The Twisted Psychology of Parents Who Torture Their Children

Don’t try to fathom what was going on in the minds of the California parents who starved and imprisoned their 13 children for years before one of the victims escaped and informed the police last weekend. Really, there is no unraveling it—not fully, at least. Basic empathy and the care of offspring are among the most fundamental lines of code in the human operating system. When that gets corrupted—when the protectors become tormentors, when the nurturers become jailers—it’s nearly impossible to grasp, much less explain. That doesn’t mean that forensic psychologists and others aren’t trying. Even as the Turpin children begin a long period of recovery, and the parents—David Turpin, 56, and Louise Turpin, 49—face sentences of 94 years to life, experts are trying to understand both the dynamics of the home and, more mysteriously, the parents’ motivations. The darkest part of an already dark reality is that while children may be abused by all manner of people, parents are overwhelmingly the likeliest offenders. According to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), 71.8% of child abuse or neglect cases occurred at the hands of victims’ parents in 2015, the most recent year for which numbers are available. The leading risk factors in that study were—no surprise—parental alcohol abuse, drug abuse or domestic violence. In the Turpins’ case, there are no reports yet of substance abuse....
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized onetime psychology Source Type: news