Stefan Molyneux
  • 3 months ago
In this episode, we delve deeper into the disturbing Turpin family case, examining the escape of 17-year-old Jordan Turpin and the unimaginable abuse her siblings endured. We highlight the systemic failures that allowed such neglect to go unnoticed and confront the alarming patterns of indifference from those around them.
The discussion continues with the tragic aftermath for the Turpin children in foster care, where allegations of further abuse emerged. We emphasize the urgent need for reform in child protection and the collective responsibility to safeguard vulnerable children. By reflecting on these harrowing truths, we seek to inspire a more compassionate society committed to preventing such suffering in the future.

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Transcript
00:00So this is part two of my true crime and philosophical analysis of the
00:06appalling case of the Turpins. Please listen to part one, which reviews
00:10the childhood of Louise Turpin, and this was written by her sister
00:17Elizabeth Flores. It's a great book to read, a terrifying book to read, called
00:20Sisters of Secrets. So let's get to the actual crime and what
00:24the effect was of the appallingly terrible childhood that we
00:29saw or heard about from Elizabeth. So David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise
00:36Anna Turpin, 49, were arrested at their Paris, California home
00:40in January 2018. Their 17-year-old daughter managed to escape
00:44from the home and call 9-1-1, and you can find this
00:49online, the video and audio recording of this
00:53call, and how confused and disoriented she was. She
00:56thought that her zip code was her address. She wasn't sure what street she
00:59was on, just very disoriented. And David and Louise, the parents, had
01:04been planning to move the family to Oklahoma at the time of their arrest.
01:08Jordan Turpin, the daughter, overheard her parents speaking about the move
01:13and decided it was time to call the police because
01:16she was terrified, and rightly so, that some of her siblings would die from
01:22the abuse. And it was now or never.
01:27So when the police entered the home, they found three of her 12
01:31brothers and sisters, aged 2 to 29, shackled to their beds with chains and
01:37padlocks in a dark room. The children were so malnourished. Some
01:41of them looked 10 years younger than their actual age, and in fact some of the
01:44girls were so malnourished that they had almost certainly lost the
01:49ability to have children. So by 2018, the Turpin children had been
01:53planning to escape their parents for more than two
01:56years. On January 14, 2018, two of the girls left the house through a window.
02:01The younger girl, who was only 13, became frightened and turned back, but Jordan,
02:04who was then 17, got some distance away and called 9-1-1
02:08on a deactivated cell phone she had brought with her. She told the
02:13dispatcher that she and her siblings were being abused by their parents and
02:15that the smell in the house was so bad sometimes she could barely breathe.
02:19She also stated that two of her sisters and one of her brothers were currently
02:23chained to their beds. When the first police
02:27officer arrived, Jordan showed him photos of conditions inside the house.
02:32Now, the phone was deactivated, but because
02:35there was Wi-Fi and she was able to access the internet, she talked to
02:40a boy in India and talked about what was happening inside the house, and
02:46he is the one who urged her to contact the police. And she said, but the phone is
02:51deactivated, and he told her that the 9-1-1 call will still work, and
02:56that's how she was able to do it. So Jordan showed the first police
03:00officer photos of conditions inside the house.
03:03So then deputies of the Riverside County Sheriff's
03:09Department raided the house, stating they were there for a welfare check.
03:13Louise and David answered the door as the parents. The Sheriff's Department
03:16said that Louise was perplexed as to why we were at the residence.
03:20Inside they encountered the stench of human excrement,
03:24decaying garbage, dead pets, and moldy food with every surface covered in trash.
03:30Later they found the other 12 children. One had been shackled to a bed for weeks
03:36and it appeared the two others had been shackled until just before officers
03:41arrived. Children were found with bruises on
03:43their arms, appearing frail and caked with dirt.
03:47The children were so malnourished that the deputies thought they were all
03:50under 18 years old when in fact seven were over 18.
03:54The house contained hundreds of journals written by the children about
03:57their lives. For years and years and years
04:02the parents imprisoned, beat, and strangled their children
04:06allowing them to eat only once a day and bathe only once a year.
04:10The older children appeared much younger because of malnourishment. The 29-year-old
04:15Jennifer weighed just 82 pounds or 37 kilograms.
04:20The 12-year-old child had an arm circumference equivalent to that of a
04:23four-month-old baby. Some appeared to lack basic knowledge of
04:27the world and had a limited vocabulary. For example, being unfamiliar with what
04:33medication was in the case of Jordan or who the police were. So these shocking
04:38facts were in stark contrast to the happy family photos they shared publicly
04:42on Facebook in recent years. Photos between 2010 to 2012 show that
04:47this family took at least two family trips to Disneyland.
04:50They are pictured in matching outfits posing with various Disney characters.
04:54Meanwhile two of the four cars parked outside the family's home
04:58when they were arrested have license plates that read
05:02D-S-L-A-N-D and D-L forever. Disneyland forever.
05:07In addition to the family's Disneyland trips the Turpins also took their
05:10children to Las Vegas three times in 2011, 2013, and 2015
05:16so they could renew their wedding vows at an Elvis themed
05:19chapel. Their children were present at the ceremonies. In 2015 the 10 girls wore
05:24matching pink dresses with white tights and white shoes while
05:27the three boys were seen in suits with purple ties.
05:30The bizarre ceremonies show the couple staring lovingly at each other while
05:34their 13 children mull around awkwardly nearby.
05:39Police have confirmed that the children are all the couple's biological
05:42offspring. The Turpin children were seen in public
05:45on a few occasions prior to 2018, the time of the arrest, notably during family
05:48trips to Disneyland. They traveled to Vegas three times, 2011,
05:522013, 2015, and the Elvis impersonator who presided
05:56over their ceremonies pulled up videos of the occasion where the siblings in
05:59matching outfits and similar haircuts smiled and danced.
06:02His name is Ripley. This Elvis impersonator, he says, watching them now
06:05it's kind of haunting and disturbing. They all looked young and thin but I
06:10figured it was just their lifestyle, maybe the activities they did, maybe
06:13because of their religious beliefs. I didn't get that in depth with them but I
06:16knew they were a fun family. How visible was this abuse as a whole?
06:22The Turpins move through society. They interact
06:26with people. So they lived in Texas before moving to
06:31California and after they left the residence they were in neighbors and
06:35subsequent homeowners reported disturbing findings.
06:38They found ropes tied to the beds after the Turpins left the house in
06:43California, in Texas. They found ropes tied to the beds,
06:45conditions of severe neglect in the home environment, dead cats and piles of
06:49garbage, which indicated a long-term pattern of
06:52abuse and neglect. The neighbors observations also included
06:55signs of emaciation among the children, which was evident even from the limited
06:59interactions they had with them outside the house.
07:02The abuse had started long before they relocated to Paris in 2014
07:07and according to investigators David and Louise had left their kids living on
07:10their own in a trailer in Rio Vista, Texas for several years.
07:14The parents lived nearby but didn't visit, instead calling and ordering the
07:18two eldest children to discipline the others.
07:20Isn't that amazing? The abusers were gone for years and the parents
07:24were gone for years and the children lived alone.
07:28They could have contacted anyone, done anything. This is the amount of
07:32imprisonment that happens in the mind. You can't get out, you can't escape.
07:37There was a small dog cage that the bad children were locked into, the
07:41punished children were not locked into. Quote bad of course.
07:46Multiple neighbors also recalled seeing four kids laying sod in the yard one
07:49night with a woman who seemed to be their mom
07:52watching them from an archway in the front of the house. One neighbor
07:55said, I thought it was weird but I'm the kind of guy that doesn't want
07:59to get in anybody's business. The Turpin family lived in Fort Worth,
08:03Texas until 1999 when they moved to Rio Vista,
08:06Texas. In 2007 the Turpin parents moved 10 of their children onto an
08:11isolated trailer on their property. David and Louise took the two youngest
08:15and left the rest of the children to fend for themselves, bringing groceries
08:18on a weekly basis but not enough to feed everybody.
08:21One of their daughters, Jordan Turpin, aged six years old at the time,
08:25stated that there was quote a lot of starving and she had to resort to eating
08:30quote ketchup or mustard or ice. After the
08:34family left Rio Vista in 2010 neighbors found
08:38of course all of these feces, beds with ropes tied to them, dead cats, piles of
08:42garbage and people knocked on the door and wanted
08:46to play with the kids and saw the smell and heard the stench
08:49and saw the dead animals and no one did anything. Nobody called, nobody
08:54called the police, nobody called child protective services, nobody
08:58alerted any authorities. Some of the children went to school for a while,
09:02nobody alerted anyone about anything and the parents were cruel insofar as they
09:07would buy bicycles for the children to use and then just leave them rotting
09:10outside. They would buy delicious food, eat it themselves or
09:13sometimes they would buy pies and just leave them on the counter when the
09:16children were half starved and just let them rot.
09:19So this dangling better treatment and better food
09:22was constant. So once the family moved from Rio Vista in 2010 their house was
09:28foreclosed. The man who bought the house, Billy Baldwin,
09:30no relation I suppose, found a stack of Polaroids from where the Turpins lived
09:34there. One showed a bed with a rope tied to its metal rail.
09:37So they left behind every evidence of how badly the children were being
09:41treated and everyone was like, oh well, photographs, photographs. Billy Baldwin
09:48also remembers a feces littered living room that looked like
09:51almost a classroom with eight small desks and a chalkboard.
09:54The closet and the refrigerator had locks on them as well as other things.
09:59So one neighbor had a child. Sometimes in the evening she would hear
10:04the Turpin children playing in their yard. One day she grabbed a jump rope
10:07and knocked on the door of the trailer. She said, I knew they were really strange
10:11but I was willing to get over the strangeness to be friends.
10:14A skinny pale girl with long brown hair opened the door and just
10:17stared, she said. Her eyes got real wide. She
10:20closed the door back in my face. She came around the back,
10:24looked at me and then ran back away into the house through the back door.
10:29The Turpin children were reported to have been seen marching in circles
10:32inside their house, a detail that contributed to the eerie
10:35and disturbing conditions described by neighbors after the case became public.
10:40According to these neighbors the children would be forced to march for
10:42hours during the night from one room to another in a single file line.
10:46They saw this happening repeatedly through the windows between midnight and
10:493 a.m. This is one of the few signs visible to
10:52outsiders that something unusual and sinister was happening in the Turpin
10:56home. Nobody did a thing.
11:00Neighbors' observations. Neighbors in Paris, California reported that the
11:04children appeared malnourished and pale. Additionally their behavior was
11:08noted as unusual. They were silent, of course, until
11:13spoken to and they skipped rather than walked.
11:17A neighbor said, I just thought they were really private and that maybe they did
11:21most of their playing in the backyard. Every now and then this neighbor would
11:24approach the Turpin's front door to have her daughter sell the family Girl Scout
11:27cookies. The mom would never open the door all
11:30the way, he remembered. Sorry, this is a female, but she would
11:34see children behind Louise jumping up and down because they were so excited
11:37for cookies. Simon saw six of the Turpin kids at a
11:42community Christmas party a couple of years ago. She said the oldest was a boy
11:46in his 20s, but she told him, you look like you're a teenager not in your 20s.
11:50Louise's sister, who we met in the last show, expressed her worry about the
11:54children's weight and health during interactions,
11:56or from what she could discern from afar sometimes, online.
12:01Family members were prevented from visiting or seeing the children would
12:04raise significant red flags about the living conditions and treatment the
12:07children were receiving. Some family members, including one of
12:10Louise's sisters, noted their concerns about
12:12the children's pale appearance and thinness when they did have rare
12:15encounters. Elizabeth Flores, this is the woman we
12:19met in part one of this series, shared her insights into the conditions
12:24at the Turpin's home in her book. She described her sister Louise Turpin's
12:28home as a place where one could smell the stench of dirt and body odors
12:32immediately upon entering. Despite this, the home was outwardly tidy
12:36and the place is visible through video calls, giving a misleading impression of
12:39cleanliness. Elizabeth also revealed the children
12:42looked underfed and pale and that their speech seemed robotic
12:46and emotionless when they did speak. Elizabeth told ABC's Good Morning
12:51America that she begged her sister to let her see her nieces and nephews, even
12:54over Skype, but they never did let her. Elizabeth said, when that
12:59happens for 20 years, and it was before, the kids were there, you don't think it's
13:03abnormal. If it had been like two years ago that
13:06she cut us off, then we might think, wow, something's not right.
13:10This has been going on before they even had children.
13:13Once, Elizabeth said, their father tried to surprise Louise with a visit. After he
13:17bought a plane ticket, Louise called and told him
13:19not to come. Another of Louise's sisters told NBC's Today Show that she was
13:24concerned about how skinny the kids were, but her sister would just
13:27laugh it off. Louise Turpin's sister Teresa Robinette recalls how the nature
13:32of her video calls with her nieces and nephews changed,
13:35declined over time until she was never allowed to speak with them
13:39ever again. They were very friendly, but it was a very weird conversation every
13:43time because they weren't real talkative, she said
13:46on NBC's Megyn Kelly Today. Quote, when she let me video Skype to them,
13:51it got to where, instead of having them all together like we did years and years
13:55ago, it got to where she would bring one or two or three at a time and then she
14:00would send them out and tell them to send down so-and-so.
14:04The last time she spoke with the siblings, Robinette said, was about
14:07seven or eight years ago, not long before the last time the children's
14:10grandparents, Betty and James Turpin, visited the family for five days
14:14at their previous home in Murrieta, California,
14:18and the family moved to the Paris, California home in 2014.
14:23Betty Turpin, David Turpin's 81-year-old mother, told the Southern
14:28California News Group, they were just like any ordinary family
14:31and they had such good relationships. I'm not saying this stuff,
14:35these kids, I'm not just saying this stuff, these kids, we were amazed, they
14:39were sweetie this and sweetie that to each other.
14:43Now, for eight school years from 2010 to 11 to 2017 to 18,
14:49David Turpin filed private school affidavits with the state affirming
14:53under penalty of perjury that he was running a home school and giving the
14:56students, all of the couple's children, a full-time
15:00education. Turpin, of course, who claimed to be the
15:02principal, operated City Day School in Murrieta and then
15:06Sandcastle Day School when the family moved to Paris in 2014.
15:10Over the years, he listed as many as nine students and as few as five students
15:14in the grades that he claimed to be teaching, one through twelve.
15:17Now, school officials said that the oldest son
15:21of the California siblings had excelled in his community college courses. The
15:25oldest son got to go to school briefly. The son's mother, Mrs. Louise,
15:29reportedly brought him to school and waited outside his classes for him.
15:33Despite near daily interactions with others at school, there's no indication
15:37that the oldest son ever sought help or wanted to draw attention to what was
15:40happening at home. One classmate named Marcy Dunker said he
15:43was, quote, always quiet and alone when they attended classes. She tried to
15:47say hello to him a few times but he just looked at her
15:50and never responded. It was one of the most sad faces I'd seen in years.
15:55And, of course, he was one of the last people to leave class because he didn't
15:58want to go back home. Now, why did she not go to the
16:04authorities? Elizabeth Lloris, the sister, claimed she did not go to the
16:09police about the conditions she observed at her sister's house because she never
16:14saw anything that would clearly indicate a need to call the police.
16:17She never noticed any severe abuse when she was visiting the house
16:21and the children appeared to be fine during her interactions.
16:26Well, that's an assumption, right? One phone call, one welfare check could have
16:30established that if you haven't seen or talked to children,
16:33nieces, and nephews for years. Have a wellness check performed.
16:39Call someone. Call neighbors. Ask them what's going on.
16:44Because officials say that the conditions of the Turpin children didn't
16:47even show up in their radar at all until the 2018 phone call by the daughter who
16:51escaped. So, who knew? Who could have known
16:57about this horror and this torture and this abuse and this confinement
17:02and this strangulation claims? Well, you have family members of the Turpins.
17:07Their parents had visited the sister who lived with them and was preyed on
17:12by the dad. There are three sets of neighbors in Rio Vista
17:16and Paris, California, and other places. In Rio Vista, people found feces, filth
17:22everywhere, and polaroids of ropes tied to a bed.
17:25In Paris, they say, they saw children marching in circles through the windows
17:28at three o'clock in the morning, quite often.
17:32In Fort Worth, one of the children escaped but was returned to the home
17:36by a neighbor. A neighbor and his daughter noted how strange they were.
17:40The daughter had an interaction with one of the kids. They had several family
17:44trips to Vegas and Disneyland. Let's travel with over 10 kids many
17:48times over many years. Hotel staff, people at gas stations, the
17:51same Elvis impersonator again several times.
17:55The oldest son went to college where classmates noted his odd behavior.
18:00One of the daughters escaped, tried to get to town, tried to get a job,
18:04had no idea what she was doing, no idea of any kind,
18:07and then she was just rounded up and handed back to the parents.
18:12Countless people over the course of 30 years, at least hundreds,
18:15probably thousands. If you look online, there's an excuse fest as to why nobody
18:20claims to have seen evidence of abuse or done anything about it.
18:23Bystander of fact, oh they were good at hiding it and people sometimes
18:27even claim it's diversity. Quote, this town grew from 36,000 to 68,000 in the
18:33past 10 years. It's located in an area where it's highly likely many people in
18:36the town either work in a part of Los Angeles or San Diego, i.e.
18:40long commutes. It's easy to say that they should have
18:42known something was wrong but it's not so easy when the majority of the time
18:46these people are commuting in bad traffic trying to keep up with their
18:48own family and the Turpins were not the only family in the neighborhood.
18:52Quote, to the northwest there are almost 19 million people in the greater Los
18:54Angeles Long Beach area. To the southwest there are over three
18:57million people in the greater San Diego area.
19:00It would be hard to find a more diverse group of people ethnically and
19:02economically in such highly populated area.
19:05So to think that a family that did so much to conceal their sadistic
19:09lifestyle should still be obvious to their neighborhood only shows how smart
19:12people are in hindsight. There are those who acknowledge the
19:16reports of frail malnourished and underdeveloped children
19:19yet they say there were no overt appearances of abuse.
19:22When is malnourishment not abuse or the absolute lack of knowledge?
19:27Oh how was school? Oh what did you learn? Anybody talking to them on Skype? Come on!
19:32Come on! These kids were only allowed to bathe once a year. They barely got a
19:36chance to change their clothing. They got punished if they got water
19:39on themselves past their wrist. Malnourishment plus
19:43paleness because they were barely allowed out during the day
19:46plus overt filth, body odors, stenches. Not an overt enough sign for a wellness
19:52check. Not once over 30 years. But it gets worse. Believe it or not
19:59it gets worse. And this is the really heartbreaking part
20:02which is we say my gosh these children should have been rescued. Okay.
20:06So then they were rescued. And what happened?
20:10And I put the sources to this below. The quote quote six of the 13 Turpin siblings
20:15who were placed into foster child care after being rescued from their sadistic
20:18parents captivity are seeking a settlement from their
20:22providers claiming they were sexually and mentally
20:25abused by their foster parents. Ellen
20:30Zexter the attorney representing the Turpin children
20:33reported quote some of the kids will tell you that what they experienced in
20:38the foster home was even worse than what they experienced
20:42at the hands of their parents. The children claim they were physically
20:46sexually and emotionally abused while under the care of their foster parents
20:51Marcelino and Rosa Olguin who were both charged after the allegations were made
20:56in a civil lawsuit. Marcelino Olguin was arrested in Jan
21:01January 2021 has been charged with 13 counts including a lewd act with a child
21:05the willful child cruelty for allegedly victimizing two of the
21:09siblings. His wife Rosa Olguin 58 and the couple's
21:14daughter Lenny's 37 were also arrested and charged with
21:18fraud and witness intimidation. The alleged creep foster
21:22father is accused of sexually abusing the children by quote grabbing and
21:26fondling their buttocks legs and breasts
21:28kissing them on the mouth and making sexually suggestive comments according
21:33to the complaint obtained by the post in
21:352022. So in October 2019 of course five of the
21:39younger children were adopted into an abusive family who further tormented
21:42them according to these allegations. Allegations included
21:46quote hitting them in the face with sandals pulling their hair hitting them
21:48with a belt and striking their heads. They were forced to eat excessively and
21:53then forced to eat quote their own vomit and the foster father was accused
21:58of grabbing and fondling them and kissing them on the mouth.
22:04An investigation for the ABC News Magazine 2020 which chronicled the
22:08case for the November 2021 special Escape from a House of Horror
22:13reported some of the Turpin children are now neglected by the Riverside
22:17County Social Services. Some are homeless and none are
22:21authorized to use the hundreds of thousands of dollars donated to them.
22:25The money was placed in a trust controlled by a court-appointed public
22:28guardian Vanessa Espinoza. Joshua Turpin stated
22:32that he could not access the funds and was denied the purchase of a bicycle.
22:37During an interview with Diane Sawyer for the 2020 special Jordan Turpin
22:41stated that she was released without warning from a foster home with no life
22:44skills, no plans for housing, no knowledge of
22:47how to obtain food and health care. According to the report Riverside
22:51County has hired a private law firm to investigate allegations of abuse
22:55by social services. The lawyer Zexter said quote the thing that kills me most
23:02is that when they were in the Turpin home
23:04they were told they didn't deserve to be like everyone else.
23:07That they were bad kids bad people that's what their parents put on them.
23:10The lawsuit also alleged that their foster father would tell
23:14the children to kill themselves because they were only targeted by the parents
23:18as they were quote unlovable. Included in the heartbreaking
23:21allegations against the foster family was that the children would be force-fed
23:26until they threw up only to make them eat their own vomit.
23:29Zexter said when you have enough people in your life telling you
23:33that you are nobody and nothing and don't deserve what everyone else has in
23:36life it has a profound effect on your psyche.
23:40The members of the Alguin family have pleaded not guilty
23:43to all charges. So David and Louise Turpin were sentenced
23:48to life in prison. I can't find any particular updates on
23:53the trial against the Alguins and the allegations from the children
23:59and everybody's making excuses and everybody's shocked.
24:03And this is the world that we live in this is possible
24:07and goes on in society as a whole and everybody claims to not know anything
24:13because there is this moat and this wall around
24:18families oh I don't want to get involved oh I don't want to get don't want to deal
24:21with it don't it's an anonymous phone call for a wellness check my gosh.
24:26And I understand of course because you know the
24:29cynical part of me the cynical part of everyone says okay well
24:33so when these kids finally this this young girl was finally brave enough to
24:38escape and get help they ended up in a situation even worse
24:42than where they came and until we completely reboot our
24:49society and rewrite our society but the protection of children being first and
24:53foremost that every law every attitude every
24:56perspective everything is focused solely and deeply and
25:01from the ground up on the protection of children
25:04until we can rewrite our society in that way with that as our primary
25:11focus that as the star we guide ourself by until we can
25:18set as the foundation of our society the protection of children
25:24nothing else that society says about its supposed virtues is
25:29going to mean anything you know it's a funny thing that I sort of
25:32experienced and I think most people who've experienced fairly severe child
25:35abuse will agree with me on this I don't want to
25:38speak for anyone else but I think it's fairly true
25:40that when we see society going through its various
25:46moral paroxysms and panics and there's white supremacy this and racism and
25:50phobia and and all of this stuff and society
25:54runs around like a spark-headed defunctioning
25:58robot claiming to have these moral insights and focusing on its
26:03virtues while schools get worse child abuse increases
26:09national deaths drown the futures of children
26:12affordable housing and families become impossible for the young
26:15but society runs around claiming that it knows everything about morals and
26:20who's good and who's wrong and who's right
26:23and who's evil and and there's hate speech and every kind of ism and
26:26bigotry is the central focus and obsession
26:30of society it's like you nobody believes any of it
26:34who's experienced the fundamental indifference of society
26:37to the suffering of children nobody has said
26:41gee you know when you get single moms the rates of sexual abuse of those
26:45children for living boyfriends or boyfriends as a
26:48whole goes 30 plus times higher nobody nobody
26:53cares about that because of course you know single moms reliably vote for
26:56bigger government and so power among us like it
26:59so the problem is when you grow up in a situation of child abuse when you move
27:03through society and even for these children after they
27:07were protected they were supposed to the police got
27:09them according to this lawsuit and i don't know that these have been proven
27:12but the charges are there the lawsuit is there the allegations are
27:16that their treatment at the hands of their foster parents was even worse
27:22than their treatment at the hands of david and louise turpin
27:25where they were chained and brutalized and starved and
27:28beaten when you go through a childhood of significant abuse and you realize
27:34the absolute deep empty indifference of society as a whole to what you're going
27:39through no morals later that society claims to
27:43beat its chest with ever mean a damn thing to you it's like
27:47if you have a parent who screams at you and hits you and then
27:53is sweet as sugar right as rain and nice as nice can be when the doorbell
27:58rings and somebody comes over you don't believe their virtue ever again
28:03right once you realize as a child when you're
28:07abused and society doesn't care and in fact society
28:10that will punish you for the effects of abuse this is what we were talking about
28:14with elizabeth flores's book that the kids who are abused and hungry
28:21and beaten and terrified and with the abuse often comes sleep
28:26difficulties and concentration difficulties
28:30and you are punished you are called lazy you are called
28:34stupid you are marked down you can lose a year or two of your life by repeating
28:39grades you are punished for the effects of
28:44abuse and i think this is still true i mean it
28:49was certainly true when i was younger i think this is certainly true that not
28:53once over the course of my childhood did anyone say are you
28:58okay how are things at home i was told well if effort matched
29:00ability you'd be an a-plus you're lazy you just don't concentrate you just
29:04don't focus you don't seem to care about your school work you're just indifferent
29:08right this contempt that is poured like salt into the wounds of the broken
29:15is so deranged it is hard to even comprehend
29:21or process this it is like a running race where there are 10
29:28children nine of them are healthy and well-fed
29:31have good shoes and another one has his legs smashed and
29:36broken with a baseball bat but he starts and
29:40no one notices it and no one cares no one cries any
29:45outrage all they do is as the kid staggers along
29:49shedding blood bone marrow and shattered fragments of his bone
29:53bleeding screaming crying everyone just screams
29:58how freaking lazy he is why won't he run properly
30:01what a nerd what a spaz what a loser how in you just don't even care about
30:08winning why aren't you running like the other
30:10kids huh why don't you care about winning you're just lazy look the
30:15other kids care about winning and you just staggering along with your broken
30:18legs smashed leg coughing up blood bloody tears
30:23streaming from your eyes
30:27you're just lazy man you don't care about winning what's the matter with you
30:30good lord how sad how pathetic how ridiculous
30:34this is life this is the world for victims of child abuse for the most
30:38part and i was abused of course and went to
30:42church regularly went to church was was brought to church
30:45by good christian men and women and nobody ever said gee
30:49you have dark circles under your eyes you
30:51appear to be somewhat malnourished you appear to be jumpy why don't you sleep
30:56why don't you want to go to bed nobody ever asks they just say
31:01you're distracted you're lazy why do you just
31:04why do you stay up so late what's the matter with you
31:07and then of course you go with people to church
31:12you go with people to church and in the church you are told
31:16that those who allow children to come to harm
31:19and those who do nothing about it are the worst kinds of people
31:23and everyone around you is nodding piously and they're leaping to their
31:26feet to sing praises and hosannas and psalms and hymns
31:30and they nod and they pray for wisdom and for guidance i remember
31:37kneeling beside my aunts
31:41in church and they were praying for guidance
31:46help us to do good and to fight evil help us to know and solve the suffering
31:55of the helpless and dependent in this world
31:59please jesus and god above open our minds and our hearts
32:04to the suffering around why are you fidgeting
32:08little steph why are you fidgeting i'm not fidgeting
32:12i'm hoping i'm hoping because there is a test
32:16of the existence of god radiating from the furrowed brows and the
32:21prayering hands of those kneeling and asking for wisdom
32:25dear god above give me the wisdom to identify suffering
32:29and solve it give me the wisdom to know evil when i see it
32:34and to rescue the victims of evil because my gosh can you
32:39believe can you believe that adam and eve ate
32:43of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil
32:46can you believe how they disobeyed god i pray
32:49for wisdom i pray for guidance i pray for you to illuminate with beams of
32:55sunlight through the stained glass the suffering
32:58among us stop fidgeting oh get up it's time to
33:03go why can't you concentrate what's the
33:06matter with you ah you see this was my test this was my
33:11test people are praying to almighty god for them
33:16to identify victims to see evil and to do good and i was
33:23kneeling beside them a victim of evil and they could have done great good
33:28and not one congregationist parishioner family member christian teacher not
33:35one priest not one cleric of any kind ever once asked me how i was doing
33:43not once but they were all praying to god to identify
33:48the victims of wrongdoing and to give them comfort
33:52now i probably went through i'm just gonna guess here it's a sort of
33:57rule of thumb and i'm not trying to make this about
33:59me obviously i mean i'm telling you this is the danger that we face as a
34:02society and i talked about this in my presentation on the french
34:05revolution as well but this is the danger we face as a
34:08society that i went through probably 500 staunch
34:14christians and moralists because the socialists as well i mean
34:18the socialists were around the leftists were around when i was a
34:20kid and they're like well we you know those who are being exploited
34:23those who are suffering we care about them
34:25those who are being mistreated by those in power boy we really care about them
34:31and they talked about multinational corporations that they could do
34:35absolutely nothing about and completely ignored the suffering
34:39of children in their midst and of course as i have stood up for
34:42children as i have over the course of my public career as an intellectual
34:46torrents of verbal abuse with no respite from
34:49mainstream society have been poured my way that's all
34:53it continues right nothing has changed foundationally in fact in many ways it's
34:58gotten worse which simply means the society is going
35:01to have to hit bottom before it bounces so not to you know i have great respect
35:08for christianity but let's be real about the evidence in this
35:14case in this situation that you had hundreds of christians
35:21in this environment who knew of these children
35:25and who prayed to god for guidance who prayed to god for wisdom and virtue
35:34who prayed to god to protect children and to advance the cause of
35:41soulful goodness and did god tell any one of them that
35:48the children were in danger that the children were being abused that the
35:51children were being tortured to the point
35:53where their bodies were half destroyed everybody prays for guidance
35:58whoever gets told something that is a moral revelation
36:02that they really don't want to do and then do it
36:06because this is why i focused on universally preferable behavior my
36:11rational proof of secular ethics because clearly religion
36:17and the police and the state and the laws and the teachers and the schools
36:21and the priests and the congregation were not enough
36:26were not enough to even touch on or approach or raise the
36:30question of the abuse of children in society
36:34was not enough it was not enough because it would have just taken one question
36:37how are you doing at home what's happening at home i mean
36:41even the psychiatric profession right i mean my mother was
36:44institutionalized and they knew she had children that would have been an intake
36:48question and i actually i mean i went to visit
36:52her on multiple occasions and nobody said wait there's kids here
36:56let's make a phone call let's do something he's going
36:59this is a 12 year old kid what we got to do something it's a 13 year old kid what
37:03are we going to do how's he getting his food how's he
37:06paying his rent what's he doing well i was just working and scrambling and
37:09i had three jobs at that time at the age of 13
37:12so nobody whatever we have as a society is not
37:18enough it is not enough to protect children
37:20whatever we have as a society is not enough to protect children whether
37:25it's communal whether it is societal whether it's
37:28religious whether it is legal whether it is political whether it
37:32it's not enough it's not enough and until we protect children
37:38we will never have a free and rational society
37:42and unfortunately because our society is based on
37:46power and coercion it has negative incentives it has strong
37:51disincentives to protect children and i've made the case before i won't
37:55make it here again that child abuse leads to totalitarianism
38:00so this is a heartbreaking story it is an extreme story
38:03but the principles remain the same across the entire spectrum and bell
38:07curve of child abuse whatever we have as a society is not
38:10enough to protect the children and in fact for most children it's
38:15going the opposite way these days and we are drugging the
38:19symptoms we are not treating the root cause because treating the root cause
38:23would be to have humility at the failures of our moral structures and the
38:26failures of our conception of how society ought to be run and to
38:30humbly kneel before the need to protect children and rewrite
38:34everything from the ground up with that in
38:36mind and with that as the purpose and i think that there are just too many
38:40people who've committed too many crimes against children for this to be
38:46much of a goal or process at the moment but it will happen one day it will
38:52happen one day and i will do everything in my power to
38:55move that day forward because the road to hell is paved with
39:00ignoring the suffering of children and the road to heaven is accepting the
39:04virtues we know we need to enact and humbly looking at the structures
39:09that we have inherited and ask ourself one question one question only
39:13does this further the protection of children if not
39:17it is expendable and if so it must be watered
39:21and grow as this conversation must grow