“These siblings are extremely relieved the defendants can never do to another child what happened to them,” attorney Elan Zektser said during a briefing outside the Riverside Historic Courthouse Monday. “But now they’re asking, what’s next? Each of them truly wants to see change.”

Zektser represents two of the girls from the Turpin family, while fellow attorney Roger Booth represents four other children — all of whom were placed with Marcelino Camacho Olguin, 65, his wife, Rosa Armida Olguin, 60, and their adult daughter, Lennys Giovanna Olguin, 39, after the victims were rescued from an oft-described “house of horrors” maintained by their parents in 2018.

The Olguins reached plea deals with the D.A.’s office, and on Friday, they were sentenced.

Marcelino Olguin admitted seven counts of lewd acts on a minor and one count of false imprisonment. He received seven years in state prison and was ordered to register as a sex offender for life. His wife admitted three counts of child abuse and one count each of witness intimidation, grand theft and false imprisonment. She received four years’ felony probation. The couple’s daughter admitted three counts of child abuse and one count each of false imprisonment and witness intimidation. She received four years’ probation.

Coordinating with placement agency ChildNet, county Child Protective Services placed the six victims with the Olguins despite complaints of prior abuse in their home, according to the plaintiffs. When CPS agents were alerted to the endangerment of the Turpin children, they failed to act, according to Zektser and Booth.

“The county and ChildNet told them, `Trust us; we got you,”‘ Zektser said. “Then they placed them with child abusers and molesters. I was the head of the sexual assault unit at the (Riverside County) District Attorney’s Office, and I can tell you, prosecutors there are sick and tired of dealing with these cases from CPS.”

The county Executive Office released a statement to City News Service Monday calling the Turpin siblings’ experiences “heartbreaking.”

“We remain committed to their wellbeing and their lifelong journey of healing,” the EO stated. “We appreciate our county and community partners, who collaborate with us to support this family, and every family, with services and resources.”

Zektser said instead of removing the victims from the house to take statements from them in late 2020 and early 2021, the minors were interviewed by agents in front of the defendants, causing them to clam up. It was only when the sheriff’s detective who had investigated the victims’ parents, Tom Salisbury, learned of the abuse allegations against the Olguins that the siblings were interviewed by “professionals,” culminating in a criminal investigation and charges, the attorneys said.

“Salisbury insisted they be removed from that home (in 2021),” Booth said.

Zektser characterized the abuse inflicted by the Olguins as “far greater” than what the victims experienced from their parents.

“They were treated worse than animals,” he said. “The Olguins made them sit in circles, and they would tell them, `No one cares about you. You are nothing.”‘

The attorneys’ consolidated civil complaint recited the following additional acts: “making the plaintiffs sit by themselves, sometimes outside, for many hours at a time”; “making plaintiffs recount, in detail, the horrors that they had experienced while living with their parents”; “verbally abusing plaintiffs, cursing at them, and telling them that they were worthless and should commit suicide”; “forcing them to eat until they began to vomit,” then compelling them “to eat their own vomit.”

Marcelino Olguin also repeatedly groped and kissed two of the girls. Money that was intended for the plaintiffs was sometimes pocketed by the defendants, the attorneys said.

Zektser said while his and Booth’s clients are “content with what happened” in the Olguins’ case, “they are continuously asking what the county is going to do.”

The attorneys said they hoped reforms to the foster care system proposed by former federal Judge Stephen Larson and the county Grand Jury in 2022 would net results.

“Things happen that you don’t know about,” Booth said. “Much of what happens in the system is shrouded in secrecy. There are lots of children being subjected to abuse, and no one knows about it.”

Zektser said if his clients, whose parental mistreatment gained international attention, can end up in conditions like those they encountered in the Olguin home, there’s “a bigger issue” that warrants resolution for the good of all minors in foster care.

“Money changes things,” the attorney said. “We are seeking a confidential amount. These now-young adults, our clients, need help. This (lawsuit) will also hopefully change how these agencies do business.”

A settlement conference is set for January. If there’s no pretrial agreement, the attorneys said they’ll be ready for trial.

County spokeswoman Brooke Federico said ChildNet is no longer utilized by the Department of Public Social Services.

“DPSS continues to address existing placement gaps and expand safe, available placements,” she said. “The county is dedicated to continuous quality improvement, and we are constantly reviewing our practices, procedures and policies. We have implemented many of the Larson report’s recommendations and are in the process of implementing several more.”

Only one of the 13 Turpin children, a girl who’s now 8 years old, remains in foster care. The others are in college, trying to procure employment and find paths forward, Zektser and Booth said.

District Attorney Mike Hestrin and the Larson report acknowledged the Turpin siblings had received some funds from hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable donations made after they were liberated from their parents’ Muir Woods Road residence. How much of that money remains available has not been divulged.

The victims’ parents, David Turpin, 61, and Louise Turpin, 54, were each sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison in 2019 after admitting child cruelty charges.

They kept some of their children restrained most times of the day, forced them to subsist on peanut butter sandwiches and burritos, made them sleep up to 20 hours daily, and allowed them to shower only once a year. There was also physical abuse that resulted in injuries.

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TEMECULA, CA — Three separate investigations into sex predators who target children online resulted in arrests, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department has announced.

The most recent case involved a 44-year-old Sacramento man who drove to Murrieta to have sex with what he believed was a 14-year-old girl but were actually undercover law enforcement officers.

According to the sheriff’s department, deputies with the Southwest Sheriff’s Station Investigations Bureau were working on a month-long investigation into online predators.

The work wrapped up Aug. 30 when Laith Fathi Sikta drove from Northern California to Murrieta to meet the “girl” for sex. He planned to pick up the minor in the middle of the night, the sheriff’s department reported.

Instead, Sikta, who had cannabis with him, was met by deputies, according to the agency.

Sikta was arrested and booked into county jail on suspicion of contacting a minor with the intent to have sex, sending harmful matter through electronic means to a minor, and offering to furnish cannabis to a minor, the department said.

Jail records show Sikta remains behind bars at Southwest Detention Center in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Another man, Andrey Raymundo Tovar Serrato, 31, of La Puente was arrested Aug. 27 in his city of residence following a report of a sexual assault on a minor in Temecula.

That investigation began around 11:55 p.m. Aug 12 when deputies got a call about a juvenile sexual assault victim who was being treated at a local hospital. The victim told deputies she was sexually assaulted in the 40000 block of Winchester Road.

“It was discovered [the] suspect initially contacted the victim through an online platform and later formed a relationship for sexual purposes,” according to the sheriff’s department.

After deputies tracked him down, Serrato was booked into county jail on suspicion of multiple sex crimes and furnishing cannabis to a minor, the department said.

Jail records were unavailable for Serrato.

Finally, on Aug. 7, deputies from the Perris Sheriff’s Station Special Enforcement Team began an online undercover operation in which they posed as a 13-year-old girl.

During that investigation, 63-year-old Yucaipa resident Guy Vincent Schneider allegedly responded.

“Over the next few days, deputies continued to communicate with Schneider, who ultimately said he wanted to meet in order to perform sex acts with the underaged female,” the sheriff’s department said.

On Aug. 30, “the girl” arranged to meet Schneider. He, too, was met by deputies who found him in possession of two firearms, according to the sheriff’s department.

Schneider was arrested and booked into county jail on suspicion of contacting a minor for sex, arranging to meet with a minor with the intent for sexual acts, and attempted lewd acts with a minor.

He was released from custody Sept. 1 on $1 million bail, according to jail records.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department previously released the wrong booking photo for Andrey Raymundo Tovar Serrato. The article was updated to include the correct image.

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But last week they stood on the floor of the California Assembly and persuaded their colleagues to advance legislation that would have California join a handful of conservative states in passing laws requiring pornography sites to verify the ages of visitors to ensure they’re adults. 

“This bill is not about harming the adult entertainment industry or attacking those that work for it,” said Alanis, a former crimes-against-children detective. “This bill is simply about protecting children – and the harmful exposure to increasingly available and increasingly violent sexual material online.”

Bauer-Kahan, a leading women’s rights advocate in the Legislature, told her Assembly colleagues that research shows 40% of college-aged women have reported being choked during sexual encounters, something she said their partners learned from watching porn. 

“We may think this is a purity issue, but it goes well beyond that,” she said. “It is about the safety of our children. It is about making sure that they learn healthy behaviors.”

Their arguments resonated. None of the 80 members of the Assembly voted against Alanis’s Assembly Bill 3080, though 15 were listed as not voting. As CalMatters reported, lawmakers regularly decline to vote to avoid going on record against a controversial bill. 

Under the bill, porn sites would need to take “reasonable steps” to verify a user is an adult, such as using age-verification software or having the user provide the site a credit card or government-issued ID. The bill would require that any data collection would ensure the user’s anonymity and would not be used to create a record of the user’s online activity.

The bill now moves to the Senate. There, the Democrat-controlled chamber is likely to hear testimony from the same parents rights and church groups, free speech advocates and porn producers who testified last month before the Assembly’s judiciary and consumer protection and privacy committees.

Porn stars, conservative family groups orgs testify

Joseph Kohm, director of public policy at the Colorado-based Family Policy Alliance, told the Assembly Judiciary Committee last month that children regularly visit online porn sites featuring sexual violence and verbal degredation.

“And what this means is that they are learning about sexuality from a perspective that portrays sex as physical abuse,” Kohm told the committee.

Free speech advocates countered that if California enacted the bill, it would stifle the First Amendment rights of adult Californians to access online porn. Members of the porn industry also testified it would reduce traffic to their sites if the restrictions are enacted as they have been in other states.

“It’s a customer deterrent,” queer porn performer Jiz Lee told the judiciary committee. “And if it was enacted in California, where a lot of our subscribers are based, it would hurt our business.”

Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a porn industry trade group, told the judiciary committee that less than 1% of pornsite users actually complete the age-verification process in states that have passed the requirement. 

 “What they do, according to our data, is hit the back button and find a site that doesn’t comply with the law,” she said.

Porn ID laws in other states

Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Kentucky have adopted age-verification requirements for porn sites based on “model legislation” from the Center for Renewing America, a conservative activist group, according to the California bill’s legislative analysis. The organization’s website lists its motto as “For God. For Country. For Community.”

The bill’s legislative analysis noted that the online porn site Pornhub blocked users in those states after the age-verification requirements became law. 

Last month, Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a similar bill.

Late last month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the Free Speech Coalition’s challenge to the Texas law, which had been upheld by a federal appellate court.  

The laws are new, and some were immediately blocked from taking effect due to legal challenges, so there’s little public data about how effective they’ve been in preventing kids from accessing porn or the impact on web traffic to porn sites.

The European Union in December passed its own age-verification law. Bauer-Kahan told the Assembly that California should follow those European countries’ lead. 

“Europe, which has much stronger privacy laws than our country, has done this,” she said. “They have found a way to put the verification of your age on your phone. A token is sent to the website without your personally identifiable information, and then you, if you’re an adult, can access legal pornography.”

Alanis told the Assembly last week that his bill isn’t that different from how retailers have traditionally prevented children from accessing other types of adults-only products. His bill, he said, would include porn sites in the same California law that prevents children from purchasing products including tobacco, fireworks, spray paint and firearms.

“I believe that California requires its own tailored approach,” he said. “That’s why my team and I have worked … to craft a workable bill using an existing statute that California has long used to protect our children from other types of harm.”

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