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Question about the book "A Child Called It"


Guest LilaFowler

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I agree that it's probably sensationalised truth. I think it's telling, however, that only the youngest of the five children (Dave is #3) has spoken out saying that the abuse didn't happen. The older ones, who would more likely remember what went on, haven't said the same.

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I agree that it's probably sensationalised truth. I think it's telling, however, that only the youngest of the five children (Dave is #3) has spoken out saying that the abuse didn't happen. The older ones, who would more likely remember what went on, haven't said the same.

Pelzer changed the names of his four brothers in his books so it's not easy to tell who is who, but below is an excerpt from an article which quotes from an inteview with his brother Stephen who was not the youngest brother and who was close in age to Dave.

I spoke with one of Pelzer's younger brothers, Stephen, 40, who was stricken with Bell's palsy as a child and whose speech is slightly slurred. Stephen denies his mother abused David or burned him or forced him to eat dog feces. ''Please!'' he says. ''That never happened.'' As a witness to the stabbing incident, Stephen says: ''I saw mom cutting food when David grabbed her arm and got a small cut from the knife. There wasn't even any blood, yet he screamed, 'Mommy stabbed me!'''

Stephen says David wasn't ostracized from the family, but that ''he was very close to me and Robert,'' the oldest brother. ''We were 'The Three Musketeers.' But David had to be the center of attention. He was a hyper, spoiled brat.''

Pelzer's grandmother, Ruth Cole, 92, remembers him as a ''disruptive kid, only interested in himself, with big ideas of grandeur.'' She says he bragged that celebrities, like Chuck Yeager, would be at his and Patsy's wedding. ''But it was just a few family members in the garage,'' she says. ''His books should be in the fiction section.''

Stephen adds that he thinks his brother was taken away from the family because ''he started a fire and was caught shoplifting. He was out of control. Even the Air Force didn't want him.'' Stephen claims Dave was discharged on psychological grounds.

When Pelzer learned that Stephen said this, he refuted it by producing a form from the Department of Veterans Affairs saying he had received an honorable discharge. ''Everyone sees things differently,'' Pelzer says. ''Besides,'' he adds, in a claim that seemed to me to be completely untrue, ''Stephen is semiretarded.''

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Wow, this thread makes me sad. It's terrible that people can't accept that abuse exists,even horrendous abuse.

Here's why I believe him:

1. It's been confirmed he was taken from his home and put in foster care. That does NOT happen unless the abuse is pretty severe. (I know this from my own work with abused kids).

2. His younger brother wrote a book that confirms pretty much everything. It appears that after David left, this boy became his mother's target, though all the boys seem to have been abused at some point.

3. If something like this happened to you (mom kicked my teeth in because I asked her where the toothpaste was) wouldn't you remember it?

4. David was involved in helping child abuse victims long before his books became famous. He did this work a long time without making any money.

5. It is very common for grown children who were abused to deny that they were abused. It's a self-protective mechanism. It's called "trauma bonding."

6. I really can't blame him because he may not have the conversation from 1978 memorized exactly. But if his mom burned him and forced him to drink bleach, does it really matter whether she said, "Get over here, scum!" or "I'm going to get you now!" ??

With that said, I think he seems like a slightly confused and hyper person, probably because of what he experienced as a child. Some of his books, particularly the last one, are hard to follow.

Edited to fix a word or two.

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Guest Anonymous
Wow, this thread makes me sad. It's terrible that people can't accept that abuse exists,even horrendous abuse.

No-one has said that they don't believe that abuse exists - they have just shared a range of opinions on the extent to which they believe that these books are authentic.

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Pelzer changed the names of his four brothers in his books so it's not easy to tell who is who, but below is an excerpt from an article which quotes from an inteview with his brother Stephen who was not the youngest brother and who was close in age to Dave.

I spoke with one of Pelzer's younger brothers, Stephen, 40, who was stricken with Bell's palsy as a child and whose speech is slightly slurred. Stephen denies his mother abused David or burned him or forced him to eat dog feces. ''Please!'' he says. ''That never happened.'' As a witness to the stabbing incident, Stephen says: ''I saw mom cutting food when David grabbed her arm and got a small cut from the knife. There wasn't even any blood, yet he screamed, 'Mommy stabbed me!'''

Stephen says David wasn't ostracized from the family, but that ''he was very close to me and Robert,'' the oldest brother. ''We were 'The Three Musketeers.' But David had to be the center of attention. He was a hyper, spoiled brat.''

Pelzer's grandmother, Ruth Cole, 92, remembers him as a ''disruptive kid, only interested in himself, with big ideas of grandeur.'' She says he bragged that celebrities, like Chuck Yeager, would be at his and Patsy's wedding. ''But it was just a few family members in the garage,'' she says. ''His books should be in the fiction section.''

Stephen adds that he thinks his brother was taken away from the family because ''he started a fire and was caught shoplifting. He was out of control. Even the Air Force didn't want him.'' Stephen claims Dave was discharged on psychological grounds.

When Pelzer learned that Stephen said this, he refuted it by producing a form from the Department of Veterans Affairs saying he had received an honorable discharge. ''Everyone sees things differently,'' Pelzer says. ''Besides,'' he adds, in a claim that seemed to me to be completely untrue, ''Stephen is semiretarded.''

Wow, that brothers sounds a bit crazy. If ever kid who ever started a fire and shoplifted was removed from his home, there wouldn't be many kids left in their homes. And that bit about the Air Force was clearly a lie. Sounds like David is scapegoated in his family. It makes sense that the grandmother would criticize him, too, to save her own skin. What kind of grandma would ignore the sort of abuse described in David's book?

It's kind of like Elisabeth Fritzl, who was imprisoned, raped and tortured by her father for 28 years in their cellar. When she got out, only one of her siblings (out of 6) would testify about the father's maltreatment.

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No-one has said that they don't believe that abuse exists - they have just shared a range of opinions on the extent to which they believe that these books are authentic.

I think it is very hard for people to believe that such things happen to children, so the natural inclination is to deny.

I don't see any evidence that he is lying. Take a look at his brother's book and you can see how vindictive and crazy his mother was. The brother had no reason to support David's story, but he did. He expresses great remorse that, as a five or six year old, he didn't stop his mother. He also got out of the home early in life.

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Guest Anonymous

Given the nature of the discussions here, I doubt there are many members who are unacquainted with the very real issue of child abuse. :roll:

Many of us also believe Dave Pelzer's story to a greater or lesser degree. We are still allowed an opinion on the way he has written the books.

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Wow, this thread makes me sad. It's terrible that people can't accept that abuse exists,even horrendous abuse.
We all know abuse exists and are probably more proactive in pointing it out where others can't see it than most.

1. It's been confirmed he was taken from his home and put in foster care. That does NOT happen unless the abuse is pretty severe.
Protective services fuck up in both directions. Unless you lived in and worked in the county he was in at the time he was removed, you can't say that that particular department only ever removed kids if things were pretty severe. And things can be pretty severe without being as severe as he describes them.

3. If something like this happened to you (mom kicked my teeth in because I asked her where the toothpaste was) wouldn't you remember it?
What is this addressing? Who said it's weird he'd remember being abused?

6. I really can't blame him because he may not have the conversation from 1978 memorized exactly.
I don't think many of us blame him for that, either.

I think the :think: wait a minute comes from other things, mostly. It's embellishing to say that he was stabbed! with a massive knife! in the chest! that mostly makes people say he's overexaggerated, and that puts other outlandish details in doubt. I have no problem believing that kids have been abused as badly and more badly than he describes, but did he go through things exactly the way he said?

And put me in the 'lying for the cause of good doesn't make it okay'. There are plenty of other people with stories to tell; his has been sensationalised and I do think partly for his own fame and puffing up.

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Given the nature of the discussions here, I doubt there are many members who are unacquainted with the very real issue of child abuse. :roll:

Many of us also believe Dave Pelzer's story to a greater or lesser degree. We are still allowed an opinion on the way he has written the books.

This sums up how I feel. I think the books are mostly accurate but with some exageration when he felt it made the story better. The fact that he seems to change things now and claim to be stabbed in the heart makes me doubt his book's accuracy.

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1. It's been confirmed he was taken from his home and put in foster care. That does NOT happen unless the abuse is pretty severe. (I know this from my own work with abused kids).

Foster care placements can be sought voluntarily, also. Not saying that's the case here, necessarily, but that it is possible and does happen. Children aren't always removed forcibly. The reasons for removal aren't always confined to abuse either (neglect is a less common reason -- not because it occurs less commonly but because it's more difficult for social workers to prove).

And put me in the 'lying for the cause of good doesn't make it okay'. There are plenty of other people with stories to tell; his has been sensationalised and I do think partly for his own fame and puffing up.

Yes, me too. The way his story has been turned into an "industry" kind of squicks me out. Even so, I would never dispute that he, or anyone, suffered abuse as a child if that's something they claim, because a false positive is usually preferable to a false negative.

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It could be true. I babysat for a little boy who came from a family of four. He was smaller than his 2 yr old brothers... he was four. He would be in his room on punishment for hours upon hours in a bedroom with no toys, literally. He had different rules than his siblings and craved attention. His mother seemed to disdain him, but I was only 13 or 14 and otherwise they seemed like a normal family. I can't find the articles from my local paper, but her daughter, 6, had said the little boy was forced to drink bleach from a bucket after he had an accident in his underwear. She didn't take him to the hospital for 10 hours. He died right before he started kindergarten. I now know that she was actively emotionally abusive and purposely neglectful, tho i never saw signs of physical abuse. I still feel sad about it. Her daughter's testimony wasn't allowed in court, and she never even spent a day in jail. I wish I had known to report something before it was too late. I found an article here:

http://poundpuplegacy.org/node/24648

didn't break the link since it isn't a blog. I never thought someone could do something so awful to their child. I learned a little something dark about the world that day.

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I've always questioned the authenticity of a lot of the event details, but a lot of the emotional details are really too accurate to be fabricated if you haven't lived through it to some degree. Perhaps the mother was not quite as physically sadistic as the book portrays, but I have no problem believing that she was every bit as sadistic in spirit.

I also would caution anyone against relying on siblings to confirm or deny the authenticity. We know from our collective fascination with fundies that some grown children will go to any lengths to deny the abuses that have been inflicted upon themselves and their siblings, or worse, to justify and defend them. We even see it in non-fundies and cases that weren't abusive in the strictest legal sense: just look at the massive groups of reasonably average people in our society who not only think it's okay, but vehemently defend their parents' and their own decisions to use corporal punishment, in spite of all evidence that it's deeply damaging. These aren't even people who follow crazies like the Pearls, but it's what their parents did, and because it's tradition it MUST be accepted, internalized and defended at any cost. Just because one sibling denies it happening doesn't mean it didn't.

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I read his book and felt there was definitely exaggeration, particularly with the chest stab wound. He expects us to believe a deep stab wound to the chest just healed with no medical care, stitching or at least antibiotics? Not to mention his mother put him in the garage during his healing time? My childhood was one one of abuse and fear (no stabbings but plenty of beatings) so I know abuse exists. But I have a serious problem with the fact that the only sibling verifying this childhood is one who is profiting off books as well.

I have never met the author in person but I have seen his interviews as well as read the "feel" other interviewers have gotten off him and I think it's all about $$$ to him and truth be damned.

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It's kind of like Elisabeth Fritzl, who was imprisoned, raped and tortured by her father for 28 years in their cellar. When she got out, only one of her siblings (out of 6) would testify about the father's maltreatment.

Oh how about her own children? Did they testify? Or did you count them as her siblings? (I mean, they are both her half siblings and children after all.) Do you think you could find the article?

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Saying we're in denial about abuse is rather insulting. No one here has said he was not abused, nor have we said that he was not abused to extent that foster placement was inappropriate. But there is no doubt that he is playing up and embellishing the details in his books. This is provable. Horrible situations (I was made to eat dog feces) become even worse in later retellings (I was made to eat dog feces -- with worms in it!). There's a HUGE difference between doubting the accuracy of the BOOKS and doubting the accuracy of his personal STORY. He was abused, he overcame it. That's great. He turned it into a money making opportunity. Not so great.

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Stephen adds that he thinks his brother was taken away from the family because ''he started a fire and was caught shoplifting. He was out of control. Even the Air Force didn't want him.'' Stephen claims Dave was discharged on psychological grounds.

When Pelzer learned that Stephen said this, he refuted it by producing a form from the Department of Veterans Affairs saying he had received an honorable discharge. ''Everyone sees things differently,'' Pelzer says. ''Besides,'' he adds, in a claim that seemed to me to be completely untrue, ''Stephen is semiretarded.''

I'd just like to say that he could have been put out for psychological grounds and recieved an honorable discharge, so that really means nothing.

I haven't read them, but just the vibe from the back of the book is a little fishy to me.

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