As a "horror house" made her home in the US headlines: 13 children aged two and 29 years locked David Allen and Louise Anna Turpin over years in California with them. Some chained them to beds with padlocks, almost all abused and tortured them. A court in Riverside sentenced the two on Friday to a life imprisonment.

The ruling of the judges provides that 57-year-old David Turpin and his 50-year-old wife Louise must serve at least 25 years of their sentence. The couple pleaded guilty in February. Both admitted to torturing 12 of their 13 children. The police ended the martyrdom last January after a 17-year-old daughter fled through a window and dialed the emergency call.

At a hearing prior to the sentencing, some of the children had remarkably mild words about their parents. This is shown by a statement from the siblings that one of the brothers read to them on Friday in court, as the broadcaster BBC reports, "I love my parents both so much," said one of the sisters.

Although her parents might not have chosen the best way to let them grow up, she was early that was with them. "Because that has made me the man I am today."

"I still have nightmares"

Another child of the Turpins, on the other hand, reported at the hearing that it still feels haunted by the torment. "I can not describe in words what we went through and how we grew up," the BBC said in its statement. "I still have nightmares about what happened, such as my siblings being chained and beaten."

But, says the statement, it's about the past and not the here and now. "I love my parents and I forgave them much of what they did to us." One child emphasized, according to US media: "My parents have taken my whole life, but I take it back now."

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California: Lifelong imprisonment for parents from "Horrorhaus"

The BBC has also recently released an audio clip of the 17-year-old's emergency call to broadcaster ABC, which illustrates the conditions under which the siblings live. "Two of my sisters and one of my brothers who are chained to their bed," said the 17-year-old accordingly. And again: "Sometimes I wake up and can not breathe, because our house is so dirty."

When the police released the siblings from their martyrdom, the siblings were severely malnourished, which is why the police first held them all as underage. It later turned out that seven of them were already adults.

Showers were allowed only once a year

According to the prosecution, the children - whose names all start with the letter J according to the BBC - were abused in the small town of Perris east of Los Angeles for a long time. They were not allowed to shower more than once a year. Doctor visits were forbidden to them.

Often they could not even go to the bathroom, because the parents would not want to take the shackles from them. According to the BBC, the children would have been able to go out on Halloween and also take part in family trips to Disneyland or Las Vegas.

Volunteers want to take siblings

The parents were "unable to provide a reason why their children were being held this way", the Los Angeles Times quoted a police spokesman after her arrest. The couple is said to have been guilty of $ 500,000 and have filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

Shortly before the verdict on Friday, the 57-year-old defendant and Ms. Louise apologized to their children on Friday: "I never wanted to do any harm to my children," the father told the court.

The siblings have been in the care of child care services since their liberation. About 20 people, including psychologists and educators, have offered to take in the six children and seven adults, according to the BBC.