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

[JillRodsEyeliner]

6 minutes ago, FJismyheadship said:

Court date is today, isnt it? Curious to see what happens.

I hope they get the books thrown at them, those poor children.

[seattlechic]

Correcto. Court is this afternoon. I am trying to elucidate whether the hearing will be live streamed. 

p.s, I used a big word,so  I am giving myself 20 bitch-so-pretentious points. 

[wild little fox]

Live Turpin Parent Court Appearance 

http://www.kesq.com/news/national-world/live-turpin-parent-court-appearance/706477899

ETA: I have no idea if there is access to what happened today. Whoops!!! 

[libgirl2]

They are calling them the Magnificent 13. 

 

http://people.com/crime/california-house-of-horrors-siblings-warm-loving/

[livinginthelight]

I watched the tape of them waiting for the hearing and what absolutely cracked me up is the total unwillingness of any of their attorneys to be anywhere near them.

Usually defense attorneys will sit close to their clients, leaning in to them, putting their arm around them, giving the nonverbal message, "I like this person. They are a real human being. You can like them too."

In this case, the attorneys are standing up instead of sitting near their clients, leaving the clients alone in their chairs.  When they do have to confer, they don't lean in. They move away as fast as they can.  The nonverbal message is, "Crap. Get me out of here."

[Chocolatedefrauded]

I love the Magnificent 13! Let them shed the last name of those horrible people who imprisoned them and live a life of peace & love & gentleness. I hope all their dreams come true. Most of all, I wish them happiness. It is truly amazing that they survived.

[EmCatlyn]

6 hours ago, SuperSluth said:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/calif-siblings-allegedly-held-captive-making-progress-lawyer/ar-BBJuxFT?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=ientp

Good update...there have been modifications made to the hospital for the 7 adult children to make it more comfortable for them, have outdoor space, etc. Learning to make choices....breaks my heart.

Thanks for posting.  I am guessing a reason they have the older ones in the hospital still while the younger ones moved to foster care may be that the younger ones were in general in better physical shape than the older ones.  I bet also there was an element of not knowing what to do with the older ones.  And I find that encouraging.

Ordinary “assisted living” is less for helping people heal and grow than it is to fill in the gaps in a person’s ability to function.  That they have not placed the older ones in assisted living suggests that the focus right now is on therapy and overall rehabilitation.  This is great.

I am wondering if a tentative goal might be to get as many of the older ones ready for college next fall as possible.  Even if they do not complete degrees, they would benefit from education and an environment that would let them live together but also among other people.

I wish we could know how the younger ones are doing... and what the plan is for the 17-year-old when she ages out of foster care later this year.   There isn’t a big difference between a 17 and an 18 year old, especially if the 17-year-old lacks world experience and education.  

[EmCatlyn]

Quote

Prosecutors added three new counts of cruelty to a child for both Turpins and an additional count of felony assault for Louise Turpin in an amended complaint Friday, according to the Riverside County District Attorney's office.

From the CBS news report.

[EmCatlyn]

Quote

The medical center CEO first suspected the Turpins would benefit from musical therapy after he pulled out his acoustic guitar to entertain them, he said, and saw that it brought smiles to their faces. He played "Take Me Home, Country Roads."

They noticed the cover of his song book, and asked him, "Who is John Denver?"

But some of them recognized the song, he said, and started singing along -- "country roads, take me home, to the place where I belong."

"They all have good voices, beautiful voices," Uffer said. "And the tears started running down the nurses' faces."

So Uffer arranged for the Turpin siblings to receive new acoustic guitars.

This account of the young people enjoying music is the most detailed so far.  

CNN on the Turpins 2/23/18

Quote

"Learning to Fly," written by Tom Petty and his close friend Jeff Lynne, seems to resonate with the Turpins, Uffer said.

"They fell in love with the song," he said. "They seem to understand it."

 

[BullyJBG]

They gave them guitars and lessons? Wow......I'm sure they're in awe, and at first wondered if they'd even get to keep them. I'm so glad they're preparing them for normal adult life, even though it's sad(especially for the daughters) that they've lost so much time in life. The oldest would be at least in her mid-30s before she'd be done that, and would marriage and children still be as much of an option if she wants?

  Well, we'll see if, in 5 years they come to Freejinger to tell their story.

[EmCatlyn]

1 hour ago, BullyJBG said:

They gave them guitars and lessons? Wow......I'm sure they're in awe, and at first wondered if they'd even get to keep them. I'm so glad they're preparing them for normal adult life, even though it's sad(especially for the daughters) that they've lost so much time in life. The oldest would be at least in her mid-30s before she'd be done that, and would marriage and children still be as much of an option if she wants?

  Well, we'll see if, in 5 years they come to Freejinger to tell their story.

Mid-thirties is not so old. Both for getting an education and starting a career and/or family, the mid-thirties can be perfect. (And not everyone who has been “out there” in the real world has completed education and/or found a career or life-partner or started a family, etc. by mid-thirties.)

It is tragic that most of these young people have had their childhoods taken away, but I think there is a lot of hope for satisfying adult lives, especially if they have a good support system.

Right now they are getting a lot of help.  Donations of guitars, i-pads, clothes, books, etc. are there for them.  And they are getting physical therapy, nutrition, etc.

But you are right that the older ones are in the worst position because they have lost the most time.  They didn’t just lose their childhoods but most of the adolescent period during which you develop life skills and social knowledge and presumably learn to negotiate the world.  

On the other hand, they may be better prepared for some things because the family didn’t always shut the kids up or teach them nothing.

 According to one of the aunts, the authorities told her that the seventeen-year-old tested academically at the first grade level.  In contrast, the oldest son (who is around 25) was able to hold his own at a community college. It is reasonable to assume that his near-age siblings (the 29 year old and the 24 yr old sister and 22yr old brother) have, in one way or another, at least something close to a 6th grade level education.  So they may have less to catch up on academically.

In any case, it is good that they are getting so much help.  I hope the under-age ones are also.

 

[chaotic life]

Speaking from some experience, lost academic years does create a struggle to catch up. However, it does not assure an inability to do so. Plenty of Amish leave in their 20s and 30s with only an 8th grade education and manage to excel in academia. And my own son came at 15 with a first grade level of education and managed to finish high school and is starting training to become an electrician this summer or fall. He is a few years behind but he will ultimately catch up and be fine. He will never excel at math and composition but lots of people who had a full, traditional route of education have the same struggles.

[EmCatlyn]

28 minutes ago, chaotic life said:

Speaking from some experience, lost academic years does create a struggle to catch up. However, it does not assure an inability to do so. Plenty of Amish leave in their 20s and 30s with only an 8th grade education and manage to excel in academia. And my own son came at 15 with a first grade level of education and managed to finish high school and is starting training to become an electrician this summer or fall. He is a few years behind but he will ultimately catch up and be fine. He will never excel at math and composition but lots of people who had a full, traditional route of education have the same struggles.

It is always harder to start behind the peer group, but it is not impossible to catch up. One of my college professors was forced (by WWII) to interrupt her education from age 7 to 12.    She suffered from malnutrition, goiter, and rickets (and bad teeth). When she resumed her education, she had to learn a new language.  But by the time she graduated highschool in the US, she was only one year behind and had the grades for a “full-ride” academic scholarship.  Eventually she got a PhD.  She married, had  2 kids and led a mostly normal life after around age 20.  She just never had a childhood.

I had a classmate in grad school who had been “homeschooled” illegally. (It was before homeschooling was permitted in his state, but the family just didn’t send him to school and got away with it.)  At age 18 when he was drafted for Viet nam, he could (by his account) perform barely at 3rd or 4th grade level.  He could not read a newspaper with ease and he had trouble with long division.  By the time he left the military a couple of years later, he had his GED.  He loved to read and after a few years in the workforce, he went to college.  When I knew him, he was pushing 30 and working on a master’s degree.  I was six years younger and working on my doctorate, but because I took “the mommy track” to raise my kids he actually got a job before I did.  I recently heard from someone that he retired a full professor (4 year state college). 

These are not necessarily representative cases. Just because some people can do it doesn’t mean everyone can.  Bt most people (even with all sorts of academic advantages from birth) are not going to get as far academically/professionally.

But my point is that there are success stories out there and that the educational loss can be made up in many cases— at least up to a point.  I teach at a state university in the South.  Every year I deal with students who were not prepared for college. Some of them don’t make it (but then some who were prepared don’t either). Most of them have to work much harder than others to “make it.”  And many of them do.

So yes, you are right that it is not easy to catch up on missed education, and some (all?) of the Turpin kids are probably not get as much education and professional preparation as they could have if their parents had not been monsters.  But with education, they have a chance at some sort of satisfying adult life.

Their childhood, however, is gone. They will never experience it.  And that is so sad.

 

[Aine]

3 hours ago, chaotic life said:

Speaking from some experience, lost academic years does create a struggle to catch up. However, it does not assure an inability to do so. Plenty of Amish leave in their 20s and 30s with only an 8th grade education and manage to excel in academia. And my own son came at 15 with a first grade level of education and managed to finish high school and is starting training to become an electrician this summer or fall. He is a few years behind but he will ultimately catch up and be fine. He will never excel at math and composition but lots of people who had a full, traditional route of education have the same struggles.

This. When we (we being psychologists) do cognitive assessments, for someone who has been severely neglected, we will write the report with that caveat. For example, I recently tested a 10 year old boy just taken into foster care after years of neglect, including educational neglect as he was being "homeschooled" as well as neglected. He tested as an IQ of 60 and academic achievement levels of a 5 year old. If he had been educated in that time, I would have given him a diagnosis of Intellectual Disability. But I gave him a diagnosis of Global Developmental Delay with the recommendation to be re-tested in 12-18 months. GDD will give him help with his IEP without it being a 'forever' diagnosis like ID considering his lack of attention, love, support and education. With all of that and the support his IEP will give him, hopefully by the next testing he will not have such a profound global deficit and we can then narrow his IEP to certain areas of learning with the aim to eventually have him back to average range at least and functioning. These assessments are 6-8 hours of testing and cover cognitive and emotional aspects and we weigh all results and behavior to inform us whether a kid or adult could make progress or not. 

[elliha]

I work in adult education and teach people who are at all levels. Some do well despite limited schooling and others have spent their whole childhood with maximum support and still did not pass enough courses to finish high school. I also have students who did very well in school but need to study a subject a bit more at high school level to be able to enter the university program of their choice. I see both success and failure in all categories really. I had a Somali man who had zero formal schooling who had learned how to read himself and learned English and Arabic on his own too. He spoke English very well and understood spoken and written English well too but his writing was horrible. He would write two-three words as one or just split a word i half at random and he didn't at first understand the concept of standard spelling. While he could read English he had not noticed that the words he read were spelled the same way each time and didn't at first see why they should be. When he accepted the concept he started dividing the words the same way as in the text and his spelling improved a lot. He was clearly intelligent man and one wonders what he had be able to do had he been in school during his childhood and teen years. I am sure he was able to become a bus driver as was his plan when he was his student but I think he could have done much more without having a life of war and having to work from when he was a young teen (14 I think). If you teach yourself several languages and how to read you are not stupid in any way. 

[EmCatlyn]

Just to clarify, at no point have I meant to suggest that the Turpin kids will not suffer for having had almost no real education.  I was simply trying to draw a distinction between what can never be made up (lost childhood and adolescence) and the knowledge needed to be a successful adult.   

The Turpin kids, even the young man who has attended community college, have lost a lot of valuable opportunities to learn and grow, and catching up will not be easy.  

However, in the long run, I have hope.  For one thing, the children are all at least somewhat literate.  That means they know the basic skill of decoding words if nothing else.  The oldest daughter saw herself as a possible song-writer and the kids were able to keep journals.  The family "culture" for all that it was twisted, somehow maintained an option for expression and a value for learning. (This may be connected to the idea that the father was "superior" because of his education.)  The adults seem to value music and some are making progress playing the guitar, it seems.   There are all sorts of places they can grow from here.  And, from my perspective (60+), they are none of them very old. 

 

[chaotic life]

I do agree, these kids, save the baby, will never have a healthy childhood. But they do have the opportunity now to make their future what they want and that was never possible before. Lack of hope for a future is as debilitating as having hope for a future is healing.

[LovelyLuna]

I’m glad they are getting some privacy.  Happy to hear they are using music to heal.  I am also glad the hospital has kept the adults.  I live a few hours away from them and I haven’t known the hospitals or health care system to be so accommodating.  Sadly our health care system usually lets people go as fast as the can.

[Jana814]

Could the hospital be allowing them to stay because they don't have any other place to go. 

[EmCatlyn]

2 hours ago, Jana814 said:

Could the hospital be allowing them to stay because they don't have any other place to go. 

I think it has more to do with the community concern, public relations, and the williingness of whoever/whatever group is in charge of their health and social services benefits (through medicare, I assume) to okay the expenditure.

From what I have found out, Corona Regional is a for-profit hospital, and its emergency room has a so-so reputation.  I believe they recently expanded and improved their facilities and may have been working on improving their image. (@LovelyLuna may know more, since she is from the area.)

Anyway, what seems most likely is that they are in the “subacute care” section, which is essentially a nursing home/ physical rehab facility on the “medical center” campus.

Corona Regional Subacute Care.  

Hospitals are very expensive. “Subacute care” is stilll expensive, but not as much as the hospital proper.   And it may be the closest to what they need.

Whoever approves these things may have stretched the definition of what qualifies a patient for “subacute care” because the therapeutic plan calls for intense intervention.  I would guess that  all of them are getting a lot of physical therapy and occupational therapy along with psychological help of some sort.  And even if they don’t need tube feeding and/or IVs to help them get to a healthy weight, it may be deemed necessary to supervise their diet and provide food supplements in ways that might not be feasible in another type of facility. 

Clearly they are not well enough to go out in the community if they haven’t been able to see their younger siblings in person or gone to the beach, etc.  So it probably is good for them to be in the care of a medical center that is clearly working very hard to meet their needs.

[LaPeleona]

With the ACA medicaid expansion California now uses a persons current monthly adjusted gross income (MAGI) to determine eligibility instead of income and assets. The Turpin children should not have to spend down the money. Additionally, it is unlikely the money is even in their names and they don't have direct access to the money yet, so it is unlikely the state is considering that money as income. 

[Carol]

19 hours ago, EmCatlyn said:

I think it has more to do with the community concern, public relations, and the williingness of whoever/whatever group is in charge of their health and social services benefits (through medicare, I assume) to okay the expenditure.

From what I have found out, Corona Regional is a for-profit hospital, and its emergency room has a so-so reputation.  I believe they recently expanded and improved their facilities and may have been working on improving their image. (@LovelyLuna may know more, since she is from the area.)

Anyway, what seems most likely is that they are in the “subacute care” section, which is essentially a nursing home/ physical rehab facility on the “medical center” campus.

Corona Regional Subacute Care.  

Hospitals are very expensive. “Subacute care” is stilll expensive, but not as much as the hospital proper.   And it may be the closest to what they need.

Whoever approves these things may have stretched the definition of what qualifies a patient for “subacute care” because the therapeutic plan calls for intense intervention.  I would guess that  all of them are getting a lot of physical therapy and occupational therapy along with psychological help of some sort.  And even if they don’t need tube feeding and/or IVs to help them get to a healthy weight, it may be deemed necessary to supervise their diet and provide food supplements in ways that might not be feasible in another type of facility. 

Clearly they are not well enough to go out in the community if they haven’t been able to see their younger siblings in person or gone to the beach, etc.  So it probably is good for them to be in the care of a medical center that is clearly working very hard to meet their needs.

I'm wondering if they've taken a few or more out for brief, private trips away from the hospital or to visit their sibs.  Just a guess, I really have no idea.

[EmCatlyn]

1 hour ago, Carol said:

I'm wondering if they've taken a few or more out for brief, private trips away from the hospital or to visit their sibs.  Just a guess, I really have no idea.

The most recent report was that there had been no face-to-face contact with the younger sibs, only skype.  However, you are right that maybe some of them have been out of the hospital setting. We have no way of knowing. It just hasn’t been reported.

[EmCatlyn]

A little more information ( and some rehashing of the old) in this article: Siblings Enjoying Everyday Activities

Quote

Hospital staff has been feeding them regularly and they enjoy lentil soup, lasagna and fish but, apparently, they're not fond of burritos.

They've been allowed to use iPads, go outside to play basketball and soccer and entertain themselves listening to CDs and reading books. Country music and books on nature and insects have been particular favorites, Osborn said.

And finally, they've been able to watch some of the most popular films over the last few years, including the "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" series.

I am not happy about the phrasing “allowed to use I-pads.”  I think the report should say that they “now have the opportunity to use I-Pads.... not sound like they “have permission.” (But I like that they can do all these things.)

Their lawyer said that he  updating the public because the siblings want him to.

Quote

Osborn said he is providing the first glimpses into their recovery process because his clients have expressed interest in thanking the public for their concerns and updating them on their status.

 

[Cheetah]

Another similar case just popped up, also in SoCal:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-joshua-tree-arrests-20180301-story.html