Attorneys: Riverside County, Foster Agency Need to Pay for What Happened to Clients

Six children rescued from a home where their natural parents imprisoned them only to be placed with a Perris foster family who treated them like “animals” are “content” that the defendants have been sentenced, their attorneys said Monday, but now they’re waiting for their lawsuit against Riverside County and a child placement agency to be resolved, ideally for the good of current and future foster kids.

“These siblings are extremely relieved the defendants can never do to another child what happened to them,” attorney Elan Zektser said during a briefing outside the Riverside Historic Courthouse Monday. “But now they’re asking, what’s next? Each of them truly wants to see change.”

Zektser represents two of the girls from the Turpin family, while fellow attorney Roger Booth represents four other children — all of whom were placed with Marcelino Camacho Olguin, 65, his wife, Rosa Armida Olguin, 60, and their adult daughter, Lennys Giovanna Olguin, 39, after the victims were rescued from an oft-described “house of horrors” maintained by their parents in 2018.

The Olguins reached plea deals with the D.A.’s office, and on Friday, they were sentenced. Marcelino Olguin admitted seven counts of lewd acts on a minor and one count of false imprisonment. He received seven years in state prison and was ordered to register as a sex offender for life. His wife admitted three counts of child abuse and one count each of witness intimidation, grand theft and false imprisonment. She received four years’ felony probation. The couple’s daughter admitted three counts of child abuse and one count each of false imprisonment and witness intimidation. She received four years’ probation.

Coordinating with placement agency ChildNet, county Child Protective Services placed the six victims with the Olguins despite complaints of prior abuse in their home, according to the plaintiffs. When CPS agents were alerted to the endangerment of the Turpin children, they failed to act, according to Zektser and Booth.

“The county and ChildNet told them, `Trust us; we got you,”‘ Zektser said. “Then they placed them with child abusers and molesters.”

Zektser said instead of removing the victims from the house to take statements from them in late 2020 and early 2021, the minors were interviewed by agents in front of the defendants, causing them to clam up. It was only when the sheriff’s detective who had investigated the victims’ parents, Tom Salisbury, learned of the abuse allegations against the Olguins that the siblings were interviewed by “professionals,” culminating in a criminal investigation and charges, the attorneys said.

“Salisbury insisted they be removed from that home (in 2021),” Booth said.

Zektser characterized the abuse inflicted by the Olguins as “far greater” than what the victims experienced from their parents.

“They were treated worse than animals,” he said. “The Olguins made them sit in circles, and they would tell them, `No one cares about you. You are nothing.”‘

Zektser said while his and Booth’s clients are “content with what happened” in the Olguins’ case, “they are continuously asking what the county is going to do.”

The attorneys said they hoped reforms to the foster care system proposed by former federal Judge Stephen Larson and the county Grand Jury in 2022 would net results.

“Things happen that you don’t know about,” Booth said. “There are lots of children being subjected to abuse, and no one knows about it.”

Zektser said if his clients, whose parental mistreatment gained international attention, can end up in conditions like those they encountered in the Olguin home, there’s “a bigger issue” that warrants resolution for the good of all minors in foster care.

A settlement conference is set for January. If there’s no pretrial agreement, the attorneys said they’ll be ready for trial.

County spokeswoman Brooke Federico said ChildNet is no longer utilized by the Department of Public Social Services.

“DPSS continues to address existing placement gaps and expand safe, available placements,” she said. ” We have implemented many of the Larson report’s recommendations and are in the process of implementing several more.”

Only one of the 13 Turpin children, a girl who’s now 8 years old, remains in foster care. The others are in college, trying to procure employment and find paths forward, Zektser and Booth said.

District Attorney Mike Hestrin and the Larson report acknowledged the Turpin siblings had received some funds from hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable donations made after they were liberated from their parents’ Muir Woods Road residence. How much of that money remains available has not been divulged.

The victims’ parents, David Turpin, 61, and Louise Turpin, 54, were each sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison in 2019 after admitting child cruelty charges.