LOUISE TURPIN (left) and her husband, David Turpin, appear for a preliminary hearing in Superior Court on Wednesday in Riverside, Calif. The couple have pleaded not guilty to child abuse, torture and other charges.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — In a plea to a police dispatcher to “help my sisters,” a 17-year-old girl in a childlike, quivering voice detailed years of abuse she and 12 siblings suffered in a squalid house where she said they were shackled to beds, choked and the stench was suffocating.

The 911 call was played in a California court Wednesday during a hearing to determine if her mother and father should face trial on child abuse charges in a case that attracted worldwide attention following their arrests last winter.

The girl is heard on the recording saying two younger sisters and a brother were chained to their beds and she couldn’t take it any longer.

“They will wake up at night and they will start crying and they wanted me to call somebody,” she said in a high-pitched voice. “I wanted to call y’all so y’all can help my sisters.”

David and Louise Turpin have pleaded not guilty to torture, child abuse and other charges. They are being held on $12 million bail each. Louise Turpin dabbed her eyes with a tissue as the recording of her daughter was played.

The 911 call in January marked a new start for the 13 Turpin offspring — ages 2 to 29 — who lived in such isolation that some didn’t even understand the role of the police when they arrived at the house in Perris, 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Two girls, 11 and 14, had been hastily released from their chains when police showed up, but a 22-yearold son remained shackled.

The young man said he and his siblings had been suspected of stealing food and being disrespectful, Detective Thomas Salisbury said. The man said he had been tied up with ropes at first and then, after learning to wriggle free, restrained with increasingly larger chains on and off over six years.

Children were deprived food and things other kids take for granted, such as toys and games, authorities said. They were allowed to do little except write in journals that may corroborate the horrific stories they told investigators.

Some suffered from severe malnutrition and muscle wasting, said investigator Patrick Morris. An 11-year-old girl who was shackled to a bed had arms the size of an infant, he said; a 12-year-old girl couldn’t recite the alphabet.

The 17-year-old, who said she hadn’t finished first grade, had difficulty pronouncing some words and spoke like a much younger child.

The girl planned her escape for two years and was terrified as she climbed out a window to freedom, Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Manuel Campos testified.

“She couldn’t even dial 911 because she was so scared that she was shaking,” he said.

She didn’t know the neighborhood and had to read her address to the dispatcher off a piece of paper. The kids were rarely allowed outside, though they went out on Halloween and traveled as a family to Disneyland and Las Vegas, they said.

“Sometimes I wake up and I can’t breathe because of how dirty the house is,” the girl told the woman dispatcher.

She said she hadn’t bathed in a year and Campos observed dirt caked on her skin and a stink from being unbathed.

The girl referred to her parents as “mother” and “father” because she said it was “more like the Bible days,” he said.

If they didn’t obey strict rules, they were slapped in the face or had their hair pulled, the girl told Campos.