Turpin kids live in squalor and are unable to access $600K in donations

The 13 siblings rescued from a California 'House of Horrors' three years ago have been failed miserably by a social services system that was supposed to help them transition to new lives, according to a new report. 

Then aged from two to 29, the siblings lived their lives in horribly abusive conditions that included being locked in their home for years, shackled to beds and starved by their parents before they staged a daring escape to contact police in 2018. 

Now, Riverside County has hired a private law firm to look into allegations the seven adult and six minor children in the Turpin family did not get basic services they needed after they were freed from their parents' prison-like home, ABC News reported on Friday.

A conservatorship, like the one Britney Spears was recently freed from, is allegedly preventing even the adult Turpins from accessing some $600,000 in donated funds, leaving them living in squalor and on the brink of homelessness.  

There also is a criminal investigation of a foster family suspected of mistreating several children, including one of the Turpins, ABC reported. A lawyer for that family denied the allegations.

Some of the children reported they 'felt betrayed' by local officials' handling of their cases, said Melissa Donaldson, Riverside County's director of victim services. 

Donaldson said there were times when the children did not have a safe place to stay or enough food, with the adult children thrust into 'couch surfing' at times and prevented from accessing their $600,000 trust by a court-appointed conservator.

Joshua Turpin, 29, told the network that the conservator in the public guardian's office had denied his request to use some of the funds to buy a bike, even though he had no other form of transportation. 

Donaldson cried as she described how the children, who had little contact with the outside world while being held like prisoners by their parents, David and Louise Turpin, were at times left on their own to try to work through a complicated bureaucracy.

'When the case first broke, I obviously got thousands of offers of help ... dentists and doctors and people saying, 'I will serve these kids pro bono. Please, send them my way,'' she said. 

'I had to pass on those referrals to the Child Protective Services workers and the hospital. And none of them were utilized,' she said.

The social worker said that the adult Turpin children were now living in one of the most dangerous, crime-ridden parts of the county, and that one of them had been assaulted.   

'They all lacked that sixth sense of fear. They had none of that, and they were cast right into the world in a very unsafe violent inner-city area,' said Wade Walsvick, the lead district attorney's investigator on the case.

'There are resources for them that they can't access. They're living in squalor. They're living in a crime ridden neighborhoods. There's money for them for their education. They can't access it,' said Riverside Country District Attorney Mike Hestrin.

'They have been victimized again by the system,' said Hestrin. 'And that is unimaginable to me, that we could have the very worst case of child abuse that I've ever seen, maybe one of the worst in California history, and that we would then not be able to get it together to give them basic needs, basic necessities,' he said.

Donaldson said she spoke out 'because we have to fix' the system. 

The shocking abuse in the Turpin home went unnoticed in the community of Perris, about 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles, until then-17-year-old Jordan Turpin escaped from the house and called police. 

Jordan and one of her sisters gave their first media interview for a segment on Friday's episode of ABC's 20/20.

Now 21, Jordan recalled how she could barely press the buttons for 911 after escaping the house. She had never spoken to anybody before on the phone, she said, and was shaking.

Seeing her siblings suffering, she said she felt like she had to do something.

'I had to make sure that if I left we wouldn´t go back, and we would get the help we needed,' she said in a tearful interview. 'Because if we went back, there´s no way I would be sitting here right now.'

When she escaped, Jordan told a sheriff's deputy that her sisters and brothers, who ranged in age from two to 29, had been starved, chained to beds and forced to live in squalor. 

The children slept during the day, were active a few hours at night and had minimal education.

Body-worn camera footage from the deputy who rescued the siblings shows him talking to Jordan, who nervously says she's never talked to anyone outside the home. 

When the deputy asked if she was taking any medication, Jordan said she didn´t know what that word meant.

When the 13 siblings were rescued, all but the 2-year-old were severely underweight and hadn't bathed for months. 

Investigators concluded the youngest child was the only one not abused by their parents, who have since been sentenced to life in prison.