The father of the foster family in which some of the Turpin children had been placed after fleeing the torture of their parents, was sentenced to 7 years in prison for child abuse.
They thought they would finally find the warmth of a caring home. But some of the Turpin children, placed in foster care in 2018, continued to experience hell. Friday October 18, Marcelino Olguin, the foster father, was sentenced in California to 7 years in prison for abusing the minors who were at his home. The New York Post reports that he pleaded guilty several weeks ago to lewd acts on a child, unlawful confinement and injury to a child, while his wife, Rosa, and adult daughter, Lennys, pleaded guilty guilty of child cruelty.
“Today’s sentencing marks an important step in providing justice for victims who suffered unimaginable abuse,” Riverside County Prosecutor Mike Hestrin said in a statement. “These children were placed in a vulnerable position after surviving intense trauma, only to be further exploited by someone in their care,” he added. An anonymous victim’s lawyer read a letter prepared by one of the Turpin children who stayed in the Olguin home: “All I wanted was to finally have a loving family and recover from my trauma , but unfortunately I didn’t get that.”
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The inaction of social services
Of the 13 children in the Turpin family, six minors were placed with the Olguins after surviving the unimaginable. On January 14, 2018, Jordan Turpin, a 17-year-old teenager, saved her brothers and sisters from the clutches of their parents. All had been held captive for years in a “house of horror”, victims of the mistreatment of the couple sentenced to 25 years in prison. Jordan Turpin had took advantage of the inattention of his executioners to flee his home in California to go and ask for help. She reported to the police that her twelve brothers and sisters were prisoners of this house, sometimes tied to their beds, deprived of food and basic hygiene. “I’m sorry if I talk too much, I’ve never talked to anyone from the outside, it’s very difficult for me to talk,” she told an agent who was questioning her.
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After being saved from their parents, the nightmare continued for some of the children, as revealed in 2021 by an ABC investigation which explained that some of the foster homes where the survivors had been placed had also been the scene of mistreatment. One of the foster parents even told one of the girls that he understood why her parents had chained her.
A report later revealed that the social services system had failed the Turpin children, who ranged in age from 2 to 29 when they were rescued by authorities from their parents’ home. In 2022, the children’s attorneys filed a civil suit against Riverside County, alleging that the Olguins abused minors in their care. The couple hit the children in the face with sandals, pulled their hair, forced them to eat their own vomit and made them sit in a circle and recount the trauma they experienced in their parents’ home , described the complaint which also alleges sexual abuse.
