She used a disabled mobile phone to call emergency services on Sunday morning after sneaking out of a window at her parent’s house in California.
It was just after 6am and “in her mind, she was risking her life,” one police source told The Mirror.
The responding police officer thought she was a girl, 10-years-old at most. In fact, she is 17 and led him to the house where she and her 12 siblings had been held captive by their parents, starving, filthy and in “horrific” conditions.
David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49, were arrested that morning and each charged with nine counts of torture and 10 counts of child endangerment. Police found the girl’s – woman’s – siblings starved and “shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings”.
“The victims appeared to be malnourished and very dirty,” the statement from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office said, AAP reports.
Now, as the world is reeling from such a heinous and incomprehensible scene, a disturbing history of potential abuse is emerging. Insight from extended family and neighbours details the Turpin’s cult-like possessiveness over their children, and implies a pattern of abuse that will take years for these children to recover from.
But first, the 17-year-old girl and the conditions she survived.
The day of the rescue
“We do need to acknowledge the courage of the young girl who escaped from that residence to bring attention so they could get the help that they so needed,” Captain Greg Fellows of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department told reporters at a Tuesday news conference, The Washington Post reports.
Top Comments
This seems to be happening a lot, I’ve seen two very similar stories before on dr Phil- one last week where adopted and fostered kids were kept in cages. What is wrong with people? The smirk on her mug shot says it all
This story is so horrible yet at the same time I can't help feeling fascinated by it.