Forging her own path, Jennifer Turpin trusted her tug.
“I was looking at (trade school programs) and this little tug — I’ve always learned to listen to (it) because if I don’t listen to it, I’m left with regret,” Turpin, one of 13 siblings freed six years ago from a Perris home after a lifetime of horrific abuse and neglect, told a Murrieta audience Friday, March 8 in a rare public appearance.
The tug, she said, told her to move forward with a medical assistant’s program even though it required her to draw blood when even fake blood scared her.
Today, Turpin said she’s worked for two years as a phlebotomist. “I absolutely love my job and if it wasn’t for me listening to that tug, I wouldn’t know where I’d be and I wouldn’t know the most amazing job I could think of having,” she said.
Turpin, who beamed as she received a standing ovation, appeared at the Murrieta Hot Spring Resort’s conference center to receive the Resiliency Award from A Day in Her Shoes, an event held on International Women’s Day to benefit the Oak Grove Center serving at-risk youth.
The award also honored Jennifer’s sister, Jordan, who could not attend.
On stage, Jennifer, the eldest Turpin who was 29 when she was freed, recounted her first steps in her post-captivity life.
“A lot of people told me not to think this way, but I couldn’t help it,” she said. “I felt like I had empty years. Anyone who’s had their whole life ripped from them, you know what I mean.
“I was 30, and most people my age already had kids, jobs, lives. I didn’t have that.”
Turpin said she got her GED and spent a semester in community college, but she wasn’t sure what she wanted to study and went to trade school when she saw how long it would take to get a degree.
“I knew I wanted a career,” she said. “That was the most important thing to me, to get my foot on the path of getting into a career of a job I loved.”
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While in conservatorship, “they wanted to teach us all these little baby steps,” she said. “Everyone’s like ‘It’s a process. It’s a process.’ I’m like ‘No, I need my GED now.’”
The same determination carried over to her medical assistant and phlebotomy classwork.
“I said ‘No, I need this now,’” she said. “Because if you sit on it, and they look at your resume, you’re never going to get a job in that field you worked your butt off for … (I said) ‘I’m not waiting. I’m not using (the COVID-19 pandemic) as a cushion.”
She thanked the late Mark Uffer, who was CEO of Corona Regional Medical Center when the Turpins were treated there. “He meant a lot to me and my family,” Jennifer Turpin said and he helped her get an externship to advance in her career.
Jennifer Turpin and her 12 siblings, the youngest being 2, were found malnourished and chained to beds inside a Perris home in January 2018 in a shocking case of child abuse and neglect that made worldwide headlines.
Police went to the home after Jordan Turpin, 17 at the time, slipped out a window and used her brother’s cell phone to call 911. The children’s parents, David and Louise Turpin, eventually pleaded guilty to 14 felony counts and were sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison.
The seven adult siblings were placed in conservatorship, with the children going to foster homes. But their problems didn’t end there.
In an ABC News “20/20” interview that aired in November 2021, Jennifer and Jordan said they had trouble finding food, safe housing or help with basic tasks they weren’t taught growing up, such as how to use public transportation.
The siblings also reported problems accessing hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations from the public. And some Turpins ended up in a foster home where caretakers were charged with child abuse — according to a lawsuit, six siblings were forced to eat their own vomit, told to kill themselves and recount details of their parents’ abuse.
The Turpins’ ordeal after being freed from captivity spurred Riverside County to hire an outside lawyer to examine its safety net for vulnerable children and adults and make sweeping recommendations for reform. The report by retired judge Stephen Larson’s firm found that county social services failed the Turpins “all too often.”
At Friday’s event, Jennifer Turpin, who has written a book titled “Where was God?” about her ordeal, said: “Advocating for yourself is very important. At the end of the day, it’s only you … no one’s going to take you seriously until you advocate for yourself. I learned that the hard way.”
She later added: “Something throughout my entire life that I had thought, and now have proven to myself is … if you really, really want something, set your mind to it (and) go for it. Don’t give up. No dream is easy. But put the hard work into it and you keep going, you’ll get it.”