House of Horrors survivor Jordan Turpin, 22, says her PTSD means she wakes up on the verge of tears
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House of Horrors survivor Jordan Turpin has opened up about how her ordeal means she’s constantly on the verge of tears, five years after her daring escape.
The 22-year-old spent her entire childhood imprisoned inside her California home with her 12 siblings before managing to escape through a window in January 2018.
Their parents, David and Louise Turpin, kept their children chained to their beds in their Perrin home, starving and beating them daily.
Jordan, who ran away when she was 17, was asked about her normal day in an interview with elle and answered: ‘I usually cry’.
She continued: ‘I try to make myself eat. And then I start to put my makeup on, but I cry, so I have to put my makeup back on.
The 22-year-old spent her entire childhood imprisoned inside her California home with her 12 siblings before she managed to escape through a window in January 2018.
Jordan says the pandemic was particularly harsh as the lockdowns came just over a year after his escape.
“And then I try to do a TikTok, but I’m like, ‘Oh, people are going to say this and that about me.’
‘So I’m like, ‘Maybe I should get some air.’ I’m going outside.’ . . and then I cry again.’
Her parents were jailed for life after she raised the alarm, called 911, and struggled to explain the situation to a police officer.
He started taking classes at a community college and worked at Taco Bell, but had trouble socializing with his coworkers.
Jordan was worried her life would never get better, and her experience left her “scared of everyone.”
The influencer said: “I was super nice and always said, ‘I’m so sorry.
‘I’m super nice. They would laugh and say: ‘Why is she like this?’ It could have been annoying.
“But I had just come out of foster care, so I was always very nice because I was afraid of everyone.”
Jordan (circled) was one of 13 siblings who were abused by David and Louise (center) in their Southern California home.
For years, she and her siblings ate one meal a day, their diet consisting of nothing more than two slices of bread with peanut butter or bologna.
Jordan was forced back into a life of isolation during the pandemic, causing her normal life to be put on hold.
She had just begun to get used to living outside her home and it felt like the ‘promised land’ of freedom, like a ‘mockery’ with no ‘escape’.
She added: “When everyone started complaining about COVID, we said, ‘Look at us!’
‘People were saying, ‘This is the worst thing that’s ever happened!’ They could barely handle it when it was only a week. They really don’t know.
Like many of his generation, he turned to TikTok to connect with others, despite having little understanding of how social media worked.
Jordan gained hundreds of thousands of followers on the app and began updating people on his life and joining the dance fads on the app.
On Instagram, where she has more than 220,000 followers, she says her dream is to be a motivational speaker one day.
The 22-year-old talks about life now in the February issue of glossy magazine while modeling designer threads.
She now has almost a million followers and had to hire a publicist and an agent, who said: ‘She got it very fast. That’s the thing with Jordan.
“Although there are certain parts of society [the Turpin siblings are] everyone starting to navigate… everyone is very aware of the world. Jordan is very smart.
‘She’s very self-aware, which isn’t something she even [a lot of] people who have not gone through this type of tragedy can say.’
The star is now considering a career in music after meeting Hailey Bieber and TikTok queen Charli D’Ameilo.
But he said he wants to take it easy, adding: “Right now, I need a break from my past.” I just want to start slow.
During his brave escape, he told a police officer who responded that his brothers were chained up because they had tried to steal food.
Along with the emotional scars, Jordan says the abuse he endured has had a lasting impact on his physical health.
Jordan crawled out a window and called police using a cellphone in January 2018. He said he walked down the street because he didn’t know about sidewalks.
David and Louise ate fast food in front of their children, who were only allowed one meal per day at any given time. The brothers were chained to dirty beds if they tried to steal food.
Not knowing what a sidewalk was, he said he walked down the street to call for help and managed to run into the policeman.
After the arrests of David and Louise in January 2018, horrifying details began to emerge about the extent of the torture, abuse and neglect suffered by the children, who ranged in age from two to 29 at the time.
The parents’ abuse and neglect was so “severe, pervasive and prolonged” that it stunted their children’s growth, caused muscle wasting and left two of their daughters unable to bear children.
All of the children except the two-year-old were very underweight, and officers testified that the children said they could only shower once a year.
They were kept mostly in their rooms except for meals, which had been reduced from three to one a day, a combination of lunch and dinner.
Since they were rescued, some of the other children have said that the social services system that was supposed to help them transition to a new life didn’t do what it was supposed to.
She said she’s still “very, very” close to her siblings and makes sure to see them often. She is seen with her sister Jennifer earlier this year.
Details later emerged about how the Turpins beat and starved their children, chained them to beds, and denied them basic hygiene such as showers.
Jordan has amassed more than 920,000 followers on TikTok, where she posts regular clips of herself doing popular dances.
Some of the children reported that they “felt betrayed” by local officials’ handling of their cases, said Melissa Donaldson, Riverside County director of victim services.
The children were threatened with belts and sticks and were even told that if they did not behave, their parents would chain them to their beds and pull their hair.
Jordan and his sister Jennifer also said the parents “literally” used the Bible to justify how they treated siblings.
They loved to point to things in Deuteronomy, saying, “We have a right to do this to you,” said Jennifer, now 33. ‘That they even had the right to kill us if we didn’t listen.’
For years, the brothers’ diet consisted of nothing more than two slices of bread with peanut butter or bologna.
The couple was also accused of taunting their children with cakes and other foods they were forbidden to eat.
The evil couple ate fast food in front of them, chaining the children to dirty beds if they tried to steal food.