The Turpin siblings who were freed from their abusive parents’ house of horrors in Southern California have suffered a new blow with some of the adult children forced to live in miserable conditions in a run-down apartment in a crime-ridden area.
Court documents that were previously sealed in the case of David and Louise Turpin – who made headlines around the world after they were arrested for shackling and starving their 13 children for years – are slowly being released in Riverside County.
The Turpin’s adult children were taken to see an apartment in an undisclosed suburb by an employee for the Riverside County Public Guardian’s office just months after they were freed in 2018.
A 2019 court filing by their attorney Jack Osborn said three of the siblings were ‘fearful to object so they indicated that the apartment was okay with the expectation that other apartments would be viewed.’
When they raised concern about the neighborhood, the agency said the lease was already signed and the only alternative would be to split them up and place them in a board and care facility, according to Mr Osborn, who represented all seven adult children in court.
Their parents were arrested more than four years ago after one of their children escaped from their their Perris, California, home and reported they had been shackled to beds, starved and held largely in isolation from the world.
David and Louise Turpin was arrested more than four years ago after one of their 13 children (pictured) escaped from their Perris, California, home and reported they had been shackled to beds, starved and held largely in isolation from the world
A police car drives past the home of David and Louise Turpin on Jan. 24, 2018 after police arrested the couple for holding their 13 children captive
All but the two-year-old were severely underweight and hadn’t bathed for months and investigators concluded the youngest child was the only one not abused by the couple.
The couple pleaded guilty to torture and abuse in 2019 and have been sentenced to life in prison.
The document release comes after ABC reported that Riverside County’s social service system failed in various instances to help the seven adult and six minor children transition to new lives.
The county has hired a private law firm to look into the allegations.
Osborn and the office of the Public Guardian, which is the county agency tasked with assisting adults unable to properly care for themselves or manage their finances, have been contacted for comment.
Brooke Federico, a spokeswoman for Riverside County, declined to discuss details of the case said the release of the court documents will assist with the law firm’s review.
Not all court documents in the case have been unsealed. It was not immediately known whether the five adult children moved to the apartment described as ‘in a state of significant disrepair’ in Osborn’s filing, and if so, how long they stayed. In his filing, Osborn wrote that the Public Guardian’s office said the apartment was going to be fixed.
Louise Anna Turpin, far left, with attorney Jeff Moore, second from left, and her husband David Allen Turpin, listen to attorney, David Macher, as they appear in court for their arraignment in Riverside, Calif., on Jan. 18, 2018
Police raided the Turpins’ four-bedroom house in Perris, California in early 2018 and found many of the malnourished children shackled to their beds by chains, living in unimaginable filth
But the account is similar to comments aired by two of the Turpin children in an interview last year with ABC and by Melissa Donaldson, Riverside County´s director of victim services, who said at times the children did not have a safe place to stay or enough food.
The comments were especially surprising because in the days after their release, the adult and minor children were taken to hospitals for treatment and donations and support poured in from around the world.
In a separate filing this year, Osborn raised questions about $1.2 million reportedly collected in donations to assist the siblings in the days and weeks after their release and how the one of the siblings who remains under a conservatorship with the Public Guardian can access these charities.
That sibling, in 2019, objected to being sent to a board and care facility rather than remaining with her family as they moved to the apartment, Osborn wrote at the time.
Her siblings said ‘immediate separation from her brothers and sisters will continue the trauma that she has suffered,’ Osborn wrote, particularly since she never complained about the abuse and followed the house rules, which they believe ‘has resulted in some significant developmental issues.’
The siblings dropped the objection a few weeks later so long as she had frequent contact with them, court papers showed.
The new revelations come just weeks after the revelation that the child welfare system sent five of the traumatized Turpin children to live with an alleged pedophile was.
Charity Douglas, 50, has run the Riverside County Children’s Services Division since September 2018 when her predecessor was forced out over an abuse case that saw a 13-year-old girl repeatedly raped and left pregnant by her mother’s boyfriend.
Charity Douglas, 50, is the child welfare boss whose social workers sent five Turpin children to live with an alleged pedophile
Marcelino Olguin, 63, of Perris, California, has been charged with seven counts of committing a ‘lewd and lascivious act on a child’ and six of torture
Douglas, who has worked for Riverside County since 2013 and earns a handsome $214,765 salary, is now facing questions after DailyMail.com revealed the Turpin children were left in the care of Marcelino Olguin, 63, who has been charged with the sexual abuse of two of them and of physically and mentally torturing all five.
Olguin’s wife Rosa, 58, and daughter Lennys, 37, have been hit with torture and false imprisonment charges for their alleged part in the abuse.
All three pleaded not guilty when they appeared in court in Riverside, California, on Friday. The judge set the next hearing for June 6. Marcelino was freed on $200,000 bond, while the two women are each on $50,000 bond.
According to court papers the family fostered four other children as well as the Turpins. One, a five-year-old girl was regularly left in soiled clothing and forced to stand for hours on end, charging documents say.
The nine children remained with the Olguins until their arrest in March 2021.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk