To say Jennifer and Jordan Turpin have been through a lot is an understatement. The two girls were among the group of 13 siblings who were discovered living in a waste-strewn home on January 14, 2018. The story that unfolded was one of horrific abuse and neglect perpetrated against the children by their own parents.
Authorities were tipped off to the situation when one of the children, who was 17 years old at the time, managed to escape the home and call 911 with an out-of-service cellphone. What happened next could never have been predicted.
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For a while, the Turpins had lived in a neighborhood that Jennifer and Jordan describe as "nice" in Fort Worth, Texas. However, their problems began when their parents packed up and moved the family to California. Their parents pulled all of their children out of school and quickly turned violent.
Jennifer Turpin told Diane Sawyer that her mother was often unpredictable. "I never knew which side I was going to get of her. If I was going to ask her a question, [is] she going to call me stupid or something … and then yank me across the floor or [is] she going to be nice and answer my question."
The siblings were forced to sleep during the day and could only be awake for specific hours in the night, and Jennifer recalled that they were often punished for very small things, such as going into their parent's bedroom. Jennifer said, "If I did one little thing wrong, I was going to be beaten … until I bled."
Jordan Turpin found a way to mentally escape: using a phone to watch music videos. In fact, she and some of her siblings especially connected with Justin Bieber, whom Jordan credits with keeping them alive.
"I don’t know where we would be if we didn’t watch Justin Bieber," she said. "I started realizing that there is a different whole world out there. I wanted to experience that."
In fact, Jordan is the sibling who ended up saving everyone. After overhearing her parents talking about moving to Oklahoma, she managed to escape and contact authorities, who arrested her parents within two hours. The siblings were each all to a local hospital, and upon release Jordan marveled at simply being outside. She explained, "I was like, ‘How could heaven be better than this?'"
When police made it to the home, they were appalled to discover "several children shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings." Some of the children were adults between the ages of 18 and 29.
In April 2019, David and Louise Turpin were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. The pair ended up charged with 12 counts of torture and false imprisonment, nine counts of child abuse, and seven counts of cruelty to a dependent adult. Additionally, 10 of their children have restraining orders in place against their parents.
