In January 2018, a 911 call was placed by a seventeen-year-old girl who had just escaped from being shackled to a bed in her Los Angeles home where she and her twelve other siblings had been kept prisoners. Recently in April of 2019, David and Louise Turpin were sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison for child abuse, torture, abuse of dependent adults, false imprisonment, and sexual abuse. Their children ranged from ages two to twenty-nine and almost all were emaciated and developed cognitive deficiencies from having suffered abuse for so long. Although these thirteen had been severely neglected all of their lives, three children testified that they still loved their parents. Some even believed that their abuse and neglect were God’s will. These children suffered years of abuse from their parents, some of them were not even children any more. Both children and even the parents were seemingly brainwashed by the whole situation, the Washington Post even reports: “Authorities said that David and Louise Turpin were “unable to immediately provide a logical reason” why the children were shackled and chained and that Louise Turpin seemed “perplexed” by the investigators’ questions” (Eltagouri).
The general public and media alike constantly look for reasons to explain this sort of deviance to themselves. The positivist theory of differential association can be used to describe the behavior of Louise Turpin. The theory of differential association states that criminal behavior, or any form of deviance, is learned. Specifically stated by Goode, “…Criminal behavior, and, again, by extension, deviance as well, must be learned through face-to-face interaction between people who are close or intimate with one another” (43). Louise Turpin herself was once sexually assaulted by her grandfather, reflecting the “abused becomes the abuser” stereotype. She married David as soon as she turned sixteen to escape the abuse from her grandfather that her mother knew about and even condoned. The theory of differential association helps to explain why Louise Turpin began to abuse as well because she internalized her sexual abuse as a child to take it out on her children. Goode also states that priority and intensity serve to further the process as it matters how early one is exposed to these attitudes that inspire criminality, and with whom the information is shared (44). Since her grandfather, someone very intimate and close in her life began to sexually abuse her as a child, she began to learn this behavior to go on to use it in her own adult life.
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The Belsky method is an ecological model that states: “A child’s development is more affected by proximate than by distal social systems,” meaning that parents are the most important social system influencing the child as they are the closest to the child (Mulder et al.). According to Mulder et al., “[In the Belsky theoretical model] risk factors can be present at four different levels: (1) the ontogenetic development of parents, which refers to the phenomena that negative parental experiences from the past are brought into their parenting behavior; (2) characteristics of the child and the family (i.e., the microsystem); (3) characteristics of the living environment (i.e., the exosystem); and (4) the attitude of society on children and child maltreatment (i.e., the macro system)”(199). This model can further explain the deviance committed by the parents, alongside the theory of differential association. We live in a society that very critically condemns child abuse publicly. The media paints a picture of child abusers as the most deviant of them all. Although this model is more concerned with the psychological side of child abuse rather than sociological, both sides closely relate as they are used to explain this sort of deviance.
Child abuse, neglect specifically, is organized according to three developmental periods: infancy, school-aged and younger adolescents, old adolescents, and adults. There are also three specific major developmental processes: cognitive, social-emotional, and behavioral (Hildyard and Wolfe). In general, “child neglect is a heterogeneous construct covering rather dissimilar negative child experiences, such as poor quality of supervision, inadequate or insufficient availability of food, lack of school attendance, and lack of required medical attention” (Mulder et al., 199). The Turpin children’s neglect was so severe that it stunted the growth of some, took away the reproductive abilities of others, and left most severely underweight. According to “Child Abuse and Neglect in the Brain—A Review”, “The findings from neurobiological studies of brain development dealing with experience-expectant periods lead to an assumption of a deficit model, in which the lack of input to the developing child at certain critical stages of development will result in delay or absence of development of certain skills (Glaser, 110). The cycle of child abuse is seen to be vicious and never-ending. If we take the theory of differential association and further apply it to the Turpin children as well as the parents, the risk of reoffending is rather large.
Child abuse is a relatively recent discovery, as it was only outlawed in all fifty states in 1962. Abusing children has been around since the times of the Romans as it was believed to discipline and educate (Pfohl, 310). Even before child abuse was criminalized, preventative penology, concerning oneself with the childhood of those abused to prevent them from further offending as adults, came to be during the House of Refuge Movement (a series of court decisions culminating with the idea that the State has a responsibility to protect those, children, who cannot defend themselves)(311-312). This movement, although working towards finding child abuse as bad, did not elicit any real reaction against child abuse as a whole. With the discovery of “battered child syndrome” because of pediatric radiologists, child abuse was then labeled as criminal and deviant (315). Social welfare agencies then began to investigate these specific incidents, even further giving weight to the seriousness of abuse. However, child abusers were seen in a different light depending on the law. Extramedical interests pursued the idea that the abusers were “sick.” Whereas the people of law enforcement saw it as inherently and objectively deviant, absolutely needing prosecution and imprisonment (319-320). In the hands of the media, child abuse quickly began to be seen and labeled as strictly deviant. With the addition of the label of child abuse as a “sickness” or “illness” in the sixties, the prosecution rate of those who did the abuse went down significantly and it was seen to “exclusively channel reporting towards helping services”(Pfohl, 321).“The League of Women Voters, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Daughters of the American Republic, the District Attorneys Association… etc.” all stood forward to publicly condemn child abuse and aided in the movement against it (Pfohl, 320). This record of child abuse, however, was written in 1977, so the fact that many laws have passed and changed against abuse against a child needs to be taken into account when discussing these facts. But we can look upon this account of “The “Discovery” of Child Abuse” as a historical account of how child abuse used to be seen and the origin of it (Pfohl).
Cases of child abuse are seen by lawyers, prosecutors, social workers, and judges alike every day. However, the Turpin case was so severe and long-term that it shocked the public because child abuse on that scale is not a normal thing to be heard of. With the theory of differential association, one can seek to “explain” this deviance because the mother, Louise Turpin, had also been abused herself. This means that since she had endured the abuse at such a young age by someone who was in her immediate family, she learned the same behavior and went on to even abuse her children. Although there is no excuse or reason to explain this level of severity in neglecting and abusing one’s children, the public, the media, and even professionals look towards sociological and psychological theories to help somehow explain this deviance to themselves and even their children growing up in this world where deviance is everywhere.
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