A California foster care family has pleaded guilty to abusing several young people in their care, including several Turpin children who were rescued from their parents' “house of horrors.”
Marcelino Holguin, of Perris, pleaded guilty Thursday to four counts of lewd acts with a child age 14 or 15 (the defendant was at least 10 years older), three counts of lewd acts with a child under 14, one count of false imprisonment and one count of injury to a child. The Press Enterprise reported.
Holguin's wife, Rosa, and daughter, Lenise, also pleaded guilty to three counts of intentional child abuse, one count of false imprisonment and one count of witness intimidation, according to the media.
Rosa also pleaded guilty to a theft charge, said Talia Hayden, a spokeswoman for the Riverside County District Attorney's Office.
Holguin will have to register with the state as a sex offender and will spend seven years in prison after his conviction, his lawyer, Paul Grech, told the Press-Enterprise.
“He just wanted closure for his family and this was the best way to achieve that,” Grech said of pleading guilty.
Both Rosa and Lenise Holguin will receive four years of probation and four years of suspended sentences.
Renee Holguin was also sentenced to 150 days in the sheriff's work release program, and Rosa Holguin will spend 120 days in the same program, Hayden said.
All three will be sentenced on October 18th.
The family was indicted in November 2021 after a local sheriff obtained an affidavit alleging they sexually and emotionally abused the children they adopted, The Press-Enterprise reported.
The media reported that the children were forced to eat their own vomit and told to commit suicide.
Six of the children abused at the Holguin home were members of the Turpin family, who were admitted to the facility in April 2018, just three months after being rescued from their parents' confinement in the so-called “house of horrors.”
The 13 Turpin children, aged between 2 and 29, suffered horrific abuse throughout their lives at the hands of their parents, David and Louise Turpin.
Six of the minor siblings were later placed in foster homes but were tortured again by the Holguins, according to two lawsuits filed by the children in 2022.
“Shortly after their introduction at the Holguin home, the three defendants began pressuring and interrogating the brothers about their traumatic pasts,” an investigator wrote, according to the Press-Enterprise.
“They forced the siblings to take part in 'group confession talks,'” authorities said.
“The siblings were forced to admit to past abuse of their siblings, which was forced upon them by their biological parents. The Holguins told the siblings that if they did not participate, they would no longer be able to see or have access to them.”
One five-year-old child in the Holguins' care was reportedly given sleeping pills and made to stand in a small square area separated by blue tape.
The Holguins tried to wake the children by splashing water, ringing bells and yelling.
The child was also confined to his bedroom for nine hours a day.
It was not clear whether the child was Turpin.
An attorney for the Turpin children told the US Sun earlier this year that the abuse they suffered in foster care “was even worse than the abuse they suffered at the hands of their own parents.”
