0:00 - Introduction to the Turpin Case
1:07 - The Escape of Jordan Turpin
3:12 - The Horrific Conditions Inside the Home
4:37 - A Deceptive Family Image
6:43 - Signs of Neglect in Texas
9:04 - Disturbing Reports from Neighbors
12:25 - Family Concerns and Isolation
14:23 - The Illusion of a Normal Family
16:01 - Missed Opportunities for Intervention
17:49 - The Aftermath of Rescue
19:55 - Continuing Abuse in Foster Care
23:49 - The Fate of David and Louise Turpin
28:58 - Societal Indifference to Child Abuse
36:33 - The Need for Systemic Change
38:38 - A Call to Action for Children's Protection
In this episode, we delve into the harrowing case of the Turpin family, continuing our true crime and philosophical exploration initiated in part one. This episode builds on insights gleaned from the book "Sisters of Secrets," written by Elizabeth Flores, the sister of Louise Turpin. We chronicle the disturbing events that unfolded within the walls of the Turpin home, where David Allen Turpin and Louise Anna Turpin subjected their children to a life of unimaginable abuse and neglect.
The narrative begins with a chilling account of the Turpin children's escape. In January 2018, their 17-year-old daughter, Jordan Turpin, fled the family's house in Paris, California, after overhearing her parents planning to move the family yet again. Armed with the courage born from desperation, Jordan called 911, despite using a deactivated cell phone. Her call, marked by confusion and a lack of basic understanding of her surroundings, highlighted the depth of their isolation and distress. Upon police inquiry, they discovered a horrifying scene: three of her siblings were found shackled in dark, filthy conditions. This shocking revelation was just the tip of the iceberg.
Investigators revealed that the children had been systematically malnourished, throughout their lives, occasionally fed just once a day and allowed to bathe only once a year. The conditions in which they lived defied comprehension—bruised and filthy, the children did not resemble the thriving family often showcased in their public appearances. Their life was one of imprisonment and abuse, juxtaposed starkly against the cheerful family photographs shared online, where they posed happily at Disneyland—a façade that concealed a horrifying reality.
We further discuss the Turpins' history, tracing their abusive patterns from Texas to California. The narrative reveals how the parents maintained a false sense of normalcy through social appearances, including family trips to public events. Yet, neighbors reported unsettling patterns of behavior, such as the children marching in circles late at night or exhibiting extreme reticence in social interactions. Commentaries from those who knew the family before the revelations came to light reinforce the perplexity of the situation—how could such severe abuse go unnoticed within their communities?
The episode sheds light on not just the abuse itself, but on the societal failures surrounding it. Family members, friends, educators, and community members who might have noticed troubling signs failed to act or question the seemingly happy facade. We analyze the notions of bystander apathy and communal moral responsibility that emerged as critical themes throughout the Turpin saga. The underlying question surfaces repeatedly: why did no one intervene when there were sufficient signs of distress?
Post-rescue, the narrative takes a tragic turn. The Turpin children, who were finally liberated from their chains, faced yet more adversity in their foster homes. Allegations of further abuse from their foster parents emerged, prompting a jagged exploration of systemic inadequacies meant to protect vulnerable children. The unsettling reality appears: the very individuals tasked with safeguarding these children exhibited the same patterns of neglect and abuse they had narrowly escaped.
In our discussion, we reflect on societal attitudes towards child protection and the need for systemic reform to truly safeguard the innocence of children. We explore concepts of accountability and the pervasive indifference that allows abuse to persist unchallenged. Drawing parallels to broader societal tendencies, we interrogate our collective ability to recognize and respond to suffering, emphasizing that the ideals of virtue and moral accountability must prioritize the protection of children above all else.
Ultimately, this episode serves as a somber reminder of the resilience required to combat both the overt and insidious forms of abuse that can exist within family structures and societal frameworks. As we navigate the implications of the Turpin case, we are called to examine how our societal structures can be fortified to ensure that no child endures such suffering again—mandating reforms that focus on the rights and protections of children as paramount. The road to justice is often paved with difficult truths, but only by facing these realities can we foster a safer, more compassionate society that prioritizes the welfare of its most vulnerable members.
[0:00] So, this is part two of my true crime and philosophical analysis of the appalling case of the Turpins. Please listen to part one, which reviews the childhood of Louise Turpin, and this was written by her sister, Elizabeth Flores. It's a great book to read, a terrifying book to read, called Sisters of Secrets. So, let's get to the actual crime and what the effect was of the appallingly terrible childhood that we saw or heard about from Elizabeth. So, David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49, were arrested at their Paris, California home in January 2018. Their 17-year-old daughter managed to escape from the home and call 911. And you can find this online, the video and audio recording of this call, and how confused and disoriented she was. She thought that her zip code was her address. She wasn't sure what street she was on, just very disoriented. And David and Louise, the parents had been planning to move the family to Oklahoma at the time of their arrest.
[1:07] Jordan Turpin, the daughter, overheard her parents speaking about the move and decided it was time to call the police because, she was terrified, and rightly so, that some of her siblings would die from the abuse. And it was now or never.
[1:27] So, when the police entered the home, they found three of her twelve brothers and sisters, aged two to twenty-nine, shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in a dark room. The children were so malnourished, some of them looked ten years younger than their actual age, and in fact, some of the girls were so malnourished that they had almost certainly lost the ability to have children. So by 2018, the Turpin children had been planning to escape their parents for more than two years. On January 14th, 2018, two of the girls left the house through a window. The younger girl, who was only 13, became frightened and turned back, but Jordan, who was then 17, got some distance away and called 911 on a deactivated cell phone she had brought with her. She told the dispatcher that she and her siblings were being abused by their parents and that the smell in the house was so bad sometimes she could barely breathe. She also stated that two of her sisters and one of her brothers were currently chained to their beds. When the first police officer arrived, Jordan showed him photos of conditions inside the house.
[2:32] Now, the phone was deactivated, but because there was Wi-Fi and she was able to access the Internet, she talked to a boy in India and talked about what was happening inside the house. And he is the one who urged her to contact the police. And she said, but the phone is deactivated. And he told her that the 911 call will still work. And that's how she was able to do it. So Jordan showed the first police officer photos of conditions inside the house. So then deputies of the Riverside...
[3:06] So then deputies of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department raided the house, stating they were there for a welfare check.
[3:12] Louise and David answered the door. It's the parents. The Sheriff's Department said that Louise was perplexed as to why we were at the residence. Inside, they encountered the stench of human excrement, decaying garbage, dead pets, and moldy food with every surface covered in trash. Later, they found the other twelve children. One had been shackled to a bed for weeks, and it appeared that two others had been shackled until just before officers arrived. Children were found with bruises on their arms, appearing frail and caked with dirt. The children were so malnourished that the deputies thought they were all under 18 years old, when in fact seven were over 18. The house contained hundreds of journals written by the children about their lives. For years and years and years, the parents imprisoned, beat and strangled their children, allowing them to eat only once a day and bathe only once a year. The older children appeared much younger because of malnourishment. The 29-year-old Jennifer weighed just 82 pounds, 37 kilograms. The 12-year-old child had an arm circumference equivalent to that of a four-month old baby. Some appeared to lack basic knowledge of the world and had a limited vocabulary.
[4:30] For example being unfamiliar with what medication was in the case of Jordan or who the police were.
[4:37] So these shocking facts were in stark contrast to the happy family photos they shared publicly on Facebook in recent years. Photos between 2010 to 2012 show that this family took at least two family trips to Disneyland. They are pictured in matching outfits posing with various Disney characters. Meanwhile, two of the four cars parked outside the family's home when they were arrested have license plates that read DSLAND and DL Forever, Disneyland Forever.
[5:07] In addition to the family's Disneyland trips, the Turpins also took their children to Las Vegas three times in 2011, 2013, and 2015, so they could renew their wedding vows at an Elvis-themed chapel. Their children were present at the ceremonies. In 2015, the ten girls wore matching pink dresses with white tights and white shoes, while the three boys were seen in suits with purple ties. eyes. The bizarre ceremonies show the couple staring lovingly at each other while their 13 children mull around awkwardly nearby. Police have confirmed that the children are all the couple's biological offspring.
[5:43] The Turpin children were seen in public on a few occasions prior to 2018, the time of the arrest, notably during family trips to Disneyland. They traveled to Vegas three times, 2011, 2013, 2015, and the Elvis impersonator who presided over their ceremonies and he's pulled up videos of the occasion where the siblings, in matching outfits and similar haircuts, smiled and danced. His name is Ripley, this Elvis impersonator. He says, watching them now, it's kind of haunting and disturbing. They all looked young and thin, but I figured it was just their lifestyle. Maybe the activities they did, maybe because of their religious beliefs. I didn't get that in depth with them, but I knew they were a fun family. How visible was this abuse as a whole? The Turpins move through society. They interact with people. So, they lived in Texas before moving to California, and after they left the residence they were in, neighbors and subsequent homeowners reported disturbing findings. They found ropes tied to the beds after the Turpins left the house in Texas.
[6:43] They found ropes tied to the beds, conditions of severe neglect in the home environment, dead cats, and piles of garbage, which indicated a long-term pattern of abuse and neglect.
[6:53] The neighbors' observations also included signs of emaciation among the children, which was evident even from the limited interactions they had with them outside the house. The abuse had started long before they relocated to Paris in 2014. And according to investigators, David and Louise had left their kids living on their own in a trailer in Rio Vista, Texas, for several years. The parents lived nearby but didn't visit, instead calling and ordering the two eldest children to to discipline the others. Isn't that amazing? The abusers were gone for years, and the parents were gone for years, and the children lived alone. They could have contacted anyone, done anything. This is the amount of imprisonment that happens in the mind. You can't get out. You can't escape. There was a small dog cage that the bad children were locked into. The punished children were not locked into. Quote, bad, of course.
[7:46] Multiple neighbors also recalled seeing four kids laying sod in the yard one night with a woman who seemed to be their mom watching them from an archway in the front of the house. One neighbor said, I thought it was weird, but I'm the kind of guy that doesn't want to get in anybody's business.
[8:01] The Turpin family lived in Fort Worth, Texas until 1999 when they moved to Rio Vista, Texas. In 2007, the Turpin parents moved 10 of their children onto an isolated trailer on their property. David and Louise took the two youngest and left the rest of the children to fend for themselves, bringing groceries on a weekly basis, but not enough to feed everybody. One of their daughters, Jordan Turpin, aged six years old at the time, stated that there was, quote, a lot of starving, and she had to resort to eating, quote, ketchup or mustard or ice. After the family left Rio Vista in 2010, neighbors found, of course, all of these feces, beds with ropes tied to them, dead cats, piles of garbage. And people knocked on the door and wanted to play with the kids and saw the smell and heard the stench and saw the dead animals, and no one did anything. Nobody called. Nobody called the police. Nobody called Child Protective Services. Nobody alerted any authorities. Some of the children went to school for a while. Nobody alerted anyone about anything.
[9:04] And the parents were cruel insofar as they would buy bicycles for the children to use and then just leave them rotting outside. side. They would buy delicious food, eat it themselves, or sometimes they would buy pies and just leave them on the counter when the children were half-starved and just let them rot. So this dangling for better treatment and better food was constant.
[9:23] So once the family moved from Rio Vista in 2010, their house was foreclosed. The man who bought the house, Billy Baldwin, no relation I suppose, found a stack of Polaroids from where the Turpins lived there, one show to bed with a rope tied to its metal rail. So they left behind every evidence of how badly the children were being treated and everyone was like, oh well, photographs.
[9:45] Photographs. Billy Baldwin also remembers a feces-littered living room that looked like almost a classroom with eight small desks and a chalkboard. The closet and the refrigerator had locks on them as well as other things.
[9:59] So, one neighbor had a child. Sometimes in the evening she would hear the Turpin children playing in their yard. One day she grabbed a jump rope and knocked on the door of the trailer. She said, I knew they were really strange, but I was willing to get over the strangeness to be friends. A skinny pale girl with long brown hair opened the door and just stared, she said. Her eyes got real wide. She closed the door back in my face. She came around the back, looked at me, and then ran back away into the house through the back door. The Turpin children were reported to have been seen marching in circles inside their house, a detail that contributed to the eerie and disturbing conditions described by neighbors after the case became public. According to these neighbors, the children would be forced to march for hours during the night from one room to another in a single file line. They saw this happening repeatedly through the windows, between midnight and 3 a.m. This is one of the few signs visible to outsiders that something unusual and sinister was happening in the Turpin home. Nobody did a thing.
[11:00] Neighbors' observations. Neighbors in Paris, California reported that the children appeared malnourished and pale. Additionally, their behavior was noted as unusual. They were silent, of course, until spoken to, and they skipped rather than walked. A neighbor said, I just thought they were really private and that maybe they did most of their playing in the backyard. Every now and then, this neighbor would approach the Turpin's front door to have her daughter to sell the family Girl Scout cookies. The mom would never open the door all the way, he remembered. Sorry, this is a female. But she would see children behind Louise jumping up and down because they were so excited for cookies.
[11:40] Simon saw six of the Turpin kids at a community Christmas party a couple of years ago. She said the oldest was a boy in his 20s, but she told him, you look like you're a teenager, not in your 20s. Louise's sister, who we met in the last show, expressed her worry about the children's weight and health during interactions. Or from what she could discern from afar, sometimes online. Family members were prevented from visiting or seeing the children, which raised significant red flags about the living conditions and treatment the children were receiving. Some family members, including one of Louisa's sisters, noted their concerns about the children's pale appearance and thinness when they did have rare encounters. Elizabeth Flores, this is the woman we met in part one of this series, shared her insights into the conditions at the Turpin's home in her book.
[12:26] She described her sister Louise Turpin's home as a place where one could smell the stench of dirt and body odors immediately upon entering. Despite this, the home was outwardly tidy and the place is visible through video calls, giving a misleading impression of cleanliness. Elizabeth also revealed the children looked underfed and pale and that their speech seemed robotic and emotionless when they did speak.
[12:49] Elizabeth told ABC's Good Morning America that she begged her sister to let her see her nieces and nephews, even over Skype, but they never did let her. Elizabeth said, when that happens for 20 years, and it was before the kids were there, you don't think it's abnormal. If it had been like two years ago that she cut us off, then we might think, wow, something's not right. This has been going on before they even had children.
[13:13] Once, Elizabeth said, their father tried to surprise Louise with a visit. After he bought a plane ticket, Louise called and told him not to come. Another of Louise's sisters told NBC's Today show that she was concerned about how skinny the kids were, but her sister would just laugh it off. Louise Turpin's sister, Teresa Robinette, recalls how the nature of her video calls with her nieces and nephews changed, declined over time until she was never allowed to speak with them ever again. They were very friendly, but it was a very weird conversation every time because they weren't real talkative, she said on NBC's Megyn Kelly Today. Quote, when she let me video Skype to them, it got to where instead of having them all together like we did years and years ago, it got to where she would bring one or two or three at a time and then she would send them out and tell them to send down so-and-so. The last time she spoke with the siblings, Robinette said, was about seven or eight years ago, not long before the last time the children's grandparents, Betty and James Turpin, visited the family for five days at their previous home in Murrieta, California, and the family moved to the Paris, California home in 2014.
[14:23] The Turpin, David Turpin's 81-year-old mother, told the Southern California News Group, they were just like any ordinary family, and they had such good relationships. I'm not saying this stuff. These kids, I'm not just saying this stuff. These kids, we were amazed. They were sweetie this and sweetie that to each other. Now, for eight school years, from 2010 to 11 to 2017 to 18, David Turpin filed private school affidavits, with the state affirming under penalty of perjury that he was running a home school and giving the students, all of the couple's children, a full-time education. Turpin, of course, who claimed to be the principal, operated City Day School in Murietta and then Sandcastle Day School when the family moved to Paris in 2014. Over the years, he listed as many as nine students and as few as five students in the grades that he claimed to be teaching, 1 through 12.
[15:18] Now, school officials said that the oldest son of the California siblings had excelled in his community college courses. The oldest son got to go to school briefly. The son's mother, this is Louise, reportedly brought him to school and waited outside his classes for him. Despite near daily interactions with others at school, there's no indication that the oldest son ever sought help or wanted to draw attention to what was happening at home. One classmate named Marcy Dunker said he was, quote, always quiet and alone when they attended classes. She tried to say hello to him a few times, but he just looked at her and never responded. It was one of the most sad faces I'd seen in years. And of course, he was one of the last people to leave class because he didn't want to go back home.
[16:01] Now, why did she not go to the authorities? Elizabeth Flores, the sister, claims she did did not go to the police about the conditions she observed at her sister's house, because she never saw anything that would clearly indicate a need to call the police. She never noticed any severe abuse when she was visiting the house, and the children appeared to be fine during her interactions.
[16:26] Well, that's an assumption, right? One phone call, one welfare check could have established that. If you haven't seen or talked to children, nieces and nephews for years, have a wellness check performed. Call someone. Call neighbors. Ask them what's going on. Because officials say that the conditions of the Turpin children didn't even show up on their radar at all until the 2018 phone call by the daughter who escaped. So who knew? Who could have known? about this horror and this torture and this abuse and this confinement and this strangulation claims? Well, you've got the family members of the Turpins, their parents that visited, the sister who lived with them, and was preyed on by the dad. There are three sets of neighbors in Rio Vista and Paris, California, and other places. In Rio Vista, people found feces, filth everywhere, and Polaroids of ropes tied to a bed. In Paris, they say, they saw children marching in circles through the windows at three o'clock in the morning, quite often. In Fort Worth, one of the children escaped but was returned to the home by a neighbor. A neighbor and his daughter noted how strange they were. The daughter had an interaction with one of the kids. They had several family trips to Vegas and Disneyland. Let's travel with over 10 kids, many times over many years.
[17:49] Hotel staff, people at gas stations, the same Elvis impersonator again, several times.
[17:55] Son went to college where classmates noted his odd behavior. One of the daughters escaped, tried to get to town, tried to get a job, had no idea what she was doing, no idea of any kind, and then she was just rounded up and handed back to the parents.
[18:12] Countless people over the course of 30 years, at least hundreds, probably thousands. If you look online, there's an excuse fest as to why nobody claims to have seen evidence of abuse or done anything about it. Bystander of fact, Oh, they were good at hiding it, and people sometimes even claim it's diversity. Quote, This town grew from 36,000 to 68,000 in the past 10 years. It's located in an area where it's highly likely many people in the town either work in a part of Los Angeles or San Diego, i.e. long commutes. It's easy to say that they should have known something was wrong, but it's not so easy when the majority of the time these people are commuting in bad traffic, trying to keep up with their own family, and the Turpins were not the only family in the neighborhood. Quote, to the northwest there are almost 19 million people in the greater Los Angeles Long Beach area. To the southwest there are over 3 million people in the greater San Diego area. It would be hard to find a more diverse group of people ethnically and economically in such a highly populated area. So to think that a family that did so much to conceal their sadistic lifestyle should still be obvious to their neighborhood only shows how smart people are in hindsight.
[19:14] There are those who acknowledge the reports of frail, malnourished, and underdeveloped children. Yet they say there were no overt appearances of abuse. When is malnourishment not abuse or the absolute lack of knowledge? Oh, how was school? Oh, what did you learn? Anybody talking to them on Skype? Come on. Come on. These kids were only allowed to bathe once a year. They barely got a chance to change their clothing. They got punished if they got water on themselves past their wrist.
[19:42] Nourishment, plus paleness, because they were barely allowed out during the day, plus overt filth, body odor, stenches. Not an over enough sign for a wellness check, not once over 30 years.
[19:55] But it gets worse. Believe it or not, it gets worse. And this is the really heartbreaking part, which is we say, my gosh, these children should have been rescued. Okay. So then they were rescued. And I put the sources to this below the quote, quote, Six of the 13 Turpin siblings who were placed into foster child care after being rescued from their sadistic parents' captivity are seeking a settlement from their providers, claiming they were sexually and mentally abused by their foster parents.
[20:29] Ellen Elan Zexter, the attorney representing the Turpin children reported, quote Some of the kids will tell you that what they experienced in the foster home was even worse than what they experienced at the hands of their parents The children claimed they were physically sexually and emotionally abused while under the care of their foster parents, Marcelino and Rosa Olguin who were both charged after the allegations were made in a civil lawsuit suit.
[20:58] Marcelino Ogwin was arrested in January 2021, has been charged with 13 counts, including a lewd act with a child, the willful child cruelty for allegedly victimizing two of the siblings. His wife, Rosa Ogwin, 58, and the couple's daughter, Lennis, 37, were also arrested and charged with fraud and witness intimidation. The alleged creep foster father is accused of sexually abusing the children by quote, grabbing and fondling their buttocks legs and breasts, kissing them on the mouth and making sexually suggestive comments, according to the complaint obtained by the Post in 2022. So, in October 2019, of course, five of the younger children were adopted into an abusive family who further tormented them, according to these allegations. Allegations included, quote, hitting them in the face with sandals, pulling their hair, hitting them with a belt and striking their heads. They were forced to eat excessively and then forced to eat, quote, their own vomit. And the foster father was accused of grabbing and fondling them and kissing them on the mouth. Hmm.
[22:04] Investigation for the ABC News Magazine 2020, which chronicled the case for the November 2021 special Escape from a House of Horror, reported some of the Turpin children are now neglected by the Riverside County Social Services. Some are homeless and none are authorized to use the hundreds of thousands of dollars donated to them. The money was placed in a trust controlled by a court-appointed public guardian, Vanessa Espinoza. Joshua Turpin stated that he could not access the funds and was denied the purchase of a bicycle. During an interview with Diane Sawyer for the 2020 special, Jordan Turpin stated that she was released without warning from a foster home with no life skills, no plans for housing, no knowledge of how to obtain food and health care. According to the report, Riverside County has hired a private law firm to investigate allegations of abuse by social services. is. The lawyer, Zexter, said, quote, the thing that kills me most is that when they were in the Turpin home, they were told they didn't deserve to be like everyone else. That they were bad kids, bad people. That's what their parents put on them. The lawsuit also alleged that their foster father would tell the children to kill themselves because they were only targeted by their parents as they were quote, unlovable. Included in the heartbreaking allegations against the foster family was that the children would be force-fed until they threw up only to make them eat their own vomit.
[23:30] When you have enough people in your life telling you that you are nobody and nothing and don't deserve what everyone else has in life, it has a profound effect on your psyche. The members of the Alguin family have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
[23:46] So, David and Louise Turpin were sentenced to life in prison.
[23:49] I can't find any particular updates on the trial against the Alguins and the allegations from the children and everybody's making. Excuses and everybody's shocked and this is the world that we live in this is possible and, goes on in society as a whole and everybody claims to not know anything because, there is this moat and this wall around families oh i don't want to get involved oh i don't want to get don't want to deal with it don't want it's an anonymous phone call for a wellness check my gosh. And I understand, of course, because, you know, the cynical part of me, the cynical part of everyone says, okay, well, so when these kids finally, this young girl was finally brave enough to escape and get help, they ended up in a situation even worse than where they came.
[24:45] And until we completely reboot our society and rewrite our society, but the protection of children being first and foremost, that every law, every attitude, every perspective, everything is focused solely and deeply and from the ground up on the protection of children. Until we can rewrite our society in that way, with that as our primary focus, that as the star we guide ourself by. Until we can.
[25:18] As the foundation of our society, the protection of children. Nothing else that society says about its supposed virtues is going to mean anything. You know, it's a funny thing that I sort of experienced, and I think most people who've experienced fairly severe child abuse will agree with me on this. I don't want to speak for anyone else, but I think it's fairly true. That when we see society going through its various moral paroxysms and panics, and there's white supremacy, this and racism and phobia and all of this stuff. And society runs around like a spark-headed, defunctioning robot.
[25:59] Claiming to have these moral insights and focusing on its virtues while schools get worse, child abuse increases, national deaths drown the futures of children, affordable housing and families become impossible for the young. But society runs around claiming that it knows everything about morals and who's good and who's wrong and who's right and who's evil and and there's hate speech and every kind of ism and bigotry is the central focus and obsession of society it's like you nobody believes any of it who's experienced the fundamental indifference of society to the suffering of children nobody Nobody has said, gee, you know, when you get single moms, the rates of sexual abuse of those children for living boyfriends or boyfriends as a whole goes 30 plus times higher.
[26:52] Nobody cares about that because, of course, you know, single moms reliably vote for bigger government and so power mongers like it. So the problem is when you grow up in a situation of child abuse, when you move through society, and even for these children after they were protected, They were supposed to, the police got them, according to this lawsuit, and I don't know that these have been proven, but the charges are there, the lawsuit is there, the allegations are that their treatment at the hands of their foster parents was even worse than their treatment at the hands of David and Louise Turpin, where they were chained and brutalized and starved and beaten. When you go through a childhood of significant abuse and you realize the absolute, deep, empty indifference of society as a whole to what you're going through, no morals later that society claims to beat its chest with ever mean a damn thing to you.
[27:48] Have a parent who screams at you and hits you and then is sweet as sugar right as rain and nice as nice can be when the doorbell rings and somebody comes over you don't believe their virtue ever again right once you realize as a child when you're abused and society doesn't care and in fact society will punish you for the effects of abuse this is what we were talking about with Elizabeth Flores' book that the kids who are abused and hungry and beaten and terrified and with the abuse often comes sleep difficulties and concentration difficulties and you are punished. You are called lazy. You are called stupid. You are marked down. You can lose a year or two of your life by repeating grades. You are punished for the effects of abuse. And I think this is still true. I mean, it was certainly true when I was younger. I think this is certainly true that not once over the course of my childhood did anyone say, are you okay?
[28:58] How are things at home? I was told, well, if effort matched ability, you'd be an A+. You're lazy. You just don't concentrate. You just don't focus. You don't seem to care about your schoolwork. You're just indifferent, right? This contempt that is poured like salt into the wounds of the broken.
[29:14] Is so deranged it is hard to even comprehend or process this. It is like a running race where there are ten children nine of them are healthy and well fed, have good shoes and another one has his legs smashed and broken with a baseball bat, but he starts, and no one notices it, and no one cares, and no one cries any outrage. All they do is, as the kid staggers along, shedding blood, bone marrow, and shattered fragments of his bone, bleeding, screaming, crying, everyone just screams, how freaking lazy he is. Why won't he run properly? What a nerd. What a spaz. What a loser. How in you just don't even care about winning why aren't you running like the other kids huh, why don't you care about winning you're just lazy look the other kids care about winning and you just staggering along with your broken leg smashed leg coughing up blood bloody tears streaming from your eyes.
[30:27] Man, you don't care about winning. What's the matter with you? Good Lord, how sad, how pathetic, how ridiculous. This is life. This is the world for victims of child abuse, for the most part. And I was abused, of course, and went to church regularly. Went to church, was brought to church by good Christian men and women. And nobody ever said, gee, you know, dark circles under your eyes. You appear to be somewhat malnourished. You appear to be jumpy. Why don't you sleep? people, why don't you want to go to bed? Nobody ever asks. They just say, you're distracted. You're lazy. Why do you just, why do you stay up so late? What's the matter with you? And then, of course, you go with people to church. You go with people to church, and in the church, you are told that those who allow children to come to harm, and those who do nothing about it, are the worst kinds of people and everyone around you is nodding piously and they're leaping to their feet to sing praises and hosannas and psalms and hymns and they nod and they pray, for wisdom and for guidance I remember kneeling beside, my aunts in church and they were praying for guidance help us to do good and to fight evil help us to know and solve the suffering.
[31:56] Helpless and dependent in this world. Please, Jesus and God above, open our minds and our hearts to the suffering around. Why are you fidgeting? Little Stef, why are you fidgeting? I'm not fidgeting. I'm hoping. I'm hoping because there is a test of the existence of God radiating from the furrowed brows and the praying hands of those kneeling and asking for wisdom. Dear God above, give me the wisdom to identify suffering and solve it give me the wisdom to know evil when I see it and to rescue the victims of evil, because my gosh can you believe, can you believe that Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil can you believe how they disobeyed God I pray for wisdom I pray for guidance I pray for you to illuminate with beams of sunlight light, through the stained glass, the suffering among us. Stop fidgeting. Get up. It's time to go. Why can't you concentrate? What's the matter with you?
[33:07] Ah, you see, this was my test. This was my test. People are praying to Almighty God for them to identify victims, to see evil, and to do good. And I was kneeling beside them, a victim of evil, and they could have done great good. And not one congregationist, parishioner, family member, Christian teacher, not one priest, not one cleric of any kind, ever once asked me how I was doing. Not once. But they were all praying to God to identify the victims of wrongdoing and to give them comfort.
[33:52] Now, I probably went through, I'm just going to guess here, it's a sort of rule of thumb, and I'm not trying to make this about me, obviously, I mean, I'm telling you this is the danger that we face as a society, and I talked about this in my presentation on the French Revolution as well, but this is the danger we face as a society, that I went through probably 500 staunch Christians and moralists, because the socialists as well, I mean, the socialists were around, the leftists were around when I was a kid, and they're They're like, well, you know, those who are being exploited, those who are suffering, we care about them. Those who are being mistreated by those in power, boy, we really care about them. And they talked about multinational corporations that they could do absolutely nothing about and completely ignored the suffering of children in their midst. And, of course, as I have stood up for children, as I have over the course of my public career as an intellectual, torrents of verbal abuse with no respite from mainstream society have been poured my way. That's all.
[34:54] Nothing has changed foundationally. In fact, in many ways, it's gotten worse, which simply means that society is going to have to hit bottom before it bounces. So, not to, you know, I have great respect for Christianity, but let's be real about the evidence in this case, in this situation, that you had hundreds of Christians in this environment who knew of these children and who prayed to God for guidance, who prayed to God for wisdom and virtue, who prayed to God to protect children and to advance the cause of soulful goodness.
[35:42] And did God tell any one of them that the children were in danger, that the children were being abused, that the children were being tortured to the point where their bodies were half destroyed. Everybody prays for guidance. Whoever gets told something that is a moral revelation that they really don't want to do, and then do it. Because this is why I focused on universally preferable behavior, my rational proof of secular ethics. Because clearly, religion and the police and the state and the laws and the teachers and the schools and the priests and the congregation were not enough, were not enough to even touch on or approach or raise the question of the abuse of children in society.
[36:33] It was not enough. It was not enough because it would have just taken one question. How are you doing at home? What's happening at home? I mean, even the psychiatric profession, right? I mean, my mother was institutionalized and they knew she had children. That would have It would have been an intake question.
[36:50] And I actually, I mean, I went to visit her on multiple occasions. And nobody said, wait, there's kids here? Let's make a phone call. Let's do something. I mean, this is a 12-year-old kid. We got to do something. It's a 13-year-old kid. What are we going to do? How's he getting his food? How's he paying his rent? What's he doing? Well, I was just working and scrambling. And I had three jobs at that time at the age of 13.
[37:13] So nobody, whatever we have as a society, is not enough. It is not enough to protect children. Whatever we have as a society is not enough to protect children. Whether it's communal, whether it is societal, whether it's religious, whether it is legal, whether it is political, it's not enough. It's not enough. And until we protect children, we will never have a free and rational society.
[37:43] Because our society is based on power and coercion, it has negative incentives. It has strong disincentives to protect children. And I've made the case before, I won't make it here again, that child abuse leads to totalitarianism. So this is a heartbreaking story. It is an extreme story. But the principles remain the same across the entire spectrum and bell curve of child abuse. Whatever we have as a society is not enough to protect the children, and in fact for most children it's going the opposite way these days and we are drugging the symptoms we are not treating the root cause because treating the root cause would be to have humility at the failures of our moral structures and the failures of our conception of how society ought to be run and to humbly kneel before the need to protect children and rewrite everything from the ground up with that in mind and with that as the purpose.
[38:38] And I think that there are just too many people who've committed too many crimes against children for this to be much of a goal or process at the moment. But it will happen one day. It will happen one day. And I will do everything in my power to move that day forward.
[38:57] Because the road to hell is paved with ignoring the suffering of children. And the road to heaven is accepting the virtues we know we need to enact and humbly looking at the structures that we have inherited and ask ourselves one question and one question only. Does this further the protection of children? If not, it is expendable. And if so, it must be watered and grow, as this conversation must grow.
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