, and the solution became not to starve them until they were past infancy?

This is all like some strange soap opera, really.

 

From interviews I read, it appeared the family had cut off the siblings and inlaws?

[feministxtian]

1 hour ago, EmCatlyn said:

As for the number of kids, given the ages of the kids, they had 12 kids 10 years ago, and I would not automatically assume that they have had a kid or two a year since then but killed some of them off.  So that seems a bit far fetched.   However, it wouldn't surprise me if they find one or two kids that "didn't make it" because they were starved as infants, and the solution became not to starve them until they were past infancy?

I hate to say this but I wouldn't be surprised at all. I read they were taking cadaver dogs out...now if they did or not or where, I do not know. I don't think it would be a bad idea to do so. 

[EmCatlyn]

2 hours ago, nelliebelle1197 said:

Didn't previous interviews state the extended families were cut off before Texas?

From interviews I read, it appeared the family had cut off the siblings and inlaws?

Elizabeth Flores started out saying they hadn’t seen or had contact with the Turpins in 19 years or whatever.  But more recent reports and interviews have made clear that the Robinette side of the family did have phone contact with Louise and there was also record of contact on Facebook.

The Turpin side of the family (David’s parents and brother) had more recent face-to-face contact, I believe.  Randy Turpin (the minister brother who writes about the blessings of fasting) seems to have seen the family (or parts of it) around 10 years ago. He is in pictures with them.   The Turpin grandparents said they had last seen the kids around 5 years ago.  They gave the impression that they were regularly in touch with their son (DT).

Both sides of the family claim that they had no clue.  No one admits to having wondered why the 20+ year olds looked like adolescents or had any thought that the way that the  20+ kids were not allowed to date might be a little worse than odd.

However, it is clear that Louise talked to her siblings and told them about her life though some of her accounts seem to have been tall-tales.

In the account that I was asking about, the poster (who identifies herself as the mother of Elizabeth Flores’s huband) alleges that she heard Elizabeth and Teresa (the other sister) joking about Louise’s chaining the kids and not feeding them.  

It is possible that Louise told them — maybe even bragged about it.  She is alleged to have bragged about extra-marital encounters, flirting with “witchcraft,” etc. as well as lied about how well-off she was.  So I wouldn’t be surprised if she told her sisters about a lot of what she and David were doing to the kids.   

Why the sisters didn’t consider that Louise and David might have crossed a line and that the kids were at risk, I don’t know.

But so far the only allegation that Louise’s sisters knew of the abuse seems to come from this person who identified herself as Elizabeth Flores’s mother-in-law.  So we don’t really know.

[anjulibai]

I don't really believe anything the family is saying. They are all unstable and attention seeking and probably getting paid for their interviews. The police investigation will very revealing about what they knew and didn't know. 

[brokenminded]

If they did know can they be charged with anything? I'm not familiar enough with American law to work this out.

[Howl]

14 hours ago, feministxtian said:

I hate to say this but I wouldn't be surprised at all. I read they were taking cadaver dogs out...now if they did or not or where, I do not know. I don't think it would be a bad idea to do so. 

When I first read about this, I assumed there were deceased children, because the level of abuse was so horrific and starvation was involved.  The children who are able to be interviewed will likely have information if, indeed, this is the case (and I hope it's not). 

[livinginthelight]

7 hours ago, brokenminded said:

If they did know can they be charged with anything? I'm not familiar enough with American law to work this out.

No. Unless someone is a mandated reporter, there is no requirement to report child abuse. Mandated reporters are people like doctors, teachers, and therapists.

[Beermeet]

28 minutes ago, livinginthelight said:

No. Unless someone is a mandated reporter, there is no requirement to report child abuse. Mandated reporters are people like doctors, teachers, and therapists.

At least in California,  where i live, it's much more than that!  I have a state license for dental assisting.  Finger printed and everything.  Becaise I could be working around children.  I'm a mandated reporter even with my basically meager not so important job.

[albireo]

I wasn't quite sure where to put this (Turpin thread, Duggar thread, own thread), but the BBC has been paying attention to the Turpin case and published this interview from an IBLP escapee who suspects that the Turpins had a connection with IBLP. The information about Gothard sending people to teach English in Taiwan was also news to me, though I could have just missed it before.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42701297

[livinginthelight]

1 hour ago, Beermeet said:

At least in California,  where i live, it's much more than that!  I have a state license for dental assisting.  Finger printed and everything.  Becaise I could be working around children.  I'm a mandated reporter even with my basically meager not so important job.

I live in California also, and I am very aware that there are many more mandated reporters than what I listed. I just didn't didn't feel the need to publish a comprehensive list, as that wasn't the question. I agree with you that there are a lot of eyes out there. And it should be noted that there are fines and other potential penalties, e.g., suspension of license to practice, for a mandated reporter who fails to act appropriately to make a report.

There are limits, however, to the mandate for reporting. As a mental health professional, I am only mandated to report cases that come to my attention within my own practice. I am permitted to report on the neighbors, for example, but not mandated.

There is a difference between permissive reporting and mandated reporting. Anyone is permitted to make a report. If the person is not a mandated reporter, the report can even be anonymous.

The law has protections for mandated reporters as well. If I make a report in my capacity as a mandated reporter, I am protected from lawsuits from the person who I reported.

[Beermeet]

@livinginthelight.  No need to compile a list.  Just giving an example because I'm not sure all know how many of us get fingerprinted and deemed at a mandated reporter.  I didn't expect it when I took the board exam.

And, exactly.  It's the same sort of protection that a good samaritan has.  I have my CPR certificate and should use it if needed.  And, I would.  But, one time I chose not to.  Because out came a poor soul from a public bathroom, she was shooting up in there and collapsed.  She was covered in open sores from head to toe.  We called 911 but a few of us whispered that we could help but felt strongly our safety was in danger.  It was awful and sad.  

[Rosalie]

And again, the “nursing country” may be quite nice in order to discover child neglect/abuse. Going to the dentist is for free until 18 years old, and the child gets an appointment automatically every year from 3 years old. And if the child fails to show for an appointment, and the parents can’t be reached or fail to get the child to the rescheduled appointment, it’s mandatory for the dentist to report to CPS. The same if the child’s teeth are rotten.

[EmCatlyn]

Among the more disgusting aspects of the Turpin story have been reports concerning human waste.  I have wondered why the parents’ psychosis and the direction the family abuse took seems to have involved living surrounded by excrement and/or its smell.  So I started reading about conditions that are in some ways connected to inappropriate handling of excrement.  Inside the spoiler I am summarizing some of what I have found that may connect to the Turpin case.  It is in the spoiler because it is disgusting.  I share it only because it may give some insight into the lives of the victims and some of the issues they may now face.  

Spoiler

The Turpin story includes mention of human waste in three specific contexts.  The first comes in the report that indicated that the Turpin offspring were tied or chained for long periods of time and not even allowed to go to the bathroom, therefore these victims lay in their own waste. The other two come from the Texas days.  In one account, the Turpins left dogs inside their house when they abandoned it, and the dogs survived off the excrement in a bunch of baby diapers. (This made me wonder how many weeks or months of diapers and/or how many children in diapers.)  In a later account, after the soiled diapers and other trash had been removed, the buyers of the house found feces smeared on the walls and floors.

As I “read” it, the three reports suggest different problems/perversions.  

Not allowing the kids to go to the bathroom, leaving them in their own waste, etc. is clearly “controlling” behavior with a sadistic component.  The parents controlled, humiliated the kids with this among other acts.

The pile of soiled diapers (along with other trash) on the other hand could just mean that the parents were overwhelmed. Either they became apathetic because they couldn’t control the piles of trash and/ or, being hoarders, they started hoarding soiled diapers.  It is not specifically cruel and it is “controlling” only if they are trying to “hoard” the soiled diapers in some way.

In this connection, I have wondered if they used diapers on children past toilet-training age.   I know of a case where a woman kept her children in diapers until they were school-age “because it was easier.”  And a college friend told me she was not allowed to get out of bed after “bedtime” and she was put in (cloth!) diapers every night for “accidents.” (This was for pee not poop, but still!)    

Anyway, it occurs to me that the large mound of diapers in the Texas house may have represented a twisted way of “holding on” to everything, including the children’s excrement. Did one or both Turpin parents see the children’s excretion as something that belonged to the parents, maybe something the parents could control (hoard) while the kids used diapers, but something that fell outside the parents’ control when the kid toilet-trained?  

Could children’s ability to control their bodily functions represent, for Louise and David, the children’s readiness for an autonomy that they had to punish and thwart?  That is, the dependent, uncritical, unindividual “baby” becomes a person that has to be trained/broken/starved into dependence... Maybe something like that went on.  And it would connect with not being allowed to go to the bathroom (possibly even when untied).   

Then we get to the smeared feces on walls and floors.  And I wanted to know how this could have met a need/satisfied a perversion for Louise and David.  Because the feces on the walls didn’t fall there accidentally. (Feces on the floor could just be that the kids didn’t get to use the bathroom.)  

Here is where it gets really disturbing.  From what I have been reading, there is a good chance that smearing feces on the walls was done by the victims.  

Several sources connect feelings of victimization and lack of control with fecal smearing.  The following quotes from The Friendship Circle Blog , which is a collection of resources for people dealing with disabled family members, state the key points well:

Quote

[F]ecal smearing, also called scatolia ... occurs most frequently among individuals with developmental delays or post-traumatic stress, which means that the person may not be able to verbalize the reason for the behavior.

Abuse and/or sensory deprivation are also given as reasons.

Quote

[Fecal smearing can happen during] periods of understimulation, for example, while the individual is alone in a darkened bedroom at night with a case of insomnia.  .... deprived of appropriate sensory input, ...

 In short,  some of the Turpin kids may have ongoing problems not only involving food/eating but excretion.  They may not be fully “toilet trained” and/or they may show compulsive, inappropriate behavior connected to feces, including fecal smearing. (Note that is is just a possibility. We don’t know what specific problems these poor kids will have.). FWIW  One of the ways of treating fecal smearing is “sensory integration therapy.”   One of the “tools” of this therapy is Play-Doh, which was very specifically on the list of things that were wanted for the Turpin victims.  However, there are other uses for PlayDoh when working with developmentally delayed and/or traumatized people, and “sensory integration therapy” is useful for all kinds of different problems that could be connected to captivity and abuse besides fecal smearing.

Though it is possible that the fecal smearing was one of the ways in which the victims tried to express their pain and lack of control, it is equally possible that one or both parents encouraged and/or demanded the behavior or even participated in it out of their own twisted need to act out.  Or, as the people who bought the Texas house originally speculated, the Turpin parents used the fecal smearing as an act of aggression when their property was about to be foreclosed.

What is clear though is that in addition to neglect, food deprivation and physical torture, the Turpin household had a complicated relationship with human waste.   

 

[seattlechic]

@EmCatlyn THANK YOU for such a detailed and serious assessment. I mean that. Bravo.

[EmCatlyn]

13 hours ago, anjulibai said:

I don't really believe anything the family is saying. They are all unstable and attention seeking and probably getting paid for their interviews. The police investigation will very revealing about what they knew and didn't know. 

We may not get a lot of information about what the relatives knew/didn’t know from the police investigation unless it is found that the relatives not only knew the extent of the abuse but were involved enough to be charged as participants in the abuse. If there is not enough to charge them with, the authorities will probably move on to something else.

As for “believing” what the family members (or neighbors, or schoolmates coming out of the woodwork), I share your skepticism, though sometimes we can look at several different accounts for clues about the background and bigger story.

 

 

 

[refugee]

1 hour ago, EmCatlyn said:

Among the more disgusting aspects of the Turpin story have been reports concerning human waste.  I have wondered why the parents’ psychosis and the direction the family abuse took seems to have involved living surrounded by excrement and/or its smell.  So I started reading about conditions that are in some ways connected to inappropriate handling of excrement.  Inside the spoiler I am summarizing some of what I have found that may connect to the Turpin case.  It is in the spoiler because it is disgusting.  I share it only because it may give some insight into the lives of the victims and some of the issues they may now face.  

  Reveal hidden contents

The Turpin story includes mention of human waste in three specific contexts.  The first comes in the report that indicated that the Turpin offspring were tied or chained for long periods of time and not even allowed to go to the bathroom, therefore these victims lay in their own waste. The other two come from the Texas days.  In one account, the Turpins left dogs inside their house when they abandoned it, and the dogs survived off the excrement in a bunch of baby diapers. (This made me wonder how many weeks or months of diapers and/or how many children in diapers.)  In a later account, after the soiled diapers and other trash had been removed, the buyers of the house found feces smeared on the walls and floors.

As I “read” it, the three reports suggest different problems/perversions.  

Not allowing the kids to go to the bathroom, leaving them in their own waste, etc. is clearly “controlling” behavior with a sadistic component.  The parents controlled, humiliated the kids with this among other acts.

The pile of soiled diapers (along with other trash) on the other hand could just mean that the parents were overwhelmed. Either they became apathetic because they couldn’t control the piles of trash and/ or, being hoarders, they started hoarding soiled diapers.  It is not specifically cruel and it is “controlling” only if they are trying to “hoard” the soiled diapers in some way.

In this connection, I have wondered if they used diapers on children past toilet-training age.   I know of a case where a woman kept her children in diapers until they were school-age “because it was easier.”  And a college friend told me she was not allowed to get out of bed after “bedtime” and she was put in (cloth!) diapers every night for “accidents.” (This was for pee not poop, but still!)    

Anyway, it occurs to me that the large mound of diapers in the Texas house may have represented a twisted way of “holding on” to everything, including the children’s excrement. Did one or both Turpin parents see the children’s excretion as something that belonged to the parents, maybe something the parents could control (hoard) while the kids used diapers, but something that fell outside the parents’ control when the kid toilet-trained?  

Could children’s ability to control their bodily functions represent, for Louise and David, the children’s readiness for an autonomy that they had to punish and thwart?  That is, the dependent, uncritical, unindividual “baby” becomes a person that has to be trained/broken/starved into dependence... Maybe something like that went on.  And it would connect with not being allowed to go to the bathroom (possibly even when untied).   

Then we get to the smeared feces on walls and floors.  And I wanted to know how this could have met a need/satisfied a perversion for Louise and David.  Because the feces on the walls didn’t fall there accidentally. (Feces on the floor could just be that the kids didn’t get to use the bathroom.)  

Here is where it gets really disturbing.  From what I have been reading, there is a good chance that smearing feces on the walls was done by the victims.  

Several sources connect feelings of victimization and lack of control with fecal smearing.  The following quotes from The Friendship Circle Blog , which is a collection of resources for people dealing with disabled family members, state the key points well:

Abuse and/or sensory deprivation are also given as reasons.

 In short,  some of the Turpin kids may have ongoing problems not only involving food/eating but excretion.  They may not be fully “toilet trained” and/or they may show compulsive, inappropriate behavior connected to feces, including fecal smearing. (Note that is is just a possibility. We don’t know what specific problems these poor kids will have.). FWIW  One of the ways of treating fecal smearing is “sensory integration therapy.”   One of the “tools” of this therapy is Play-Doh, which was very specifically on the list of things that were wanted for the Turpin victims.  However, there are other uses for PlayDoh when working with developmentally delayed and/or traumatized people, and “sensory integration therapy” is useful for all kinds of different problems that could be connected to captivity and abuse besides fecal smearing.

Though it is possible that the fecal smearing was one of the ways in which the victims tried to express their pain and lack of control, it is equally possible that one or both parents encouraged and/or demanded the behavior or even participated in it out of their own twisted need to act out.  Or, as the people who bought the Texas house originally speculated, the Turpin parents used the fecal smearing as an act of aggression when their property was about to be foreclosed.

What is clear though is that in addition to neglect, food deprivation and physical torture, the Turpin household had a complicated relationship with human waste.   

 

If I’m remembering right, the Nauglers smeared feces everywhere in one of the houses they lived in. Seems like the smell was not off-putting to them. (Whereas I hold my breath as long as I can when I have to use a porta potty...)

[feministxtian]

the one and only time one of my kids had a poopy painting party, I had to clean it up with a plastic barf bag beside me. What was worse was cleaning up my mother...

[nelliebelle1197]

21 hours ago, EmCatlyn said:

Elizabeth Flores started out saying they hadn’t seen or had contact with the Turpins in 19 years or whatever.  But more recent reports and interviews have made clear that the Robinette side of the family did have phone contact with Louise and there was also record of contact on Facebook.

The Turpin side of the family (David’s parents and brother) had more recent face-to-face contact, I believe.  Randy Turpin (the minister brother who writes about the blessings of fasting) seems to have seen the family (or parts of it) around 10 years ago. He is in pictures with them.   The Turpin grandparents said they had last seen the kids around 5 years ago.  They gave the impression that they were regularly in touch with their son (DT).

Both sides of the family claim that they had no clue.  No one admits to having wondered why the 20+ year olds looked like adolescents or had any thought that the way that the  20+ kids were not allowed to date might be a little worse than odd.

However, it is clear that Louise talked to her siblings and told them about her life though some of her accounts seem to have been tall-tales.

In the account that I was asking about, the poster (who identifies herself as the mother of Elizabeth Flores’s huband) alleges that she heard Elizabeth and Teresa (the other sister) joking about Louise’s chaining the kids and not feeding them.  

It is possible that Louise told them — maybe even bragged about it.  She is alleged to have bragged about extra-marital encounters, flirting with “witchcraft,” etc. as well as lied about how well-off she was.  So I wouldn’t be surprised if she told her sisters about a lot of what she and David were doing to the kids.   

Why the sisters didn’t consider that Louise and David might have crossed a line and that the kids were at risk, I don’t know.

But so far the only allegation that Louise’s sisters knew of the abuse seems to come from this person who identified herself as Elizabeth Flores’s mother-in-law.  So we don’t really know.

Great summary! Thank you!

I had gotten lost somewhere in all this ...

[EmCatlyn]

2 hours ago, refugee said:

If I’m remembering right, the Nauglers smeared feces everywhere in one of the houses they lived in. Seems like the smell was not off-putting to them. (Whereas I hold my breath as long as I can when I have to use a porta potty...)

I don’t know much about the Nauglers (and I am pretty sure my life is complete without knowing more) but I have read somewhere that while the smell of other people’s feces often causes “disgust,” most of us are not disgusted by the odor of our own feces.  It is part of us and in a way it smells “like” us. 

What civilized people normally feel about their own poop is “shame.”  We are afraid that we “disgust” or may be “disgusting.”  This s all part of the mny different cultural attitudes to defecation that evolve in different societies.

Anyway, the stink of other people’s poop is generally more annoying than our own.

 

[Anonymousguest]

I have known children with reactive attachment disorder to smear pop too. Given the conditions the kids were kept in it's not surprising they would do this. The shocking part is that the parents would want to live like that. I think hoarding and living in filth like that indicates a mental illness. I know someone personally who lives that way. A kitchen pulled so high in garbage and dishes you can't use it, laundry pulled in the laundry room so high you can't reach the washer. Animal and human urine and feces on the carpet and furniture. You would never know they live this way when talking to them out in public. I don't know how or why they live that way. They have had DHS involved a couple of times. I brought a meal after she had a baby once and there was a path from the front door to the kitchen and up the stairs. The urine smell was so strong in the house my eyes were watering. She was in the bed with the baby and there was so much stuff on the bed I don't know how she and her husband both slept in it. And neither seemed even the tiniest bit embarrassed that I was in there with the state of the house like it was. The husband even made some comment about it being relatively clean because she had been nesting when I went upstairs to see the baby.

[lilith]

7 hours ago, Beermeet said:

@livinginthelight.  No need to compile a list.  Just giving an example because I'm not sure all know how many of us get fingerprinted and deemed at a mandated reporter.  I didn't expect it when I took the board exam.

And, exactly.  It's the same sort of protection that a good samaritan has.  I have my CPR certificate and should use it if needed.  And, I would.  But, one time I chose not to.  Because out came a poor soul from a public bathroom, she was shooting up in there and collapsed.  She was covered in open sores from head to toe.  We called 911 but a few of us whispered that we could help but felt strongly our safety was in danger.  It was awful and sad.  

Shame on you. She was a human being in need of help. I’m assuming you were concerned about blood born diseases - they are highly unlikely to be transmitted whilst giving CPR unless both parties have open sores in their mouths - even then the odds are tiny.

[FeministShrew]

Sigh. Just saw this on the local news. I'm about 30 minutes from Hendersonville. I don't know which is worse, sending dolls with a religious message, or using the fact that she sent the dolls to get publicity for her company.

Spoiler

http://wlos.com/news/local/hendersonville-woman-donates-dolls-to-turpin-children

 

[Kailash]

51 minutes ago, lilith said:

Shame on you. She was a human being in need of help. I’m assuming you were concerned about blood born diseases - they are highly unlikely to be transmitted whilst giving CPR unless both parties have open sores in their mouths - even then the odds are tiny.

We are not obligated to try to help someone merely because they are also human. Everyone must access the situation, weigh the personal risk, and either help or not.