With Strange Fire

The Turpin Family and Reactions by Other Neglectful Parents

Originally published January 18, 2018 on No Longer Quivering. Written by Suzanne Titkemeyer

Today has been another day of more reveals in the story of the Turpin family. Louise Turpin’s sister has come forward to make allegations that when she lived with Louise and David Turpin that David would attempt to watch her shower. That she only recently realized how wrong that was. No way of knowing if this is true, or merely the headline grabbing behavior of another relative.

Other information has come out about the family’s bankruptcies, their obsession with Disney to the point of having a yearly pass for every member of the family and all those Vegas vacations. I wonder how the family afforded the Disney passes because the annual passes for the parks run from $619 to $1,049 per person, making it anywhere from $8,666 (hee, that number!) to $14,686 for everyone combined without including the baby. Seems a strange and major expense in a family that skimps on feeding the children.  I guess that’s how they afford those Elvis wedding reenactments in Las Vegas, that and Daddy’s bowl hair cuts.

This is actually not that uncommon of a way to handle money in Quiverfull families. Many times Daddy gets his toys (like that Mustang) and his choice of food/entertainment, Mama gets what Daddy allows, and the kids get whatever dregs are left over. Credit card bills mount up, bankruptcy happens and the entire poverty cycle starts again. Or you do like the Duggars and buy used and save the difference just so Daddy can save a few pennies and afford Aldi brand cookies. Evangelical Quiverfull families are notorious for poor money handling skills, which they pass on to their children, dooming them to even more poverty.

I do wonder why the Turpin parents, David and Louise aren’t looking as thin and food deprived as the children, and if Jill Rodriguez and family in West Virginia (now Ohio) know the Turpins.

In a stranger take on the entire awful messy situation that is the Turpins are that from a Kentucky homeschooling/unschooling mom who had her kids taken for unsafe living conditions. Nicole Naugler, who we’re covered here before, started posting about them on her Facebook page with her supporters saying that the Turpins were not getting the same treatment as the Naugler family did. I don’t know, it looks pretty even from here, in fact I might say that the Turpins have eaten up more column ink in the newspapers than the Nauglers ever did. Very interesting when people in cracked glass houses toss them at others.

Nicole has said nothing directly about David and Louise Turpin, but you can almost feel the martyrbating from here on the articles she’s sharing. Why do you think Nicole is sharing about another set of neglectful parents like this?

Editor’s note: The Naugler family were in the national media for losing custody of their ten children in Kentucky and claiming it was about homeschooling. In reality it had more to do with the fact that the family was living in filthy, unhealthy, squalor.