A group of Perris children, known as Turpin 13 who were rescued from their abusive parents in January 2018, will share their thoughts through their representatives in a live news conference Monday morning.
The news conference is set to start at 9:30 a.m. after the foster father, who was assigned to take care of several of the children, was sentenced to seven years in prison for child abuse.
The Turpin children are suing the county Department of Public Social Services and placement agency ChildNet, also known as Foster Family Network, for putting them in the foster home.
Marcelino Olguin of Perris, his wife and their adult daughter who perpetrated sexual, psychological and other abuse on six children placed in their care after being rescued from a home where their natural parents imprisoned them and inflicted trauma that gained international notoriety were sentenced Friday.
Marcelino Camacho Olguin, 65, his wife, Rosa Armida Olguin, 60, and their adult daughter, Lennys Giovanna Olguin, 39, had reached plea agreements with the District Attorney’s Office last month.
Marcelino Olguin admitted seven counts of lewd acts on a minor and one count of false imprisonment, prompting prosecutors to drop four related charges. During a hearing at the Riverside Hall of Justice Friday, Superior Court Judge Gail O’Rane sentenced the defendant to seven years in state prison, as well as ordered him to register as a sex offender for life under the terms of his parole.
His wife admitted three counts of child abuse and one count each of witness intimidation, grand theft and false imprisonment. Four counts were dropped in her case. The judge imposed a sentence of four years’ felony probation and 120 days in a sheriff’s work release program.
The couple’s daughter admitted three counts of child abuse and one count each of false imprisonment and witness intimidation. Three counts against her were dismissed. O’Rane sentenced the defendant to four years’ probation, with a requirement for 150 days in work release.
Rosa and Lennys Olguin received prison sentences of four years apiece, but those were suspended by the judge under the women’s plea deals.
According to the complaint, several of the Turpin girls were objects of lascivious attention from Marcelino Olguin, with him “grabbing and fondling (their) buttocks, legs, breasts” and “kissing them on their mouths and making sexually suggestive comments.”
There were instances of the Olguins “pulling their hair, hitting them with a belt and striking their heads,” the complaint stated.
The document recited the following other abuse: “making the plaintiffs sit by themselves, sometimes outside, for many hours at a time”; “making plaintiffs sit in a circle and recount, in detail, the horrors that they had experienced while living with their parents”; “verbally abusing plaintiffs, cursing at them and telling them that they were worthless and should commit suicide”; “forcing them to eat until they began to vomit,” then compelling them “to eat their own vomit.”
The Olguins further told the children that “nobody would ever love them,” the complaint said.
In the spring of 2021, the plaintiffs were either placed in alternate foster homes or emancipated.
The foster famly’s abuse was an extension of what the Turpin children had endured at the hands of their own parents.
David Turpin, now 63, and Louise Turpin, now 56, were each sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison in 2019.
The couple operated what prosecutors and investigators described as a “house of horrors,” keeping some of the children caged or chained most times of the day, forcing them to subsist on peanut butter sandwiches and burritos, making them sleep up to 20 hours daily, and allowing them to shower only once a year.
The parents also engaged in repeated physical abuse, resulting in injuries. The conditions were uncovered in January 2018 when one of the Turpin girls, then-17-year-old Jordan Turpin, escaped through a window and called 911.
City News Service contributed to this report.
