One year ago, a 17-year-old girlslipped out the window of a Perris, Calif. homeand dialed 911 shortly before 6 a.m. What she told dispatchers shocked them — and would soonshock the nation.
Responding officers were shocked at the teen’s frail appearance and at theunspeakable abusethey encountered inside the house: Some children were shackled while the others were in cramped, foul-smelling rooms. Theyranged in age from 2 to 29.
Soon after, parentsDavid and Louise Turpinwere arrested and charged with nearly 50 counts of torture, false imprisonment and child abuse.
David-Louis Turpin/Facebook
According to the lawyer for the seven adult children of the suspects, the siblings are admirably adapting to a new life — and have left a lot of their angry feelings behind.
“They’re not bitter,” attorney Jack Osborn said onToday. “They really take every day as it is, as a gift.”
Last year,Osborn told ABC Newsthat the siblings “want to be known as survivors, not victims.”
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The brave 17-year-old who called 911 had been planning to escape for two years, Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Manuel Campos testified during a preliminary hearing last year.
Eventually, the teen was able to get an old cell phone that had belonged to her older brother.
“They are abusive,” she said of her parents, according to the call audio. “And two of my sisters are chained up.”
One of the adult female children was 35 lbs. underweight and suffered from “severe protein caloric malnutrition, numbness and weakness in extremities,” as well as “severe skeletal abnormalities,” investigator Wade Walsvick testified last year, based on his conversation with a doctor in the Corona Regional Medical Center who treated all seven adult siblings.
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The Turpin family.Courtesy Billy Lambert
The trial for David, 57, and Louise Turpin, 50, is expected to start later this year.They have pleaded not guilty. If convicted, they face life in prison.
An attorney for the Turpins did not immediately return PEOPLE’s message for comment.
While the case goes forward, the kids are learning about life outside captivity.
“They came from a situation that seemed normal to them. And now they’re in a new normal,” Osborn toldToday. “And so I think they may spend a long time processing the two.”
source: people.com
