RIVERSIDE
A
California couple pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of torture as
grisly details emerged of how they allegedly kept their 13 children in
locked rooms or chains, allowing them to shower no more than once a
year.
David Allen Turpin, 57, and his
wife Louise Anna Turpin, 49 — who had registered their home as a school
— were hit with 12 counts of torture, 12 of false imprisonment, six of
child abuse and six of abuse of a dependent adult ahead of their court
appearance in the city of Riverside.
The couple arrived in court dressed in black with their hands and legs shackled, and were represented by a public defender.
David
Turpin was also charged with committing a lewd act against a child by
force or fear or duress, District Attorney Mike Hestrin told a press
conference.
The court set bail at $12 million for each of the defendants.
"If convicted of all charges, they face 94 (years) up to life in prison," Hestrin told reporters in Riverside.
Sheriff's
deputies in Perris, a town southeast of Los Angeles, found three of the
captives had been shackled with chains and padlocks in their filthy,
foul-smelling home Sunday after receiving an emergency assistance call
from their teenage sister who had managed to escape.
Hestrin
said the 17-year-old had been working on a plan to escape for more than
two years, and took one of her siblings with her, who became frightened
and turned back.
The teenager was so emaciated that officers first thought she was a young child.
Officers
also initially assumed all the other siblings to be children, but were
shocked to discover seven ranging in age from 18 to 29.
All 13 are being treated for malnutrition and undergoing other diagnostic tests.
'PROLONGED ABUSE'
Hestrin
said all the children had been subjected to "prolonged abuse," were not
allowed to shower more than once a year, and barred from seeing a
dentist or doctor.
"Circumstantial
evidence in the house suggests that the victims were often not released
from their chains to go to the bathroom," he told the press conference.
"If
the children were found to wash their hands above the wrist area, they
were accused of playing in the water and they would be chained up,"
Hestrin said.
When they were not
chained up, they were locked in different rooms and were not allowed to
have toys, "although there were many toys found in the house that were
in their original package and had never been opened."
While
the children's ordeal began when the family was living in the Fort
Worth region of Texas, it "intensified over time and worsened" when they
moved to California.
"They were fed very little, on a schedule," Hestrin added.
Mark
Uffer, chief executive officer at the Corona regional medical center
where the adults were being treated, has described their condition as
stable.
Neither parent was able to
immediately explain why their children were restrained, according to the
Riverside County Sheriff's Department.
There
was no indication that either suffered from mental illness, Perris
police chief Greg Fellows said, or that the children's ordeal was linked
to the family's religious beliefs.
'BEGGED TO SEE THEM'
Initial investigations have confirmed that the couple were the biological parents of all 13 siblings.
According
to police, the family moved in 2014 from Texas to a middle class
neighbourhood of Perris, some 110 kilometers southeast of Los Angeles,
homeschooling their children in their Spanish-style stucco house.
A sister of Louise Turpin, Elizabeth Flores, told ABC the couple kept to themselves.
"This
has been going on before they even had children... they were real
private, and they didn't come around much," said Flores. "We begged to
Skype them. We begged to see them."
As a university student Flores lived with the Turpins for a while.
"I thought they were really strict, but I didn't see any abuse," Flores said.
But
she said she did have disturbing memories of the husband. "If I went to
get in the shower, he would come in while I was in there and watch me.
It was like a joke. He never touched me or anything."
The case recalls previous kidnapping horrors that have made global headlines in recent years.
Ariel
Castro abducted three young women he repeatedly raped for a decade at
his Cleveland home. He was arrested in May 2013 after one of his victims
escaped.
Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped
as an 11-year-old and repeatedly raped over 18 years by convicted sex
offender Phillip Garrido in California. She was rescued in August 2009.
Austria
has seen two high profile kidnaps — Elisabeth Fritzl was imprisoned and
raped over a period of 24 years by her father Josef while Natascha
Kampusch was held for eight years by Wolfgang Priklopil before her 2006
escape.
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