Lawsuit: Riverside County, CA and ChildNet Youth and Family Services, Inc UPDATED

“Two new lawsuits filed on behalf of six of the 13 Turpin siblings accuse Riverside County, California, and other foster care entities of negligence after the county placed them in an allegedly abusive foster home for three years despite their pleas for help.

The lawsuits state that Riverside County, as well as ChildNet Youth and Family Services, Inc., and Foster Family Network, placed six of the youngest Turpin siblings in the care of abusive foster parents after the siblings were rescued from their biological parents Louise and David Turpin’s “House of Horrors” in 2018 – a continuation of their horror.

“These kids were horribly abused by their biological parents — basically imprisoned for their whole lives,” Roger Booth, an attorney for four of the six Turpin children, told Fox News Digital. “And then they finally got freed from that situation and placed under the care of the county and then were subject to more abuse.”

The lawsuits state that the defendants understood the rescued Turpin children “were in a very fragile state, both physically and emotionally,” and “needed to be placed in a home where they could recover from their trauma and learn how to integrate into society.”

The opposite occurred, however, when the county, through ChildNet, placed the six minor Turpin siblings in the care of two foster parents identified as Marcelino and Rosa Olguin, despite the fact that the couple “had a prior history of abusing and neglecting children who had been placed in their care,” according to the lawsuits, which accused ChildNet of having a “financial incentive” to “continue placing a large number of children in this foster home” for the county.

ChildNet Director of Development and Communications Brett Lewis told Fox News Digital in a statement that the “organization is not at liberty to disclose facts or discuss the allegations made in the complaint” at this time.

“We look forward to providing the facts at the appropriate time in court,” Lewis said. “Our agency has been serving California’s most vulnerable, traumatized youth for over 50 years. We have a strong track record of providing excellent care and continue to demonstrate our commitment to these children.”

The plaintiffs, who spent the majority of their lives in isolation without any kind of contact with the outside world until 2018, are accusing the defendants of severe physical and emotional abuse.

Marcelino Olguin is accused of not only hitting the plaintiffs but “grabbing and fondling their buttocks, legs and breasts, kissing them on the mouth and making sexually suggestive comments.”

The foster parents and their daughter are also accused of making the children “sit in a circle and recount in detail the horrors that they had experienced while living with their biological parents”; preventing them from communicating with their adult siblings; and forcing them to sit outside “for many hours at a time” as punishment. They also allegedly verbally abused the plaintiffs, “telling them that they were worthless, would never be loved and should commit suicide,” the complaints state.

The couple also forced the children to “eat excessive amounts of food, which led to eating disorders” and sometimes “eat their own vomit.”

“Defendants had a duty to protect plaintiffs, but instead protected the foster parents by failing to report the abuse and neglect of plaintiffs to child protective services or to law enforcement and by failing to intervene and interfere when abuse and neglect was reported by others,” the lawsuits state. “Defendants allowed plaintiffs to remain in the home for three years.”

A Riverside County Sheriff’s Department investigation eventually led to the arrests of Marcelino and Rosa Olguin, as well as their daughter, in March of 2021. They face charges of lewd acts with a child, inflicting injury on a child, willful child cruelty and false imprisonment.

Only then were plaintiffs removed from the couple’s care.

Booth is arguing that Riverside County and ChildNet “dropped the ball.”

Whereas the defendants should have “found the best possible home” for the six children, they placed them in the care of two individuals and their daughter who were wholly unfit to care for the traumatized children.

A total of 13 Turpin children ranging in age from 2 to 29 lived in their parents’ abusive household about 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles before their rescue four years ago.

The children were freed after Jordan Turpin, then 17, escaped through a window and called 911. Louise and David Turpin were sentenced to 25 years in prison after they pleaded guilty to torturing and imprisoning their kids.”

New Turpin family lawsuits accuse foster family of horrific abuse after rescue from biological parents
[Fox News 7/21/22 by Andrea Conklin]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update:“The foster dad accused of sexually and physically abusing five of the younger Turpin children has appeared in court in Riverside, California, accompanied by his wife and daughter.

Marcelino Olguin, 64, was arrested in January 2021 and hit with 13 charges, including three counts of performing a lewd act with a child under 14, four counts of performing a lewd act with a child aged 14/15 and multiple counts of willful child cruelty.

Cops say Olguin was aided during his reign of terror by his wife Rosa, 59, and daughter Lennys, 38 – both of whom are also charged with several counts of willful child cruelty, witness intimidation and another of fraud, all of which apply to nine foster children who lived with them at their Perris, California, home.”

“During the hearing Judge Polk noted the case had already been active for 496 days but rubber-stamped the move.

Outside court and asked whether they regretted their behavior towards their vulnerable foster children, the Olguins refused to comment – although Lennys muttered ‘Leave us alone’ to a DailyMail.com photographer while Marcelino tried to hide his face.

Last year, DailyMail.com revealed the trio’s arrest on abuse charges and confirmed that five of the younger Turpin children had been victimized via a relative.

According to charging documents seen by DailyMail.com, Marcelino targeted two of the girls – one of whom was under 14 at the time – for ‘sexual touching’ on their buttocks and upper thighs more than 50 times.

He also ‘told them they were sexy, recommended they not wear undershirts, said they had beautiful skin, forcibly kissed them and pulled a minor on top of him,’ according to a supporting affidavit written by investigator Thomas Salisbury.

Approached by a DailyMail.com reporter last year and asked about his alleged abuse of the Turpin children at his $585,000 four-bedroom house, Olguin replied ‘F*** you’ before hiding in his garage.

The story of the Turpin children’s rescue from their abusive parents, David and Louise Turpin, now 61 and 54 made global headlines in January 2018 after one daughter was able to escape from the house – also in Perris – and dial 911.

Then aged between two and 29, the younger children were placed in foster care which in the case of five allegedly meant going from the frying pan into the fire when they were fostered by the Olguins.

According to court documents, the Olguins forced the children to take part in ‘confession circle talk’ where they were ‘made to admit to their past sibling abuses, which their biological parents forced them to do’.

The confession circles allegedly began soon after the children arrived at the Olguin home despite the foster parents’ knowledge of the ‘egregious, lifelong, severe abuses’ the minors had suffered at the hands of their parents.

One of the male Turpin children was singled out for extra abuse and was repeatedly imprisoned in his bedroom, ‘cussed at’, ‘demeaned’ and separated from his sisters. The Olguins also ‘intentionally ruined his media devices,’ Salisbury wrote.

All five were also threatened with never seeing their older siblings again if they didn’t comply with the Olguins’ wishes.

According to the report, Lennys also scratched the top of one girl’s hand and, when she was holding a metal coin, moved her hand close to an electrical outlet saying ‘You want to get shocked?’

Along with the Turpins, the Olguins were fostering another four children – among them a five-year-old girl who was given sleeping pills and then forced to stand while the trio rang bells in her ear and sprayed water in her face so she couldn’t fall asleep.

This was ‘all while repeating the revenge phrase; ‘You don’t let us sleep, we’re not letting you sleep’,’ investigator Salisbury wrote. The little girl collapsed and fell on the hard tile floor, he added.

They also locked the girl – identified as V#1 – in her room for nine hours a day and failed to change her diaper.

‘They frightened V#1 by telling her spiders were in the bathroom. They held her in that dark, noisy, scary bathroom (which contained a large decorative spider at one point) despite V#1’s crying/panicked pleas to be let out.

‘They beat V#1 with sandals,’ added Salisbury, ‘choked her, threw her, and knocked her front tooth out by throwing her down several steps.’

The Olguins also encouraged two of their foster children to fight each other, the court papers allege, calling one a filthy a**hole and ‘motherf***er,’ while another was told she would end up as ‘a white piece of s**t on the curb’ like her biological mother.

They are also accused of physically abusing those same two children, with Rosa said to have dragged one of them by her hair ‘which resulted in her hair being pulled out.’

Both Marcelino and Rosa Olguin are certified foster carers and were approved to take in the Turpin children by the Riverside County Children’s Services Division.

Social services in the county have been heavily criticized over the children’s plight with a report published last July noting that the Turpins ‘experienced further harm by a system that was meant to protect them’.

The 600-page Larson report also said the older Turpin children had experienced problems with accessing cash raised for their care while the younger Turpins faced abuse at the hands of their foster parents.

It continued: ‘Specifically, some of the younger Turpin siblings were placed with caregivers who were later charged with child abuse.

‘Some of the older siblings experienced periods of housing instability and food insecurity as they transitioned to independence.’

Both Turpin parents are now serving life sentences after being found guilty of systematically abusing their 13 children by beating and starving them, chaining them to the wall as punishment and allowing them just one shower a year.

David Turpin is currently in the protective custody unit at Corcoran State Prison while his wife Louise is serving her sentence in the Central California Women’s Prison in Chowchilla.”

Foster dad charged with abusing five young Turpin siblings after they were rescued from California house of horrors is seen leaving court with co-accused wife and daughter as 16-month-old case is delayed again
[Daily Mail 4/28/23 by Ruth Styles]