Sister of Mom Who Shackled 13 Kids Says She Was Not Allowed to Visit

An aunt of the 13 children that were found chained up by their parents has told reporters that she was not allowed to visit them.

Elizabeth Jane Flores, a 41-year-old Christian motivational speaker from Cleveland, Tennessee is the sister of Louise Anna Turpin, the woman who, along with her husband, has been accused of child endangerment.

Flores told The Daily Mail, “Something didn’t seem right about her parenting but never would I have expected it to be like this.”

“We have been so worried about them because it’s been so strange but there was nothing we could do. They wouldn’t let anyone visit and we didn’t know their address. I haven’t seen her in 19 years,” Flores added. “We would talk on the phone from time to time, but every time I would ask to talk to her kids, she wouldn’t let me.”

Flores, who herself is a mother of seven, also revealed that her parents flew out to California to visit but that her sister would not provide them a home address.

“She never let us talk to her kids. She wouldn’t even accept my Facebook request. We all wondered what was going on. My parents booked several flights to go see them but when they got there they wouldn’t tell them where to go and my parents left crying every time,” Flores said. “They died before they got to see them again. It’s just heartbreaking and I’m so embarrassed about all of this.”

To make the situation even more bizarre, a neighbor of the family spoke about a very unusual situation where she saw all of the children outside kneeling on the ground one night last fall.

“It was about 9pm at night and we came around right here and at the gate, we saw four children inside,” Wendy Martinez recalled. “They were on their knees, four little kids, and they were just rolling on the grass. It was odd at that time of night.”

“Their mother was in the archway, I just remember the mother in the archway, and I said, ‘hi.’ There was like no movement, not even to look over to see who’s saying hi,” she added. “No movement, like if they were told not to speak to anybody. The mom, no movement at all.”

On Jan. 14, Turpin and her husband David were arrested after their 17-year-old daughter escaped their house and fled to safety so she could call police.

When law enforcement arrived, they discovered the couple’s 13 children, ranging in ages from two to 29, chained up inside.

All the children were immediately removed from the home and the couple taken into police custody.