Julissa, Jolinda and James Turpin have spoken publicly for the first time since their rescue from what has been described as a “house of horrors,” where they say they endured years of abuse by their birth parents.
The three siblings are among the 13 Turpin children who suffered abuse in California. They were also among six of the Turpin children who later say they were abused in foster care.
The siblings discussed their lives since the rescue—and how their view of family has been shaped by their upbringing—in The Turpins: A New House of Horror — A Diane Sawyer Special Event, which aired Tuesday, Feb. 3 on ABC.
“To me, it feels like, ‘Why do people get to have a family, and we don’t?’” Julissa, 19, told Diane Sawyer. “And like we have each other, and that’s the world, you know, but we still want a mom.”
“Something good needs to come from this. It has to. And I can’t accept it not,” she added.
All three pointed to therapy as a major part of their healing as they work through the trauma connected to both their parents and foster care experiences.
“I’ve been, like, literally discovering all these things about my brain that helps me have clarity of who I am, my identity, and who I want to be, what I can work on, what I can fix, and also realizing, too, that it’s not my fault is a big thing, too,” Jolinda, 20, said.
James, 24, spoke about wanting dependable parents—and how he’s learned to lean on other sources of guidance.
“I’ve always wished I had normal parents or just someone I could like go to and, you know, rely on or ask questions or whatever, but I have the internet, so it’s okay,” he said, smiling.
Jolinda also shared that she and her sisters have matching tattoos featuring lyrics from the title track of Harry Styles’ 2019 album Fine Line: “we’ll be fine, we’ll be alright.”
“To me that song just means that like we’re gonna be okay, we’re always gonna get through everything and at the end of the day we’re always gonna have each other,” she said.
During the special, Sawyer, 80, said the siblings were offered a settlement from the agency that placed them with their foster family, while noting the agency did not admit wrongdoing.
The interview comes nearly eight years after all 13 siblings were rescued from the family’s Perris, Calif., home in early 2018. The escape began when Jordan Turpin—who was 17 at the time—got out of the house and alerted authorities about what she said was ongoing captivity and abuse.
Before the rescue, the siblings—ranging in age from 2 to 29—spent much of their lives inside the home, where they said they were beaten, starved, and subjected to severe punishments. At times, the children were chained to beds or placed in cages for breaking house rules.
Their parents, David and Louise Turpin, were later convicted on multiple felony counts, including cruelty to an adult dependent, child cruelty, torture and false imprisonment, and were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
After the escape, the six youngest Turpin siblings were placed with foster parents Marcelino and Rosa Olguin, along with their adult daughter Lennys Olguin. In that home, the children also reported abuse.
An attorney for some of the siblings previously said their foster care experience was “worse” than what they endured at their parents’ home.
“These kids were just hit with a double whammy,” attorney Elan Zektser previously said. “They were made to feel worthless at home by their parents and then they were hit again when they went to the foster home. They constantly told these children, ‘Your parents were right. You are worthless. You’re a nobody. You’re a Turpin,’ like that was some kind of grotesque thing. And it brought their confidence to an all new low.”
The Turpins: A New House of Horror — A Diane Sawyer Special Event is also available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu starting Wednesday, Feb. 4.
