Turpin Lawyers: Riverside County and Foster Agency Must Pay for What Happened to Clients

Six children rescued from a home where their natural parents imprisoned them and then placed in a Perris foster family that treated them like “animals” are “pleased” that the defendants were convicted, their lawyers said Monday. but they are now waiting for their lawsuit against Riverside County and a child-placing agency to be resolved, ideally for the sake of current and future foster children.

“These brothers and sisters are extremely relieved that the defendants will never be able to do to another child what happened to them,” attorney Elan Zektser said during a press briefing outside the historic Riverside Courthouse on Monday. “But now they’re wondering: What’s next? Each of them really wants to see change.

Zektser represents two of the Turpin family’s daughters, while his colleague Roger Booth represents four other children, all of whom were placed with Marcelino Camacho Olguin, 65, his wife, Rosa Armida Olguin, 60, and their adult daughter, Lennys Giovanna Olguin. , 39, after the victims were rescued from an oft-described “house of horrors” maintained by their parents in 2018.

The Olguins reached plea deals with the prosecutor’s office and on Friday they were sentenced. Marcelino Olguin admitted to seven counts of lewd acts against a minor and one count of false imprisonment. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender for life. His wife admitted three counts of child abuse and one count each of witness intimidation, robbery and false imprisonment. She was sentenced to four years of felony probation. The couple’s daughter admitted three counts of child abuse and one count each of false imprisonment and witness intimidation. She was sentenced to four years of probation.

In coordination with the placement agency ChildNet, county Child Protective Services placed the six victims with the Olguins despite complaints of prior abuse in their home, according to the plaintiffs. When CPS officers were alerted to the danger posed by the Turpin children, they did not act, according to Zektser and Booth.

“The county and ChildNet told them, ‘Trust us; we got you,” Zektser said. “Then they placed them with child molesters and child molesters. »

Zektser said that instead of bringing the victims out of the house to take their statements in late 2020 and early 2021, the minors were questioned by agents in front of the defendants, forcing them to remain silent. It was not until the sheriff’s detective who had investigated the victims’ parents, Tom Salisbury, learned of the abuse allegations against the Olguins that the siblings were questioned by “professionals”, leading to an investigation criminal charges, lawyers said.

“Salisbury insisted that they be evicted from this house (in 2021),” Booth said.

Zektser called the abuse inflicted by the Olguins “much more serious” than what the victims suffered at the hands of their parents.

“They were treated worse than animals,” he said. “The Olguins made them sit in a circle and said to them: ‘No one cares about you.’ You are nothing.

Zektser said that while his and Booth’s clients are “pleased with what happened” in the Olguins’ case, “they continually ask what the county is going to do.”

Attorneys said they hope reforms to the foster care system proposed by former federal Judge Stephen Larson and the county grand jury in 2022 will yield results.

“There are things going on that you don’t know about,” Booth said. “Many children are victims of abuse and no one knows about it. »

Zektser said that while his clients, whose parental abuse has attracted international attention, may find themselves in conditions like those they encountered at the Olguin home, there is “a more serious problem” that deserves attention. be resolved for the good of all minors placed in foster families.

A settlement conference is scheduled for January. If there is no pretrial agreement, attorneys said they will be ready for trial.

County spokeswoman Brooke Federico said ChildNet is no longer used by the Department of Public Social Services.

“DPSS continues to address existing placement gaps and expand safe and available placements,” she said. “We have implemented many of the recommendations of the Larson report and are in the process of implementing several others. »

Only one of the 13 Turpin children, a girl now 8, remains in foster care. The rest are in college, trying to find jobs and find paths forward, Zektser and Booth said.

District Attorney Mike Hestrin and the Larson report acknowledged that the Turpin siblings received funds from hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable donations made after they were released from their parents’ Muir Woods Road residence. How much of this money remains available has not been disclosed.

The victims’ parents, David Turpin, 61, and Louise Turpin, 54, were each sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in 2019 after admitting to child cruelty charges.