'Malnourished and dirty': police find 13 children and siblings chained in California house

Parents charged with torture and child endangerment after 17-year-old girl escapes and alerts authorities.

Thirteen malnourished siblings ranging in age from two to 29 have been rescued from a house in California where some of them were chained to beds, and their parents have been charged with torture, police have said.
Officers made the discovery after a 17-year-old girl escaped the house in Perris, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles, on Sunday and used a mobile phone she had found in the house to call them, the Riverside county sheriff’s office said. Officers initially thought she was about 10 years old.
“Deputies located what they believed to be 12 children inside the house but were shocked to discover that seven of them were actually adults,” police said in a statement. “The victims appeared to be malnourished and very dirty.”
The children’s parents, David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49, were arrested and each charged with nine counts of torture and 10 counts of child endangerment. They were ordered held on $9m bail, police said.
Six of the couple’s children were minors, while the other seven were over 18, police said, adding that the siblings told officers they were starving.
The group were found in a neighbourhood of closely spaced one and two-storey, single-family homes.
A Facebook page that appeared to have been created by the parents showed the couple dressed in wedding clothes, surrounded by 10 female children in matching purple plaid dresses and three male children in suits. A neighbour who answered the phone on Monday but declined to be identified described the neighbourhood as recently built and said he did not know the Turpins and had not noticed anything unusual.

                                                                                                                           The Guardian

Unbelievable story against human nature.