Investigators testified in June that the children said they were starved, chained to beds, locked in cages, choked, tossed down stairs, beaten with switches and neglected to the point they had no formal schooling and bathed only about once a year.
“This is among the worst, most aggravated child abuse cases that I have ever seen or been involved in in my career,” Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said after the hearing.

Hestrin said the deal was reached in part to spare the couple’s kids the spectacle of a trial and the possibility some might be called to the witness stand.
Hestrin said he met with the kids as a group prior to Friday, including the youngest child, a 3-year-old girl.

House of Horror couple, David and Louise Turpin are both seen smiling during their court hearing as prosecutors filed eight new charges of perjury against David Turpin in May, 2018

“They were uniformly pleased that they will not have to testify,” he saiid.
“I was very taken by them, by their optimism, by their hope for the future — for their future. They have a zest for life and huge smiles, and I’m optimistic for them,” he said.
He said prosecutors were adamant the deal include at least one charge for each of the couple’s 12 eldest children. He said the kids “may or may not decide to speak at the sentencing.”
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When authorities rescued the couple’s then 11-year-old daughter on Jan. 14, 2018, she was suffering from the muscle-wasting syndrome cachexia and had been diagnosed with “psychosocial dwarfism,” a growth disorder caused by extreme emotional deprivation, an investigator with the Riverside County District Attorney previously testified.

Louise showed little emotion during the preliminary hearing last year but appeared to cry when prosecutors played the 911 call that her 17-year-old daughter placed after escaping out a window of the family’s house in Perris, Calif.
The teen’s voice sounded like that of a little girl.
“OK, I live in a family of 15 people and my parents are abusive. They abuse us, and my two little sisters right now are chained up,” the girl told the dispatcher.
“Sometimes I wake up and I can’t breathe because of how dirty the house is. We never take baths,” she said. “I don’t know if we need to go to the doctors.”
The daughter told the dispatcher she didn’t know what “medication” meant. She had trouble reading her address from a piece of mail she swiped from the house.
“I don’t go out much, so I don’t know anything about the streets or anything,” she apologized to the operator.
Asked when she last took a bath, the teen said she wasn’t sure.
“Uh, I don’t know, almost a year ago,” she said. “Sometimes I feel so dirty, I wash my face and I wash my hair …I wash it in the sink.”
The daughter said she and her siblings didn’t attend regular school.
“Our mother tells people we’re private schooled, but we don’t really do school. I haven’t finished first grade, and I’m 17,” she said.

The Turpin family home in Perris, California which was filthy and smelled like death according to rescuers

A charge involving the couple’s youngest child was previously dropped by the judge after he found the toddler appeared to be well-fed.
Hestrin said Friday that after the couple’s sentencing in April, the Turpin kids will be able to obtain ongoing, individual protective orders barring the parents from contacting them, if they choose.