After being rescued from their abusive parents’ house of horrors in 2018, some of the Turpin children are now suing the foster care system that was supposed to protect them but instead led them into more “severe abuse and neglect,” according to court documents.
The six youngest of the 13 Turpin siblings have brought a lawsuit against Riverside County and its agency contractor ChildNet, which was given responsibility for placing them with a foster family. The plaintiffs say they were made to stay in their new home for three years despite informing officials that they were being subjected to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of their foster family. Their legal filings say the authorities administering their care had “failed to report” the “severe” abuse and neglect at the home.
The siblings say the abuse included being hit “in the face with sandals, pulling their hair, hitting them with a belt, and striking their heads.” The foster family who allegedly perpetrated the abuse have been separately arrested on criminal charges to which they have pleaded not guilty.
An eight-month external investigation into the children’s care was commissioned by Riverside County after the siblings first went public with allegations of abuse while in the social services system in November 2021. The resulting report published earlier in July concluded that the kids had been “failed” by the system, pointing out that the younger siblings “were placed with caregivers who were later charged with child abuse,” while the some of older children “experienced periods of housing instability and food insecurity as they transitioned to independence.”
“These children who were chained to their beds for a great majority of their life finally are free, and then the county places them with ChildNet and puts them in another position where they are further abused,” Elan Zektser, the attorney representing the two oldest Turpin siblings who are suing and have since left foster care, said in an interview with Good Morning America on Wednesday.
News of the legal filing is just the latest development in the Turpin children’s horrendous saga. In 2018, then-17-year-old Jordan Turpin first alerted authorities to their plight after she escaped the family home in Perris, California. She told a 911 operator that her biological parents—David and Louise Turpin—were abusive, and that her younger siblings were chained up at the time of her escape. Investigators would ultimately uncover the unspeakable scale of the abuse the kids were subjected to, which included the children being starved, imprisoned, and tortured for years. David and Louise pleaded guilty to 14 felony charges including cruelty and torture in 2019 with both being sentenced to life without the possibility of parole after 25 years.
