Turpin daughter on escape: 'If something happened to me, at least I died trying'

Table Of Content

• Are the Turpin family kids still close?
• TEEN WHO ESCAPED POSTED VIDEOS OF HERSELF SINGING
• Cousin Of Black Lives Matter Founder Dies After Being Repeatedly Tased By Police
• MORE: David and Louise Turpin, parents who allegedly tortured their kids, plead guilty to 14 counts: DA
• Angelina Jolie Details Abuse Allegations Against Brad Pitt in Countersuit

One asked in a statement for a lighter sentence because "they believed everything they did was to protect us." She also said she wanted to have contact with them again, and asked that they be incarcerated nearby. The girl didn't know what month it was or what the word medication meant, but knew enough to punch the digits 911 into a barely workable cellphone and then began describing years of abuse to a police dispatcher. David and Louise Turpin would also bake pies and not let the children eat, and buy toys but refused to let the children open them. In the Sawyer interview, the girl who called 911 talked about the courage to finally escape. "The only word I know to call it is hell," one of the sisters said in a clip of an upcoming "20/20" special with Diane Sawyer. Marcelino Olguin was additionally charged with multiple counts of lewd acts on a child under 14 years old.

Are the Turpin family kids still close?

"It was impossible to sleep. Every time my eyes would close, I dreamed about being [in my first foster home]," she says. "I had to go to the emergency room a lot. I was really, really broken." A month before the Riverside County Sheriff's Department arrested the Olguins in March 2021, Jordan was placed into a different foster home.

'House of Horrors' Hero Jordan Turpin on Healing from 'Rough Year' - PEOPLE

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TEEN WHO ESCAPED POSTED VIDEOS OF HERSELF SINGING

But if they notice me missing, they’re going to try to cover that all up,’” she said. Deputy Anthony Colace was coming to the end of a long and busy graveyard shift when he took the dispatcher’s call to assist on a runaway call. Colace said the majority of runaway calls only require taking the child home to their family. “If I did one little thing wrong, I was going to be beaten… until I bled. David would also use belts and sticks to whip the children, often until they bled. While the parents ate well, they tormented their starving kids by leaving apple and pumpkin pies on the kitchen counter, but not letting them have any, said Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin.

Cousin Of Black Lives Matter Founder Dies After Being Repeatedly Tased By Police

Within a year she had caught up to high school junior level — and at 18, she entered a school building for the first time. "I'm not ready to go into details about what happened to me in that home. I was very traumatized, and it's been a very scary journey," she says quietly. "It was really hard to understand the first situation [with my parents]. Then going into another, that was just really, really hard. You have all these questions and you just don't get the answer."

MORE: David and Louise Turpin, parents who allegedly tortured their kids, plead guilty to 14 counts: DA

Investigators learn the children’s parents regularly beat, strangle, and starve their 13 children, who are reportedly only allowed one shower per year. Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin says the Turpin siblings are severely malnourished. Jordan also told Sawyer it was Justin Bieber, of all people, who inspired her to break free. She said she would secretly watch the pop star's music videos and interviews whenever her parents left the house and that Bieber taught her about the world beyond the confines of the Turpins' home. David and Louise Turpin pleaded guilty in 2019 to torturing and abusing their children, aged 2 to 29, and were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Children said they were beaten, caged and shackled to beds if they didn't obey their parents.

Officers scrambled to free him — as they arrested the parents and asked them where to find the key to the chains, the footage showed. Officers knocked on the door of the squalid house for more than two minutes before parents David and Louise Turpin answered. The 17-year-old said her hands were shaking uncontrollably as she made the brave decision to dial 911 in 2018. She said it was one of the few times she had been outside in that California neighborhood. When asked if she wants her parents to see her modeling photos, Jordan says she doesn’t really care. Jordan loves sharing dance videos on TikTok, where she has more than 924,000 followers.

Tortured Turpin kids say abusive foster family made them eat their own vomit: suit

According to public records reviewed by ABC News, ChildNet has in recent years been the subject of dozens of investigations into allegations of verbal and physical abuse in its foster homes -- many of which have been substantiated by state investigators. Just four days after ABC News requested from the court an explanation for the sealing order, Judge Cahraman unsealed a few of the filings partially explaining the secrecy in the case. The newly available documents shed no light on the Turpins' care or lives since they were rescued, but the unsealing did mark a first for the case. From watching television shows, Jordan Turpin knew she needed proof of the abuse. So when she got ahold of her older brother’s deactivated cell phone, she asked her chained sisters if she could take their photos to use as proof.

According to Lynchburg Police, the suspect whose name is Omarian Fitch was arrested and is facing multiple charges ranging from malicious wounding to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. A second person, Shantia Turpin, was also arrested and was charged with eluding police and obstruction of justice. The officers, saying they were conducting a welfare check, searched the home, where in one room they found the two young malnourished girls from Jordan's photo with bruised wrists. Within minutes, the deputies found the chains that had just been removed from the girls. After that incident, Jordan secretly talked to a couple of her sisters about trying to come up with a plan to escape.

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As part of the probe, an outside law firm "will be seeking" to interview the Turpin children, the office also said. Current employees will be "directed to participate in this investigation," but not required. "One adult -- that was a minor, now an adult -- she has reported…one foster parent telling her she understands now why her parents chained her up," Donaldson said. Chang said he "welcome[s] an independent and comprehensive inquiry into the care, services, and placement provided to the 13 Turpin siblings by Riverside County departments." "I requested -- I called the public guardian's office and she refused to let me request for a bike," Joshua Turpin said, referring to the public guardian's office.

Around 2015, Jordan Turpin said she got a hold of an old smartphone and discovered Justin Bieber’s music videos. It was Jordan Turpin who managed to escape on Jan. 14, 2018, and call 911, freeing herself and her siblings from the family’s house of horrors in Perris, California. In July 2022, six of the Turpin siblings filed a lawsuit against the foster parents they lived with after being rescued from their parent’s home. Their attorneys filed suits against Riverside County, ChildNet Youth and Family Services and the Foster Family Network. Jordan and her 13-year-old sister escaped the house together by crawling out a window in January 2018, but the younger girl went back home after she got scared. Jordan, who had spent two years devising the plan with some of her siblings, carried her older brother's deactivated cellphone and called 911.

On Feb. 22, 2019, both David and Louise pleaded guilty to 14 felony counts including cruelty to an adult dependent, child cruelty, torture and false imprisonment. They were sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 22 years. Once they arrived at the Turpin home, authorities found three children chained to their beds and the rest in small, foul-smelling rooms.

“The animals, one white and one black, appear healthy and friendly and are leash-trained,” an animal control official said in a news release from the City of Perris. The two female 1-year-old pups — one of whom is named Fluffy — are not only healthy, someone has taken the time to train them. At a news conference, Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin (right) laid out a series of startling accusations about the conditions authorities discovered in Perris. “We are as hurt and shocked and angry and disappointed as everybody else,” Teresa Robinette, Louise’s sister (right), said through tears in an interview with NBC News. Defense attorneys would not say if the David or Louise Turpin will address the court.

In the family’s Perris, California, home that Jordan escaped from, she told investigators she was kept in a bedroom where two little sisters were chained on and off for months. She said she and her siblings lived in filth and that she hadn't bathed in seven months. Officials kept the siblings in the foster home for three years despite the siblings having alerted them to the abuse, according to the complaint. The children escaped captivity in a house of horrors nearly four years ago -- and two of them are telling their story for the first time in an exclusive interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer. David and Louise Turpin later pleaded guilty to charges including torture and false imprisonment. Jennifer said for years she and her siblings only ate once a day, primarily peanut butter sandwiches, bologna, a frozen burrito or chips, while their parents ate fast food and other full meals.

She showed him the photos of her dirty, shackled sisters, explaining that the chains were punishment for taking food. "If we went to Oklahoma, there was a big chance that some of us would have died," Jordan said of her severely malnourished and frail siblings. In 2016, Jordan said she got a hold of one of her parents’ old smartphones. It opened up a whole new world she had never seen before, and eventually she discovered Justin Bieber’s music videos. "We [weren’t] even allowed to stand up. We were supposed to be sitting down all the time," added Jennifer, now 33. They were cruelly fed only once a day, allowed to shower just once a year and were deprived of toys and games.

The Turpin parents managed to hide their abuse for years by having the family sleep during the day and awake at night. Both parents worked in their home and set up their property as a private K-12 school with the California Department of Education. From the abuse they endured in the "House of Horrors" to their lives today, here's everything to know about the Turpin family. Both the adult and minor children of David Turpin and his wife have struggled since they were rescued. A 74-year-old woman serving as a security guard who was shot in the face and a 30-year-old man who was shot in the leg. A man has been arrested and charged in connection to the shooting at Waffle House on Sunday.