Some of the 16 children discovered at a Ohio home in deplorable conditions were unable to speak and one — an 18-year-old who was developmentally disabled — could not even write her name.
After being rescued Tuesday, seven were taken to hospitals, including one who was in critical condition, investigators said. Their current conditions weren’t immediately known Thursday. Child welfare officials have temporary custody of the children.
If what investigators allege is true, it could be the beginning of a difficult road ahead to undo years of abuse, neglect and trauma and not all foster families can accommodate such severe cases. Ohio also has a shortage of foster families and it’s getting harder to recruit, like in many states.
Some children could be placed into specialized treatment centers as part of their recovery.
“It’s going to take a lot of work to address the emotional harm and some of the issues that are going to result from this,” Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson said during a news conference this week, adding he's seen nothing like the conditions that the children were subjected to.
“But we need to make sure those kids are surrounded and loved and supported by people who truly care for them," he said.
Four people who are the children’s parents and grandparents were arrested on child endangerment charges. Defense attorneys have urged people not to draw conclusions and wait for the facts to come out in the case.
Other cases have shown the challenges that lie ahead after children are rescued from horribly abusive conditions. In one case in Michigan, children were left alone in a home in conditions so offensive that police evidence technicians wore hazmat suits.
In Southern California, 13 children were rescued from their home in 2018 after being locked up for years and starved by their parents.
Like in Ohio, the abuse in the Turpin home went unnoticed in the community of Perris, about 60 miles (96 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles, until then-17-year-old Jordan Turpin escaped from the house and called police. When the 13 siblings were rescued, all but the 2-year-old were severely underweight and hadn’t bathed for months.
The parents, David and Louise Turpin, pleaded guilty to torture and years of abuse and were sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
The children were later failed at different points by a social services system that was supposed to help them transition to new lives and treat their trauma.
Six of the Turpin siblings went to a foster home where they said they were again abused. In a lawsuit, they described being hit with sandals and forced to eat their own vomit. The foster family pleaded guilty in the case and the foster father was sentenced in 2024 to seven years in prison.
A 2022 report from a law firm hired by Riverside County to investigate the children’s care concluded that the county’s social services system was short-staffed and underfunded, leaving workers struggling with high caseloads that made it hard to ensure safety and care “for our most vulnerable populations.”
Not all foster families have the capacity to help in complex cases where children are dealing with a multitude of traumas, said Scott Britton, assistant director of the Public Children Services Association of Ohio.
The system is already overwhelmed, with one in four children in Ohio coming into foster care not due to abuse or neglect, but behavioral health issues, developmental disabilities or juvenile justice involvement, Britton said.
“We have a lot of kids with significant and serious needs, not all of which unfortunately can be met by a foster family,” he said, noting that residential care facilities and psychiatric treatment centers have to step in. “So we unfortunately are all too accustomed to managing a very broad range of significant deficits in children.”
Many states’ child welfare systems are overburdened.
State and federal data shows worker turnover rates can range from 20% to 40% in some places due to burnout and the emotional toll. Recruitment is another challenge, as state agencies struggle to attract and keep qualified workers, with rural areas and high-need regions often hit the hardest.
In New Mexico, the state child agency is facing legal action over what the New Mexico Department of Justice has described as systemic failures. It outlined systemic failures in a scathing report released in April, with the state’s top prosecutor pointing to the deaths of 14 children in the last two years. Attorney General Raúl Torrez said the circumstances were tied to lapses in decision-making and oversight at the Children, Youth and Families Department.
Ohio has made new investments in children’s services and behavioral health resources, and Britton is hopeful that a statewide Medicaid-managed care plan specifically for children and adolescents with significant behavioral health challenges can help.
“I’m not saying it’s enough,” he said. “We could use more and a lot of it depends on where you’re located.”
In California, Riverside County and a foster care agency reached a $13.5 million settlement with the six Turpin siblings put into an abusive foster home.
Their attorneys said that the case helped spur critical improvements in the county’s child welfare system.
Nearly four years after the rescue of the Turpin children in California, Jennifer Turpin told ABC News in a 2021 interview that she was ready to move on with her life.
“I want the Turpin name to be, like, ‘Wow, they’re strong, they’re not broken,’” she said.
She has since published a book about her journey called, “Where was God?”
Her author’s bio states: “She has been through hell and came out strong and resilient.”
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Watson reported from San Diego and Montoya Bryan from Albuquerque, New Mexico. AP writer Ed White in Detroit contributed.
Police tape surrounds a home where authorities say they removed 16 children and arrested four adults in Hamden, Ohio, Wednesday, July 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Louisiana’s attorney general was indicted Thursday over accusations she threatened the jobs of New Orleans leaders who fought a Republican-led overhaul of local courts in the heavily Democratic city.
The 16-count indictment against Republican Liz Murrill, handed up by a New Orleans grand jury, charges Louisiana’s first female attorney general with intimidation and malfeasance. At the center of the case are deepening rifts between state leaders in Louisiana, which is heavily Republican, and Democrats who control the state’s most prominent city.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry promised a swift pardon, saying Murrill would not have her reputation tarnished by an “Orleans Kangaroo court.” Mayor Helena Moreno, a Democrat, was among those who had accused the state’s top law enforcement official in May of making threats against public officials.
The assistant district attorney handling the case, Laurie White, is a retired Orleans Parish criminal court judge appointed as a special prosecutor, and she said she expects the case to be “very simple” and “very open and shut.”
In response to Landry’s promise to pardon Murrill, she said, “Let’s get her convicted, and then he can pardon her.”
Landry, Murrill and GOP legislators have been sparring publicly for months with New Orleans officials over the local elected office won last year by a man who spent nearly three decades in prison for a wrongful conviction.
At Landry's urging, legislators enacted a law to eliminate that job, Orleans Parish criminal court clerk, and give its duties to the civil court clerk. That kept the elected eping the criminal court clerk, Calvin Duncan, from taking office in May. Murrill and Landry have long refused to acknowledge his innocence, though he's listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.
Bond for Murrill was set at $400,000 on Thursday, according to court records. Landry slammed the indictment in a social media post on Thursday, promising to pardon Murrill “as fast as the law allows.”
“The criminal justice system is a circus at its finest in Orleans and we will not have any of that!” he wrote on X.
The Republican Attorneys General Association said that in making statements to local officials — in writing — was simply “issuing a legal opinion and warning public officials about the law” as part of her official duties. It called the indictment “as outrageous as it is dangerous.”
Local officials had a swearing-in ceremony for Duncan on the steps of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court two weeks before he was to take office — while lawmakers still were considering the measure to eliminate his job, combining its duties with those of the civil court clerk.
Then, in May, the City Council sought to oust the civil court clerk and set a special election for November to fill the combined job — and give Duncan a chance to claim it. That prompted Murrill to warn local officials that they could lose their offices for violating state “usurper” laws, which forbid support for an unauthorized officeholder.
“Louisiana’s usurper laws carry serious consequences, and I will enforce them,” Murrill wrote in a May statement when her office publicized the letters.
Murrill called the case against her “retaliatory, meritless, and unconstitutional,” in a Thursday evening post on X.
“I will not back down. I will continue enforcing the law, fighting corruption, and doing the job the people of Louisiana elected me to do” she wrote, saying that she would file an emergency appeal with the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Moreno, who was among the officials that Murrill said could be ousted, said indictment is “a matter for the courts” and did not directly address the allegations against Murrill.
“My focus, as always, remains on fulfilling the responsibilities the people of New Orleans elected me to carry out,” Moreno said.
Moreno and the five city council members who received the letters swiftly rebuked the attorney general’s guidance in videos posted on social media.
“It is surprising that the attorney general put all of this in a letter considering that there is a criminal law” that prohibits intimidation, Moreno said in an Instagram video at the time.
White told reporters after the indictment: “We’re very interested in elected officials in New Orleans not being intimidated or threatened by letter or any other way.”
Those who backed the law eliminating Duncan’s elected position argue that it promotes government efficiency and tries to improve a dysfunctional court system in Orleans Parish. They also said the offices of criminal and civil clerks of courts are combined in other parishes.
Duncan has said he believes state officials were retaliating against him in eliminating the job he won with 68% of the vote.
Duncan was a jailhouse lawyer who later graduated from law school. He founded a nonprofit dedicated to expanding incarcerated people’s access to the court system and was the driving force behind a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended nonunanimous jury convictions.
He sought compensation from the state over his imprisonment but withdrew his petition after Murrill threatened to go after his law license because he referred to himself as exonerated. She also demanded during his campaign that he stop describing himself that way or face “further action.”
Duncan spent more than 28 years in prison over a fatal shooting during a robbery in 1981.
The night before a 2011 hearing to consider new evidence, prosecutors offered to reduce Duncan’s sentence to the time he’d already served in prison if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and armed robbery. Duncan took the deal and was freed but didn’t give up on clearing his name.
In 2021, a judge agreed that Duncan had been unjustly convicted and vacated his sentence altogether. Landry and Murrill have pointed to the 2011 plea deal in objecting to Duncan calling himself exonerated.
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Associated Press reporter Jack Brook contributed from New Orleans.
FILE - Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill speaks with attendees during an election night watch party for U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La., May 16, 2026, in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton, File)
