Turpins 4: 2 Monsters, 13 Victims and Now an Interview!

[Briefly]

19 hours ago, feministxtian said:

My "baby" is 28 today. I STILL worry about him, I worry about all 3 of my kids. My daughter...is she getting enough sleep, is she balancing work, school, kids, planning a wedding without running out of steam? #1 son, is he traveling too much? Is he jet lagged? #2 son, he works as a roofer right now, is he using PPE? Is he harnessed? Is he able to cool off during the day? 

It never stops...it's ALWAYS there. My three are 35, 31 and 28. It just gets added to with the grands...

My 26 year old daughter and her boyfriend came over this afternoon.  As they were leaving, as soon as I told them goodbye the next thing I said was "drive carefully."  No, it ever stops!  We'd be pretty useless parents if we didn't care about them.  I know I have always tended to be overprotective, I attribute some of it to the fact that we had such a hard time even getting pregnant with her so it's hard to relax.  I am really working on relaxing some of that.  I have started to just tell her "here's your overprotective mom warning:  insert whatever warning you think I would say or that you need to hear and consider it done."  She likes that, actually.

[EmCatlyn]

2 hours ago, Briefly said:

My 26 year old daughter and her boyfriend came over this afternoon.  As they were leaving, as soon as I told them goodbye the next thing I said was "drive carefully."  No, it ever stops!  We'd be pretty useless parents if we didn't care about them.  I know I have always tended to be overprotective, I attribute some of it to the fact that we had such a hard time even getting pregnant with her so it's hard to relax.  I am really working on relaxing some of that.  I have started to just tell her "here's your overprotective mom warning:  insert whatever warning you think I would say or that you need to hear and consider it done."  She likes that, actually.

My son used to get annoyed when I’d say “Drive carefully.”  One day he asked me if I didn’t trust him to know how to drive.  I explained that “Drive carefully,” was just another way of saying “I love you.”   It isn’t a reminder of anything they  might not do if we didn’t remind them.  It is a way of saying, “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”  

Now when I say, “Drive safely,” or “Take care of yourself,” he will usually reply, “You too,” (even if I am not driving).

[Koala]

On 6/28/2018 at 11:55 PM, feministxtian said:

My "baby" is 28 today. I STILL worry about him, I worry about all 3 of my kids. My daughter...is she getting enough sleep, is she balancing work, school, kids, planning a wedding without running out of steam? #1 son, is he traveling too much? Is he jet lagged? #2 son, he works as a roofer right now, is he using PPE? Is he harnessed? Is he able to cool off during the day? 

It never stops...it's ALWAYS there. My three are 35, 31 and 28. It just gets added to with the grands...

Amen to that.  My kids have asked, "Mom, when will you stop worrying about us?"  

When I take my last breath on this earth, that's when.  They will always be my babies, and their happiness and well being will be on my mind for the rest of my life.

I can't even fathom what those monsters did.  How does a person become so depraved?  There are just no words.  I hope they both rot in prison, and I don't really care what their experience in prison is like, just to tell you the truth.

[feministxtian]

1 hour ago, Koala said:

Amen to that.  My kids have asked, "Mom, when will you stop worrying about us?"  

When I take my last breath on this earth, that's when.  They will always be my babies, and their happiness and well being will be on my mind for the rest of my life.

Found out tonight my daughter didn't get a job she interviewed for. The salary bump would have been VERY nice for her. I think I'm more upset about it than she is. 

I worry about #1 son traveling so much. I hate to fly and he's flying all over the world. 

#2 son went camping on the coast of CA this weekend for his birthday. Let's see, bugs, snakes, cold ocean water, fires, driving about 200 miles from their home to the coast, driving 200 miles back. 

#1 granddaughter, ye olde teenaged rebellion.

#2 granddaughter, last year of junior high coming up. 

#1 grandson starts kindergarten this fall. 

It truly NEVER ENDS. I'll stop worrying when I'm dead. And I'll probably still worry in the afterlife. 

[Briefly]

On 7/1/2018 at 12:20 AM, feministxtian said:

Found out tonight my daughter didn't get a job she interviewed for. The salary bump would have been VERY nice for her. I think I'm more upset about it than she is. 

I worry about #1 son traveling so much. I hate to fly and he's flying all over the world. 

#2 son went camping on the coast of CA this weekend for his birthday. Let's see, bugs, snakes, cold ocean water, fires, driving about 200 miles from their home to the coast, driving 200 miles back. 

#1 granddaughter, ye olde teenaged rebellion.

#2 granddaughter, last year of junior high coming up. 

#1 grandson starts kindergarten this fall. 

It truly NEVER ENDS. I'll stop worrying when I'm dead. And I'll probably still worry in the afterlife. 

It never ends!  I have to take some stuff to my daughter (I thrift shopped and found stuff for her today) at work tomorrow. I have a tendency to assume she doesn't have $ for dinner even though she does.  But I will probably still take her a coke!

[feministxtian]

9 minutes ago, Briefly said:

It never ends!  I have to take some stuff to my daughter (I thrift shopped and found stuff for her today) at work tomorrow. I have a tendency to assume she doesn't have $ for dinner even though she does.  But I will probably still take her a coke!

My daughter and #1 son live about 900 miles NE of me. #2 son lives 700 miles NW of me. I hate that they're so far away but...ya gotta do what ya gotta do. They have settled into their lives where they are, have jobs/careers, friends, etc. there. I'm actually thankful that they're independent enough to live that far from me. I guess I did something right there....

 

[Briefly]

3 minutes ago, feministxtian said:

My daughter and #1 son live about 900 miles NE of me. #2 son lives 700 miles NW of me. I hate that they're so far away but...ya gotta do what ya gotta do. They have settled into their lives where they are, have jobs/careers, friends, etc. there. I'm actually thankful that they're independent enough to live that far from me. I guess I did something right there....

 

I know how you feel.  My daughter works in the small town we live in but moved to a small town on the other side of Tulsa when she moved in with her boyfriend a few months back.  They talked about a place in the middle, but the rent is so much cheaper there.  I'm very proud of her, I know she is a responsible adult.  I'm just always going to be Mom!  What I found at a thrift store is a costume piece that she can convert into something for one of her cosplays.

[Hane]

After college, my daughter always lived less than 15 miles away from me, until she got an excellent teaching job (very highly paid and in one of the wealthiest towns in the US) about 50 miles away from me. Even though it’s hardly on another planet, it’s not as if we can just drop in on each other anymore.

[LovelyLuna]

I don’t know all the answers of why people do horrific things to their children,  but I know in my case, my mother thinks she did an amazing job raising us.  She talks about it with fondness and rose colored glasses to the point where the main reason I haven’t gone no contact is because I would have to tell her why. How do you tell a probable narcissist with undiagnosed metal illness and “it’s for your own good” typical helicopter parenting shit that its for my own good we don’t talk anymore?  She has no fucking clue.  

I think a lot of abusers think they are doing what is in the best interest of the abused.  I’m not excusing the behavior but I think it is more complicated then ‘they hate their kids’ or the parents are just plain evil.

[Black Aliss]

I've learned to just be happy when one of my kids lives on this side of the International Date Line. Briefly they all lived in the same time zone as me.

[AliceInFundyland]

@LovelyLuna When I went no contact with my father I explained why. After years of arguing with a b/w thinker I somewhat naively thought that if I could I could get admit him to concede he had made a mistake on one specific thing...we could move forward. It did not happen.  

The difference is that he did not pursue the issue. He just let me hang up. It sounds like your mom would not handle that well.

Hugs.

[EmCatlyn]

19 hours ago, LovelyLuna said:

....

I think a lot of abusers think they are doing what is in the best interest of the abused.  I’m not excusing the behavior but I think it is more complicated then ‘they hate their kids’ or the parents are just plain evil.

Precisely!  There is no excuse, but a lot of parents who abuse their children think they aren’t doing anything wrong.  Even when they conceal it, it’s because  “people wouldn’t understand,” not because they necessarily admit to themselves that what they are doing is cruel, wrong, depraved, evil. 

These are sick people. They may not be “legally” insane but they aren’t able to see the reality of what they are doing.  In their narcissistic world view, the children have no “rights” and have only themselves to blame for the “punishment”  they receive.  Though on some level they may realize they crossed the line from “discipline” into cruelty, most of the time they feel justified.  They can rationalize and excuse themselves.  They feel justified.  (“I had to tie him up for his own good because he has been bad and if I don’t punish him he will go to hell. If he would only stop stealing food, I would not have to chin him.”)

To normal people, the Turpin’s lack of empathy for their children is appalling.  Most of us hate it when we have to cause those we love pain or discomfort. When you have to force a reluctant and rebelious toddler to swallow the “nasty medicine,” or when you have to ground your teenager, you do it because you must, not because you enjoy it.  But it is apparent that the Turpin parents enjoyed the power and could not put themselves in their children’s place. That is not normal.

Yet they didn’t realize how bad they had become. They clearly slipped into greater and greater cruelty. They are monsters, but I doubt they see themselves as monsters.   So although we may wonder how anyone could do these things, the answer is that they persuaded themselves that it was all right.  

[Briefly]

20 hours ago, LovelyLuna said:

I think a lot of abusers think they are doing what is in the best interest of the abused.  I’m not excusing the behavior but I think it is more complicated then ‘they hate their kids’ or the parents are just plain evil.

In some cases, you may be right.  But sometimes people are just bad, evil is a good word.  I'm mainly thinking of pedophiles who have children.

(2 Trigger warnings)

I had a good friend when I was a kid who had a really odd father.  I didn't understand the way her mother acted or some of the ways my friend and her sister acted.  As an adult, I realize exactly.  At the time, although I didn't know it and probably the other kids in the neighborhood didn't either because those things simply were not talked about.  But many of the parents were aware, I know my parents tried to keep me from playing with my friend if they or other adults were not present.  Now that I am an adult, I realize that the girls father was a pedophile and I'm firmly convinced that his daughters were his victims.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a 5th grade teacher in the school district we now live in that was arrested for child molestation with his female students.  Turns out he is the father of a girl who was briefly a friend of my daughter, my daughter did spend a night or two with the girl at sleepovers but they were older than his targets and I think the number of girls there at the time probably was protective also. Even though she is 26, I still talked with her and I'm convinced that she was not victimized.  The parents were very much what my mom called "holier than thou" and eventually they told their daughter that most of her friends were just not good enough or Christian enough for them, and she was no longer allowed to associate with any of her friends anymore.  We thought that they were just over-sheltering her, because they are a little partriarichal. But now we suspect that she was being isolated for another reason.  The father/teacher did admit his actions with his students, and apparently it's been going on for a very long time.

[feministxtian]

1 hour ago, EmCatlyn said:

In their narcissistic world view, the children have no “rights” and have only themselves to blame for the “punishment”  they receive.

My mother!!! She was convinced she could still slap me, pinch me, pull my hair and cuss at me because I was her child...I was over 45 years old!!!! Fucking cunt...yeah, I said it...because that's what she was. I hope she's roasting her self-righteous ass in hell. 

[EmCatlyn]

19 hours ago, Briefly said:

In some cases, you may be right.  But sometimes people are just bad, evil is a good word.  I'm mainly thinking of pedophiles who have children.  [snipped the rest]

 

The issue of whether people are good or bad (even evil) is a separate one from whether people who we would call evil see themselves as evil.  It is important, not because it changed what they do (or how we judge their actions) but because it gives us insight into “How could they do this?” and — in a few, rare cases, may give sane (not evil) society a way to reach these people before they do too much harm.

To address the example of child molesters, many molestors, especially those who prey n family and/or children in their community, seem to justify approaching children sexually by telling themselves that they never touch a child without the child’s consent and/or by seeing themselves as “seduced” by the child who is seen as a willing participant.  This doesn’t make their acts less wrong, their abuse less “real.”  But it does tell us that these people (although they recognized that society would deem their actions wrong) told themselves that their actions were not wrong. They wanted to think well of themselves. They didn’t want to see themselves as evil.  In some cases, they genuinely felt afection, even love for the young people they seduced/abused.  Repeat: this is not an excuse or a justification. It just adds depth to our understanding of the situation.

There have been cases where a father sexually abused a daughter and later admitted he had been wrong, had misunderstood the significance of what he was doing out of selfishness or whatever. One case that has always stuck with me was featured in the Donahue show back in the late 1970s.  The father had told himself that initiating his daughter sexually was a way of “protecting” her from men who might take advantage of her.  Now to us this is a really obvious rationalization, but the man believed it.  (The case was featured on Donahue because the daughter wrote a book, which I read, but it was so long ago that I only remember the basic outline. I have forgotten the family’s name.)

To summarize, I don’t think anyone wakes up in the morning and decides that he or she is  going to do evil things because they are fun.  Instead, most often the “evil” things people desire to do are cloaked in terms of “duty,” entitlement, and/or someone else’s desire/ wishes. (Parents “blanket train” because it makes life easier for them and gives them a sense of power. They claim it — and spanking, beating, maybe even tying up their kids— is for the kids’ own good.  Child molestors “groom” their victims and project on the kids their own desires, etc. )  Even when people commit an evil act that they knew was wrong, they often feel that they were driven to it as in “I couldn’t help myself!” 

The reason that it matters that many people who do evil do so under the belief that they were doing right is that sometimes, by challenging and exposing this distorted thinking, not only do you cast a blow at the very foundation of the “evil” person’s self-image, but you can sometimes help the victims heal.  IMHO.

 

 

 

[seattlechic]

OMG listening to LAHenna's videos. Aside her editorial commentary, which I don't care much for, she is reporting quite well, and I am grateful to have "eyes and ears" in the courtroom.

 

I hope the victims are getting the help and care they need, both physical and emotional. Have they been to testify in court at all?

[Palimpsest]

54 minutes ago, EmCatlyn said:

To summarize, I don’t think anyone wakes up in the morning and decides that he or she is  going to do evil things because they are fun.

I agreed with much of your post but I'm going to disagree with this quote.  Most people don't do evil things for "fun" but there are the true sociopaths who seem to be born with no moral compass and no conscience.  For them other people are just objects to be manipulated for their own gain and power.  For them it can be a game.

There is a lot of talk about this and differential diagnosis between socio- and psychopathology in psych circles.  There's also discussion of whether this is something to do with damage or lack of function in the frontal cortex.

I think people like Charles Manson (who never murdered anyone himself) fits this category.  He got his "fun" from manipulating others to kill people for him, enjoying his control over them.  Ted Bundy is another one.  He enjoyed killing and had no apparent conscience.  And the list goes on.

They are not all like Manson and Bundy who were responsible for many deaths.  Some live quite quiet lives just making everyone around them, especially their families, miserable.  Or they can end up as powerful figures in business or politics, and possibly even presidents.

If you have ever met someone like this in person you know it.  They chill you to the bone.

[Briefly]

EmCatlyn, I'm going to have to disagree with you on most of what you said.  Respectfully.

But this is a subject I have a very specific experience with. And evil is the only word that applies.

[Gobsmacked]

I worked with a person described by Palimpsest for a miserable 9 months over 2 decades ago. Even now I have shivers when I think of that time. The first time I met her and shook hands the hairs on my neck stood up and my stomach turned. I truly believe I touched evil that day.  The week after she left my normal 'both feet firmly planted' boss mentioned that he felt as though a Gremlin had left the room. 

[apandaaries]

I don't have either personal or professional experience with the level of true evil we're describing here, but I did find a very interesting article a few months ago which seems worth sharing here. It's about kids who are callous and unemotional, basically displaying traits of psychopathy at early ages.  These researchers are trying to find ways to work with them before they reach adulthood to hopefully mitigate the damage they wreak in their lives (seriously -- the information about their control group is really, really bleak), and note that approximately 1% of the population seems to have these characteristics.  It's a fascinating article and worth a read: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when-your-child-is-a-psychopath/524502/

[AliceInFundyland]

@apandaaries I was just thinking about that article. I believe you posted it before, maybe related to the Turpins. Very interesting stuff.

[apandaaries]

17 minutes ago, AliceInFundyland said:

@apandaaries I was just thinking about that article. I believe you posted it before, maybe related to the Turpins. Very interesting stuff.

Probably (though I hope it wasn't on another Turpin thread  but who knows?).  It's a really intriguing article.  I also like this one, about the neuroscientist who discovered that his brain was structurally the same as a psychopath's brain, yet he was married with kids, not a violent criminal. He's determined he's a "pro-social psychopath," which is another fascinating category, and credits nurture with helping him overcome his natural tendencies (he also has genes linked with aggressive behavior): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/

Edited July 7, 2018 by apandaaries

[EmCatlyn]

4 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

I agreed with much of your post but I'm going to disagree with this quote.  Most people don't do evil things for "fun" but there are the true sociopaths who seem to be born with no moral compass and no conscience.  For them other people are just objects to be manipulated for their own gain and power.  For them it can be a game.

There is a lot of talk about this and differential diagnosis between socio- and psychopathology in psych circles.  There's also discussion of whether this is something to do with damage or lack of function in the frontal cortex.

I think people like Charles Manson (who never murdered anyone himself) fits this category.  He got his "fun" from manipulating others to kill people for him, enjoying his control over them.  Ted Bundy is another one.  He enjoyed killing and had no apparent conscience.  And the list goes on.

They are not all like Manson and Bundy who were responsible for many deaths.  Some live quite quiet lives just making everyone around them, especially their families, miserable.  Or they can end up as powerful figures in business or politics, and possibly even presidents.

If you have ever met someone like this in person you know it.  They chill you to the bone.

Sorry, I think I have not explained myself clearly.  I wasn’t saying that people don’t do evil things “for fun.”  I was saying that when they do “evil” they don’t see it as “evil.”  The sociopath/psychopath that enjoys doing things that we call “evil” doesn’t have a moral compass (not even a distorted one) so he or she isn’t thinking of what s/he does as evil, even if s/he knows that others would call it evil.

The idea of “evil” requires moral awareness.  And people without moral awareness can do evil things, and even be what we could genuinely call “evil,” but they wouldn’t see themselves as evil.  They might know that they are doing “evil” things, and they might define themselves as “evil,” in some cases, but their moral emptiness keeps them from understanding the concept except, perhaps, as a joke.

Returning to the Turpins, clearly they have done evil and one could say that they are evil.   But I don’t think they saw themselves as evil.  They came from a background of a lot fundie anxiety about sin and so forth. They were both trained to hypocrisy and denial of inconvenient truths.  They would tell themselves that they were not doing anything wrong when they beat, starved and caged the kids.  They would not tell themselves, “Gee, I am bored, so I will go spank my kid,” even if that was what was going on.  They would, instead, find something the kid did wrong and tell themselves (as well as the kid) that the kid deserved punishment.  Yes, that was evil.  My point is that they carefully avoided thinking of themselves and their actions as evil.

3 hours ago, Briefly said:

EmCatlyn, I'm going to have to disagree with you on most of what you said.  Respectfully.

But this is a subject I have a very specific experience with. And evil is the only word that applies.

As I said to @Palimpsest I may have expressed myself badly if I was understood to be saying that people aren’t evil or don’t do what others consider “evil” things on purpose.  I was talking about how most people who do evil are not thinking of themselves or their actions as evil.

In any case, we can agree to disagree.  Sorry to hear you have had “very specific experience” with the subject of evil.

 

[Aine]

3 hours ago, apandaaries said:

I don't have either personal or professional experience with the level of true evil we're describing here, but I did find a very interesting article a few months ago which seems worth sharing here. It's about kids who are callous and unemotional, basically displaying traits of psychopathy at early ages.  These researchers are trying to find ways to work with them before they reach adulthood to hopefully mitigate the damage they wreak in their lives (seriously -- the information about their control group is really, really bleak), and note that approximately 1% of the population seems to have these characteristics.  It's a fascinating article and worth a read: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when-your-child-is-a-psychopath/524502/

I used to work in a lab for my first (absolutely treasured) mentor in psychology who specialized in studying the 'Dark Triad' (Psychopathy, Narcissism, and Machiavellianism). The current research seems to show clear differences in functional neuroimaging, for example one study we did showed that those who were psychopaths showed no difference in functional imaging when engaging in benign cognitive dissonance- where they were asked to do an objectively boring task to the vast majority of people and rating as so (they had to edit a list of office supplies, 6 pages long, for spelling and grammar), then rated their enjoyment of the task (overwhelmingly very negatively), and then were asked to do a speech that would be judged by experts in leadership and persuasion to convince others to do the task- those who didn't meet psychopathy criteria showed clear activation of parts of the brain associated with lying and more emotional activation in areas like the amygdala (associated with fear) and physical signs of stress like the galvanic skin response whereas those who did meet that criteria literally showed the same response in almost 100% of the cases as our normal controls who just did the task, rated it on self-report (like the experimental group) and then told the truth that was congruent with their private self-report (the ones that didn't were likely not true psychopaths due to measurement error that is intrinsic in all studies).

We did lots of cool studies but it seems to be something most are born with. Even the risk factor of being raised in a home in abuse or neglect is likely due to the genetic loading on psychopathic traits.

There is also an argument in evolutionary psychology that the 1-2% rate of psychopathy could be adaptive in populations. It can be 'helpful' to the majority sometimes to have someone who makes "cut-throat" decisions that aren't always lethal but might cause suffering for a lot of people with the hope of eventual better outcomes. I know I wouldn't be able to see many suffer in the short-term and know it is my decision that did it with no guarantee of a good outcome and many of us couldn't. Psychopaths may make the decision more for the glory and power of possible success but sometimes it can be for the good. According to evolutionary psychology. I get the purpose of evolutionary psychology but I'm pretty into observable and measurable outcomes in my science (psychology) and evolutionary psychology is mostly fundamentally flawed in that respect but it's an interesting idea that may have merit.

[apandaaries]

21 minutes ago, Aine said:

We did lots of cool studies but it seems to be something most are born with. Even the risk factor of being raised in a home in abuse or neglect is likely due to the genetic loading on psychopathic traits.

I would love to hear more of your stories, and think that the quote snipped above is part of why that neuroscientist is so very interesting. He had so many markers for the potential for evil, yet seemed to channel all that into being competitive and being right (perfect traits for an academic), and says he used to think genes determined all. That's another reason why I think it's so fascinating that those callous and unemotional teens in that study are so fascinating --- what happens when we try to rewire the brain when it's still fairly plastic? And they're so focused on what truly motivates their population...the fact that 16 people died as a result of the control group, and no murders were committed by the folks in the program -- that's tremendous right there. 

Evolutionary psychology makes my spidey senses tingle...things are always a little odd there. Evolutionary biology -- awesome! Evolutionary psychology still seems dominated by Freud-like folks, convinced of their ideas (at times quite imaginative) but with little data to substantiate large claims.

Oops. Forgot to link to some information about strange ways that traits of CEOs and psychopaths overlap. Lots of other interesting, thought-provoking information there, too: http://www.businessinsider.com/ceos-often-have-psychopathic-traits-2017-7

Edited July 7, 2018 by apandaaries