A Child Called It

A really hard book to read today, it was disturbing and frightening to even fathom.  The book was called A Child Called It written by David Pelzer and written in the early 1990s.  The book is the real life story of the author who experienced tremendous physical and mental abuse at the hands of his mother, though his father was a supportive witness who did nothing (or very limited) to stop the abuse.  The author goes into great detail of the physical beatings, stabbing, and starvation that his mother did to him over a seven year period.   It was really hard to get through this book.  I can’t even understand how a mother of five singled out one child, attempted to kill him and encouraged through repetition to have her other children watch and even join in near the end.  His mother and father’s relationship was strange and clearly she had something over the father to allow him to be a quiet observer, though a few times he attempted to stop it.  If it wasn’t for the assistance of a substitute teacher and the school nurse, I have no doubt David, who was called “the boy” by his mother, would have killed him.  Freezing him, having him eat out of the trash, having him drink ammonia, doing chores all day and night, ten days without eating, the list goes on and David tells the higher levels of the abuse.  Children are sacred and to enter this hell was unfathomable.  There are two more books to the series as this one ends when the principal of the school finally intervenes after three other thwarted attempts.  This is not a book for that I would read as light reading.  It is heart wrenching, sickening, and a story that I’m sure needed to be told.  I pray that all victims of abuse find the courage and the support to receive the help that they deserve.  Congratulations to David for escaping, becoming a father, and loving his son as he never was as a child.