Turpin Survivor Tells Ohio's Rescued 16 Children: Healing Is 'Definitely Possible'

Julissa Turpin knows what it's like to walk out of a house where no one ever asked how you were doing. Now she's talking directly to 16 children in Ohio who are learning that same lesson in reverse.

Turpin, now 20, escaped her parents' Perris, California home in 2018 alongside 12 siblings. Her sister Jordan, then 17, was the one who climbed out a window and called 911, telling officers about years of starvation, beatings and imprisonment inside what investigators and courts later called a "house of horrors." David and Louise Turpin were each sentenced to 25 years to life in April 2019 after pleading guilty to 14 felony counts including torture and false imprisonment, according to unilad. Judge Bernard Schwartz told the couple at sentencing that they had "severed the ability to interact and raise" the children they brought into the world.

Eight years after her escape, Turpin told NewsNation's Elizabeth Vargas Reports, in an interview conducted by Brian Entin, that the 16 children rescued from a rural property in Hamden, Ohio, on June 30 face a hard road but a real one. "It's gonna be really hard to adjust, but it's definitely possible," she said. "And it's definitely possible for them to get healing and everything that they need."

The Ohio children, ranging in age from 1 to 18, were found in a 12-by-12 room on a property investigators said was covered in feces, according to the New York Post. Four adults, identified as Gary Siders Sr., 73, Christina Siders, 67, their son Gary Siders Jr., 36, and his wife Elizabeth Siders, 33, have pleaded not guilty to child endangerment charges and are awaiting trial, according to unilad and the Express.

Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson, who visited the scene, did not mince words. "They looked like almost feral animals," he said. "It was terrible." He went further in a separate statement reported by the Express: "What we saw down here today is pure evil. Most of our livestock was kept in better conditions than the children." Wilson also said that had authorities waited another 24 hours, "there is a very high probability that we'd be dealing with a death, or multiple deaths, of these children."

Investigators say several of the children could not speak, and the oldest, 18, could not write her own name, according to the Express. The children were discovered after law enforcement executed a search warrant tied to an unrelated matter, not a tip about the kids themselves.

Turpin's own account of reentry offers a preview of what the Ohio children may face. She said basic social phrases sounded alien to her at first. "Even with literally saying, 'How are you?' That was odd to me that people would say, 'Hi, how are you?'" she said. "I don't remember a single time in that house, by an adult or a parent, 'How are you?' or 'Are you ok?'" She also said she thought the concept of friendship was "fake, or just stuff that's in the movies" before she left the house, and described the moment she got outside as feeling like "heaven," just from seeing a tree and breathing fresh air.

There's a reasonable question about whether these two cases are as similar as headlines suggest. The Turpin case involved 13 children held for years by their biological parents in California. The Siders case in Ohio involves a different family structure, a different state, different charges still pending in court, and facts that have not been tested at trial. The adults have pleaded not guilty. No conviction has occurred. Comparing the two is useful for understanding what recovery might look like, but the legal outcome for the Siders family remains unresolved.

Denise Rodriguez Bowman, a forensic interviewer who worked directly on the Turpin case and has now weighed in on the Ohio case, told Ashleigh Banfield's "Drop Dead Serious" podcast that the Siders children are likely already in foster care but almost certainly will not all live together. "The children have likely been placed in foster care," Bowman said, adding it is "unlikely child welfare officials would be able to house all of them together." She said sibling visits could be arranged if professionals overseeing the case determine that's in the children's best interest, according to the Express.

Bowman also described the practical difficulty of interviewing children who've experienced this kind of isolation. "It is a lot of patience on an interviewer's part," she said. "They generally can be long interviews, and we're kind of moving it along based on the kid's ability to be in that room and how long they can be in that room."

The Siders trial has not been scheduled with a public date in available reporting. Until it happens, the four defendants remain presumed innocent under the child endangerment charges they're facing, even as the physical conditions described by Wilson and investigators have already shaped national coverage of the case. The open question now is how Vinton County and Ohio child welfare officials will manage foster placements for 16 children whose ages span nearly two decades, and whether any of them will be kept together at all.