A California couple who tortured 12 of their 13 children, starving and beating them, depriving them of sleep and sometimes shackling them to their beds with chains, were sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison.
A California couple who tortured 12 of their 13 children, starving and beating them, depriving them of sleep and sometimes shackling them to their beds with chains, were sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison.
Some of their children gave statements at the sentencing hearing, saying they were haunted by the abuse they suffered, but also saying in some cases that they had forgiven and still loved their parents. One of their daughters told a packed courtroom that the suffering “may have been bad, but it made me strong.”
“My parents took my whole life from me, but now I’m taking my life back,” said the young woman, who is now in college. She added, “I’m a fighter. I’m strong.”
The couple, David and Louise Turpin, cried and trembled as four of their children made statements, two of them through intermediaries, in Riverside County Superior Court.
One of the children, a young man who is studying software engineering at college, said that he had learned to ride a bike since being rescued. “Sometimes I just go on long rides because I enjoy it so much,” he said.
The children were rescued in January 2018 after one of the girls worked up the courage to escape by jumping from a window of the suburban Los Angeles home where they had been kept prisoner. She called 911 from a cellphone she had grabbed from the house, and in a calm, clear voice described the years of abuse to a police dispatcher.
“I’ve never been out. I don’t go out much,” the girl told the dispatcher. She was 17, but her voice sounded like that of a much younger child, because, prosecutors said, her growth had been stunted by the abuse. The abuse left two of her sisters unable to bear children, authorities said.
