[WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

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[WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by Anonymous Bosch »

Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in Perris Home, Including Kids Chained to Beds:
KTLA.com wrote:Two parents are being held on $9 million bail each after a horrific discovery at a residence in Perris over the weekend -- 13 malnourished siblings held captive amid dirty conditions, including some children shackled to beds, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department said Monday.

An investigation began after a 17-year-old girl "escaped" from her home in the 100 block of Muir Woods Road and called 911 early Sunday morning to report that her 12 brothers and sisters were being held captive by their parents, according to a sheriff's news release.

She alleged some of her siblings were bound in padlocked chains.

Responding officers initially believed the “slightly emaciated” girl was only 10 years old until she provided her age.

After interviewing the teen, investigators went to the residence and contacted her parents, identified as 56-year-old David Allen Turpin and 49-year-old Louise Anna Turpin, according to the release.

Investigators discovered "several children shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings," the release said. The parents could not provide a "logical" explanation for why the kids were restrained, investigators said.

Authorities located what they thought were 12 children, but were "shocked" to find out that seven of them were adults. In all, the victims are between the ages of 2 and 29, the release stated.

They looked to be malnourished and filthy, authorities said.
:shock:
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by hepcat »

I’m good with the death penalty sometimes.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by rshetts2 »

This is, in a word, horrific. I simply can not conceive of how a person or persons can be so morally bereft. I know that the condition exists, you see man's ability to be incredibly inhumane, in the news every day it seems but I can not grasp how a mind can become so cruel and hateful.
Well do you ever get the feeling that the story's too damn real and in the present tense?
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by McNutt »

hepcat wrote:I’m good with the death penalty sometimes.
Yeah, I'm pretty much against it, however...
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by Smoove_B »

The parents could not provide a "logical" explanation for why the kids were restrained,
Understatement of the year. But this:
California records indicate a David Turpin is the principal of Sandcastle Day School, a private school that is located in the 100 block of Muir Woods Road in Perris. The address of the school matches that listed for the Turpins in public records.
What in the actual hell is happening here? Absolutely horrific by all accounts.
Last edited by Smoove_B on Tue Jan 16, 2018 12:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by Blackhawk »

Sounds to me like he was wanting to take attention away from the fact that his kids weren't in school by having them in 'school.'
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by Smoove_B »

Then WTF is going on in California?
David Turpin had been an engineer for defense contractor Northrop Grumman, where he earned about $140,000 a year, the court record indicated. His wife was a homemaker.
You can just randomly declare your home a Day School and make yourself Principal and they rubber-stamp the application? No inspectors come out to visit? No one does follow up?

I hope those kids get all the help they need, but there's clearly more to this story than we know.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by Anonymous Bosch »

Smoove_B wrote: Tue Jan 16, 2018 12:33 am Then WTF is going on in California?
David Turpin had been an engineer for defense contractor Northrop Grumman, where he earned about $140,000 a year, the court record indicated. His wife was a homemaker.
You can just randomly declare your home a Day School and make yourself Principal and they rubber-stamp the application? No inspectors come out to visit? No one does follow up?
Pretty much:
PE.com wrote:That house at 160 Muir Woods Road is also the address of Sandcastle Day School, a private school founded in the 2014-15 school year, according to state records.

In the 2016-17 school year, it had an enrollment of six: one student in each of the fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth, 10th and 12th grades.

The school is within the boundaries of the Perris Union High School District, said Candace Reines, deputy superintendent for business services. However, as a private school, Reines said, Sandcastle has no association with the public district.

“Private schools, they don’t have to get any approvals from the local school district,” she said.

Instead, their operators — including a parent who wants to run a private homeschool — file a Private School Affidavit with the state Department of Education.
So Blackhawk's likely correct, in that they were registered as a private school to give the false impression their captives were being 'homeschooled'.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by GreenGoo »

McNutt wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:51 pm
hepcat wrote:I’m good with the death penalty sometimes.
Yeah, I'm pretty much against it, however...
The only thing I have against it is is wrongful convictions.

Some people cause enough misery for the world that they can't be gone soon enough.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by hepcat »

This whole thing just gets weirder and weirder. Reports are now showing up that make it sound like they were a normal family with loving parents at one point.

I'm curious to see what the real story behind all this is.

Also, the husband has a page boy haircut in his booking photo. I believe that should be an additional charge when he goes to court.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by LawBeefaroni »

Was the 29-year-old one of their kids? If so, how do they manage to capture him/her along with all the other kids in the last few years?

I guess it's possible but this is so strange.



I'm against the death penalty in this case. Instead, they should get house arrest. Chained to the same beds they chained those kids to and left alone until roaches devour their corpses.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by LawBeefaroni »

Ok, timeline makes more sense now. Move to new home in 2010. Bankruptcy in 2011. Opened "school" in 2011. Disney trips, vow renewal ceremonies, other photo ops since.


The Turpins moved into the Perris home in 2010, public records show.

The next year, they filed for bankruptcy in California, according to court records.

Ivan Trahan, an attorney who represented the couple at their bankruptcy hearing, told CNN "there was nothing out of ordinary" about the couple when he worked with them in 2011. They couple "spoke lovingly of their children and even showed me their photos from Disneyland," he said.

David Turpin made about $140,000 per year working as an engineer at Northrop Grumman, according to the bankruptcy documents. His wife's occupation was listed as "homemaker."
They listed about $150,000 in assets, including about $87,000 from 401k plans from Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, according to court papers. The documents listed debts of about $240,000, which included mostly credit card debt and a foreclosed farm in Rio Vista, Texas, valued at $40,000.

Trahan said neither of the Turpins seemed upset they were going through bankruptcy.

"They came with a lot of debt. We just knew there was no way they could make their payments," Trahan said.

David Turpin is listed as the principal of the Sandcastle Day School, according to the California Department of Education website. It was operated out of his home, and opened in March 2011.
Softening my stance a bit, death penalty isn't too lenient.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by Moliere »

It sounds like they were being chained down by credit card debt.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by Isgrimnur »

Independent
It has emerged that the people held in the house ranged in age from two to 29 years – six children and seven adults kept in appalling conditions. Knowing all this, the Facebook photograph of all of them together posing in red T-shirts takes on a much more sinister appearance.

The children are numbered. It would seem that the numbering is in order of age. The little girl at the front wears a 12, the taller girls behind her are 3 and 5. They all wear the name “Thing” (“Thing 12”, “Thing 3”, “Thing 5”) perhaps in reference to a Dr Seuss book about two characters called Thing 1 and Thing 2. Here is a family that thinks it’s a joke to number everyone rather than give them names and refer to them as “things”.

The photograph of the family together at a chapel in Las Vegas when the couple renewed their marriage vows – something, it seems, they did fairly regularly – shows the considerable trouble they had gone to to dress all the daughters in identical plaid dresses and the sons in identical suits. Here is evidence of the children being treated as decorations for the parents’ rituals. They also show that the Turpins were more than happy to display their anonymous brood, apparently unaware of the social implications of showing them off in such a strangely formulaic way.
...
The Facebook photographs we’ve seen certainly have the look of a cult about them. Even their picture in Disneyland shows the children identically dressed.
...
David Canter is an emeritus professor of investigative psychology at the University of Liverpool
TIL that funny family outing shirts and wedding party conformity are signs of a cultish mind.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by Anonymous Bosch »

Smoove_B wrote: Tue Jan 16, 2018 12:33 am Then WTF is going on in California?
David Turpin had been an engineer for defense contractor Northrop Grumman, where he earned about $140,000 a year, the court record indicated. His wife was a homemaker.
You can just randomly declare your home a Day School and make yourself Principal and they rubber-stamp the application? No inspectors come out to visit? No one does follow up?
Further details courtesy of the L.A. Times:

For Perris couple arrested after kids found chained, home-schooling kept spotlight away
LATimes.com wrote:Ultimately, home-schooling proved to be another way to shield their children from anyone’s oversight.

Like many California families who choose to home-school their children, the Turpins registered with the state Department of Education. Beginning in 2010, when the family lived in Murrieta, David Turpin filed paperwork to run a private school out of his home, putting himself down as principal of what he called the Sandcastle Day School. For several years, he described it as a full-time, religious school unaffiliated with any denomination, but recently he wrote that it was “non-religious.”

He submitted these forms every year, but the information sought by the California Department of Education — such as address, type of school, enrollment — likely told authorities little about the children’s lives.

That paperwork, known as a private school affidavit, is all that California law requires of home schools.

Neither the Department of Education nor the local school districts had any legal responsibility to knock on the Turpin’s front door, review their curriculum, or assess their children’s academic performance.

Under the law, private school employees must submit to fingerprinting and background checks, but there is no such demand placed on parents teaching their own children.

“We are sickened by this tragedy and relieved the children are now safe and authorities are investigating,” said a spokesman for the California Department of Education in a statement sent to reporters.

“Private schools are required to register with the state to record their students’ exemption from compulsory attendance at public schools. Under current California law, the CDE does not approve, monitor, inspect, or oversee private schools,” the statement said.

“We really knew nothing about them,” said Grant Bennett, superintendent of the Perris Union High School District. “If they were on home-school from the beginning, they wouldn’t even have been on our radar.”

According to the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a nonprofit that advocates for more active oversight of home-schooled children, California is one of 15 states that ask little more of parents other than that they register with the state. This group includes states such as Nevada, Arizona, Alabama and Mississippi that historically eschew government regulation.

Eleven other states don’t require parents to submit any documentation, including Texas, where the Turpins lived for a time.

“We know that many home-schooling parents provide their children with a safe and child-centered home environment,” said the coalition’s executive director, Rachel Coleman. “Unfortunately, current law provides nothing to stop families like the Turpins from using home-schooling to isolate and imprison their children.”

Citing numerous cases of home-schooled children who have been abused, Coleman called for significant changes. She said states like California should require such children to interact with “mandated reporters” — for example, teachers and doctors — through annual performance reviews and check-ups. She also called for states to mandate criminal background checks for families who elect to teach their children at home.

There are states, such as New York, that require home-schooled children to take standardized tests or have portfolios of their work reviewed by teachers. In Pennsylvania, the law bars parents from home-schooling if they’ve been convicted of an offense that would prevent them from teaching at a public school.

But efforts to pass more stringent requirements in many other states have met with little success, Coleman said.

“Part of the reason is the home-school lobby tends to interpret these bills as some sort of indictment of them,” she said. “As long as the laws are so lax, these things are going to keep happening.”
Suffice to say, I'd be surprised if the laxity of those laws isn't tightened up fairly soonish as a result of this house of horrors.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by Isgrimnur »

CNN
The parents who held their 13 children captive inside their California home pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including torture, on Friday, prosecutors said.

David and Louise Turpin each pleaded guilty to 14 charges of torture, adult abuse, child endangerment, false imprisonment and more. They face 25 years to life in prison, the Riverside County District Attorney's Office said.
...
"This is among the worst, most aggravated child abuse cases I have ever seen," District Attorney Mike Hestrin said. He said he believes the pleas will result in life sentences. Had the case gone to trial, Hestrin said, some of the victims would have been called to testify.
...
[A]n attorney for the adult Turpin children, Jack Osborn, told CNN, "Our clients are relieved that there will not be a trial and they are happy the district attorney was able to achieve this result."

The adult children are doing "very well," Osborn said.

"They have been living together, getting their education and moving their lives forward. They are all extremely bright, incredibly strong and resilient. They have been supportive of each other. "
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by Jaymann »

I confess! When I home schooled my children I looked up the answers in the back of the math book. Every day I live with the shame.
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by Isgrimnur »

WaPo
In a Friday hearing at Riverside County Superior Court, the California couple was sentenced to life in prison. They’ll have a chance at parole after 25 years.
...
In court on Friday, both Turpin parents apologized. David Turpin, through his lawyer, said that he had “good intentions.” Louise Turpin said she was sorry for “everything I’ve done to hurt my children.”

“I only want the best for them.”
:roll:
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Re: [WTF] Teen’s Escape Leads to Discovery of 13 Victims Held Captive in SoCal

Post by em2nought »

There's very little solace in that fact that at least it didn't happen in Florida. Surprising they didn't get off as being completely nutz. :think:
Technically, he shouldn't be here.
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