A Child Called "It"

This is the stuff Stephen King books are made of: absolute horror; cruelty beyond imagination. Except it’s a true story. I heard about Dave Pelzer and his childhood of abuse from other social workers I work with, so I thought I knew what I was getting into when I bought the first book in Dave Pelzer’s trilogy: A Child Called “It”. Was I ever wrong! His case has been deemed the third worse case of child abuse in the history of California; I cannot begin to imagine what happened to the first two!

THE STORY
This first book chronicles Dave’s childhood from 4 to 12 years of age. His life started off happy; he had a mother, father, and two brothers. They lived a good life; family dinners, vacations, love and affection. But around the time Mr. Pelzer was 4 years old, his mother began a steady decline into the world of alcoholism and mental illness. Her behavior began to radically change. Her once sweet, loving nature became harsh. She would spend all day on the couch in her bathrobe watching television and drinking.

For reasons not explained in this first book, Dave was targeted for all of his mother’s rage. The “discipline” began simply by making him sit in the corner for hours at a time. Then the beatings started, and she even pulled his arm out of socket. Dave’s father was a firefighter and stayed at the firehouse until his day off. Dave loved when his father was home because it meant he was “safe” because his mother had to be on her best behavior.

As his mother’s descent into the illness continued, the abuse worsened. She banished him to the basement and made him wear the same dirty clothes day after day. She was very fond of “games”. No, not Monopoly kind of games, but games borne of her twisted imagination. She would give him a list of chores and tell him that if he wanted to eat that day, he would have all of the chores done in an impossible amount of time. He would go as long as ten days at a time without eating.

Dave began stealing food from school, from stores, begging from the neighbors, eating left over food from the dog’s dish, etc. Once his mother caught on that he was getting food from other sources, she began making him puke everyday when he returned home, and God help him if he puked anything up! While the family ate dinner together every night, Dave was forced to stand in the basement. When dinner was over, he would be called upstairs to do the dishes for a meal that he didn’t get any of.

The school Dave went to finally started noticing his physical condition, not only bruises and cuts, but the fact that he wore the same thread bare clothes everyday, went months without a bath, and was extremely under weight. He was always in trouble for stealing food from the other children (he learned if he stole food and ate it first thing in the morning, it would already be digested by the time he got home from school when his mother would make him puke). One of the school staff finally called his mother to see what the problem was, but when he saw how beat-up Dave was the next day at school, he knew making waves would only make matters worse for Dave’s situation.

Dave’s father, who was also an alcoholic, tried to intervene on his son’s behalf, but his wife would just make his life miserable. He tried to sneak food to his son from time to time, but after getting caught several times, he decided it wasn’t worth facing the wrath of his wife over. He began spending more and more time away from home, which only fueled the mother’s anger even more, and poor Dave suffered because of it.

The abuse continued to escalate after the birth of two more sons. Her games now included making Dave drink ammonia and Clorox. Often she would mix the two lethal chemicals together in a bucket and lock Dave in the bathroom with it. As the chemical cloud would descend on him, he would cough up blood and pass out. Another game was to make him lay in an ice-cold bathtub full of water for hours at a time; the only thing she would allow to stick out of the water was his nose so that he could breathe.

Finally, Dave’s school intervened. They had kept meticulous notes on his injuries; they required him to visit the school nurse every day to document new bruises, cuts, and even a stab wound where his mother stabbed him with a knife. This is actually where the book begins with the school calling the police; the rest of the book is a flashback of what led up to this point.

COMMENTS
Pelzer tells the story in the first person, and from the point of view of himself as a child. He includes what he was thinking and feeling at the time of these incidents. By the end, he thought of his mother only as “The B*tch”; she was no longer a person or a mother to him. One question bothered me through the entire story, and that was: why him? She had five sons, why did she only abuse him? I suppose that since he was writing from a child’s point of view, he did not know the answer to that himself (at least, at that time). I plan to read the second book of the trilogy because I am so curious about that, and I also want to know what happened to his parents. I would really like to know that both of them are rotting in prison! Even though his father didn't participate in the abuse, he did not do anything to stop it, so that makes him just as guilty in my book.

The story was well written and easy to read. The story itself is only 153 pages and I read the entire book in one sitting. In the back of the book there are a couple of extra sections on child abuse and resources, as well as, notes written by the teacher who finally “blew the whistle”. This is a soft cover book published in 1995 by Health Communications, Inc., and costs $9.95 plus tax. It can be found in most bookstores in the Self-Help/Psychology/Inspiration sections.

I do recommend this book, especially for social workers, teachers, day care workers, or anyone else who works with children. After reading this book, you will definitely be more aware of some of the indicators of child abuse. A word of caution, however, if you are squeamish or very sensitive, I would not recommend this book. The subject matter is very emotional, brutal, and horrific. As a social worker, I have worked with severely abused children and that still didn’t prepare me for the horror of this story.

On the bright side, Dave Pelzer went on to become a very well known motivational speaker, dedicating his life to helping others. He has received personal commendations from former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, several international awards, and was a Torchbearer for the 1996 Olympic Torch Relay.

The second book in the trilogy is The Lost Boy and is based on his life from ages 12 to 18 years old. The third book is A Man Named Dave and is from age 18 to present.