David Turpin, 56, and Louise Turpin, 49, starved their children to the point that their growth was stunted, chaining them to their beds for months at a time and forbidding them from showering more than once a year or using the toilet, a prosecutor said on Thursday.
“The victimisation appeared to intensify over time,” Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said in announcing charges. “What started out as neglect became severe, pervasive, prolonged child abuse.”
The couple were charged with torture, child abuse, dependent adult abuse and false imprisonment. David Turpin was also charged with performing a lewd act on a child under the age of 14.
The litany of abuses was enough to invoke a house of horrors that apparently went unnoticed for years in California and Texas until Sunday, when a 17-year-old girl managed to escape and call the police.
The girl and her siblings had plotted the escape for two years, Mr Hestrin said. Another girl who escaped out a window with the teen turned back out of fear.
Mr Hestrin did not say what finally triggered the girl to act.
When officers arrived at the house on Sunday in Perris, about 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles, they were shocked by what they found.
The children’s malnutrition was so severe that it was consistent with muscle wasting and had led to cognitive impairment…
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