A child called “it”

I don’t believe that anyone could read this book and not be disturbed it. It is a poignant and heart wrenching book of one child’s great misery at the hands of his extremely “ill” mother.

The types of abuse that were inflicted upon him were horrific and terrifying to read about, let alone to have suffered through. I had to pause several times in the reading just to take a breath and try to absorb that anyone could have endured such horrors and survived it. It often brought me to tears and shock from the sheer sadness of it. David Pelzer’s writings were clear, concise, and held back no punches.

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At times, I felt myself filled with rage at the injustice and cruelty this man bore as a helpless child and the incredulity that it was permitted to go unchecked for so long. It seemed so inconceivable that no one interfered or made any attempt to stop it from family to public officials. This did not happen in the Dark Ages but in the 1970’s in California and in a country which was and is supposed to be a nation of freedom and enlightenment.

How could the system have so totally and miserably failed this child? The “why” of that was still a mystery to me when I had reached the conclusion of the book? The only answer I could come up with was that no one could be bothered until it just finally became so evident that it could no longer be ignored. That, in itself, is almost as dire a tragedy as the misery and pain this child had to feel and live through.

First question: A discussion of how this book impacted you emotionally and cognitively.

The first real reaction I had was to the way the boy felt so unworthy in the beginning chapter of the book. This is a classic sign of child abuse, where it becomes the purpose of the abuser to demean and belittle the abused until they have no self confidence left or any sense of personal dignity. A human being that believes in themselves will fight back and refuse to be submissive.

The mother’s constant spew of criticism was intended for just that purpose so that David would not try to oppose her and would suffer through her abuse without fighting her. It gave her a sense of power over him, ill regardless of the fact that she was an adult and he was a child where the physical odds were against him.

As each stage of the abuse became more violent and degrading as well as life threatening, my shock grew the further I read into the book. At points, it was hard to believe that a mother could be so uncaring of her child. Her coldness and lack of guilt amazed me but David’s mental and emotional fight to preserve his sanity and survival awed me more.

When she broke his arm was horrible but to make him suffer through the night just so she pass it off as a fall off a top bunk and therefore, in her mind, take away any risk that she might be held accountable for it, impressed upon me just what a callous coward she was. Yet that incident seemed to pale in the mockery of the stabbing where she simply bound his wounds and let him heal at home without any medical help.

She knew if she took him to the hospital that there would questions and reactions and she would come under suspicion but in truth, the saddest and most despicable action came from his father when David turned to him for help and the man simply told him to go back and finish the dishes before the mother noticed.

He let his child stand there and bleed on the carpet and did nothing. Why? Because he was afraid of his wife and her mouth! He put his comfort over the safety of his child and that is unbelievable that any loving parent would do that!

I could better understand David’s siblings’ withdrawal out of fear of the mother but the father and the grandmother, both adults, failing to act in David’s defense was almost beyond comprehension.

The malicious way that the mother taught her youngest son to view his older brother was feasible because a child, especially a very young one, reacts to the way they are taught. He was blameless in a way and more so than David’s older brothers. It brought forth the question to my mind as to why “just David” and not the other boys?

Why were they allowed to eat and have privileges and David wasn’t? What was it about David that made his mother single him out as the one to be despised and abused? These were questions that the book never quite answered in my opinion. Of course, the book was written from the first person point of view, which of David and in only being a child, how would he know what caused his mother to turn on him and treat him so abominably?

Second question: A discussion of the instances of where people could have stopped the maltreatment but did not.

This question goes back to the instance of the father in particular. He was the only other adult in the house and it should have fallen on him to stop the abuse when it first began. Despite the fact that his wife hid the abuse from him in the beginning and made David never reveal it to his father, how could he have not noticed? With the mother denying the child food, the boy would have grown thinner and wan with an unusual lack of energy or vibrancy normal to a child David’s age.

The father would have also had to see how the child clung to him when he was home. Then as time progressed and the father did openly admit to what was happening, why did he not stop it? If he had been a truly loving and caring parent, he would have taken immediate action to stop it, no matter how much he cared about his wife.

He simply did not want to “rock the boat”, to use an old adage. He chose to ignore the situation and pretend that it was not happening. David was alone in a world that he was too small to be able to defend himself in.

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