From the ages of 4 to 12, Dave Pelzer suffered brutal physical and psychological abuse at his mother’s hands. When he was finally taken from her custody, Pelzer’s case was one of the worst cases of child abuse ever reported in California
A Child Called “It” is Pelzer’s autobiographical account of his experience, told through his childhood perspective; the book is a rare look at the epidemic issue of child abuse through a victim’s lens.This is the first in a trilogy chronicling Pelzer’s experiences—first as a child enduring abuse, then as a teen in foster care, and finally, as an adult rehabilitating from his traumatizing experiences. Throughout them all, Pelzer demonstrates resilience and determination in the face of horrific abuse and adversity.
David’s earliest childhood memories are happy ones. He looks up to his fireman father, and he loves his warm, caring mother who goes to great lengths to create memorable and magical experiences for David and his two brothers.
Those early years are filled with day trips to San Francisco, cherished family vacations, and memorable holiday traditions. But amidst it all, there are a few hints of Mother’s odd behaviors.
For example, one day Mother seems unlike herself and claims to be sick, but after dinner she manically paints the garage steps and tacks on rubber mats before the paint has dried, making a mess of the wet paint. When David asks her why she didn’t wait until the paint dried, Mother simply says that she wanted to surprise his father.
Since the book is written from David’s childhood perspective, he doesn’t question or analyze details like this with an adult’s insight. Rather, he accepts them as a child would.
Around the time David’s in first grade, Mother’s behavior shifts dramatically.
Mother limits the severity of her abuse when Father is home, but he works 24-hour shifts at the fire station and is often out of the house. Mother singles out David among his brothers and subjects him to increasingly cruel punishments, including:
One day, the abuse reaches a turning point when Mother holds David’s arm over a flame on the stove and then tries forcing him to lie on top of the stove. That day David vows to take responsibility for his survival and outsmart Mother any way he can.
Withholding food is Mother’s primary punishment for David; he seldom gets dinner or breakfast. Father tries to help David by sneaking food scraps to him, but when Mother catches him, it causes huge arguments that ultimately make things worse for David.
David resorts to several methods of stealing food at school:
David always ends up getting caught, and eventually, Mother starts forcing him to vomit every day after school to ensure he hasn’t stolen any food during the day.
David is also forced to eat disgusting and harmful things—sometimes as punishment and sometimes out of desperation—including:
Mother’s abuse is designed to isolate David from the rest of the family and force him into the role of “family slave.” She does this by:
As time goes on, the abuse intensifies.
One night when David is 10, Mother is giving David his list of chores for the evening, holding a knife and threatening to kill him if he doesn’t finish them within the time limits she gives. As usual, Mother is drunk. Mother begins to sway and loses her balance, and a moment later, the knife in her hand strikes David in the stomach.
David blacks out. When he comes to, Mother is dressing his wound. Neither she nor Father takes David to the hospital, and Father’s failure to act devastates David.
Mother still makes David wash the dishes, though she shows some warmth and caretaking as the night goes on: She allows David to play outside with his brothers, calls him by his name, and checks on him through the night.
However, when David wakes up the next morning, it’s business as usual. Within a few days, the wound becomes infected and David must resort to using a dirty rag and a few drops of water to clean it himself. David renews the vow he made to himself the night Mother burned him, to survive through self-reliance and strength of spirit.
For a while, David considers Father his protector because Mother limits her abuse when Father is home. But as time goes on, Father spends more time at work or at bars to avoid being home, and eventually, his presence no longer deters Mother’s abuse.
Around the time David enters fourth grade, Mother’s abuse includes:
At one point, Mother forbids Father from seeing David, and David loses all hope of a better life. He stops praying to God and stops fantasizing that some superhero will rescue him.
One day, out of the blue, Mother apologizes to David and tries to make amends. He spends two blissful days believing her charade, but it comes to a crashing halt when a social worker visits the house to ask David about his relationship with Mother; David immediately realizes Mother’s gestures were hollow, and the abuse continues. He’s crushed, but, at the very least, he’s grateful to have had two good days.
After the social worker’s visit, David loses faith in God and resigns himself to simply surviving each day.He stops finding escape through his imagination, and he comes to hate everyone around him because no one has stepped in to save him.
David hates his Father and brothers for going along with Mother’s abuse, but most of all he hates himself because he feels responsible for allowing the abuse to continue for so long. David is convinced that he’s weak and that he deserves his mistreatment.
David sinks so low that he wishes he were dead. He assumes Mother’s torture will ultimately kill him, so he decides to provoke her. For a short period, David rebels—doing his chores sloppily and disobeying Mother in every way he can—until she locks him in the gas chamber longer than ever before and tries to dunk his face into the bucket of chemicals. After that, David returns to submission.
Around this time, Mother and Father’s marriage reaches a breaking point. Their relationship has been disintegrating for years, and Father finally moves out a few days after Christmas. David is resentful, jealous, and, most of all, scared of what Mother will do to him now that Father’s gone. David is sure Mother will kill him soon, and he merely hopes she’ll do it quickly.
It’s March 1973 and David is a fifth-grader in Daly City, California, just outside San Francisco. When he arrives at school, the nurse does her regular inventory of David’s new bruises and scars. David attempts to give one of the explanations Mother told him—that he ran into a door—but the nurse knows better and eventually David admits that the marks are from Mother.
Shortly after, David’s called into the office to meet with the nurse, two of his teachers, the principal, and a police officer. The nurse asks David to show the scar on his stomach from when his mother stabbed him.
The officer takes David to the police station, where he calls David’s mother to tell her that David is now in the custody of the San Mateo Juvenile Department. David is terrified, but the officer reassures David that he’s finally free.
As an adult, David attributes his survival to the fact that he took control of himself and his circumstances any way he could.He also credits his horrific experiences for his strength, adaptability, intrinsic motivation, and unique perspective on life.
After he escapes, David vows to make the most of his life by creating success and pushing himself to be the best person he can be. He finds community and a sense of purpose as a member of the United States Air Force, and he builds a loving relationship with his own son.
(Shortform note: David’s parents faced no charges after he was removed from their custody. His father died in 1980 and his mother in 1992.)
A Child Called “It” is author Dave Pelzer’s autobiographical account of the abuse he endured at his mother’s hands from ages 4 to 12. His experience was one of the worst cases of child abuse reported in California history at the time.
The book is the first in a trilogy—the first chronicling the childhood abuse, the second his teenage years in foster care, and the third his rehabilitation in adulthood. The books showcase Pelzer’s resilience and determination in the face of horrific abuse and adversity.
Pelzer wrote this book using the perspective, language, and tone he had as a child, without any adult insight or speculation about the reasons for his mother’s behavior.
(Shortform note: Several sources—including at Slate, The New York Times, and The Guardian—have criticized Pelzer for exploiting his experiences for profit and doubt the veracity of Dave’s story. While they don’t refute Pelzer’s abuse, they suspect he exaggerates certain details. Pelzer’s mother and father are both dead, and two of his brothers reportedly denied that the abuse was as severe as Pelzer claims.)
In March 1973, David is a fifth-grader in Daly City, California, just outside of San Francisco. When David arrives at school, he goes through a familiar routine with the school nurse: David removes his tattered clothes and the nurse checks his body for new bruises and scars.
David claims he ran into a door, but the nurse has heard all his cover-ups before and David eventually admits that his mother inflicted them. Still, David’s terrified his alcoholic mother will find out that he revealed the truth and beat him for it, like she did when the principal called the year prior to ask about David’s bruises.
Today the principal, two of David’s teachers, the school nurse, and a police officer have assembled, and David fears he’s in trouble because he regularly steals food from his classmates’ lunches. They assure David he’s not in trouble and ask about his mother. The nurse asks David to show the others the scar on his stomach from when his mother stabbed him, and David explains that Mother punishes him because he’s bad.
The school staff members are jeopardizing their jobs to save David. (Shortform note: The first child abuse reporting laws were enacted in the 1960s, but they pertained to doctors. By 1974—the year after David was taken out of Mother’s custody—only 24 states mandated teachers and 34 states mandated nurses to report suspected abuse.)
The police officer takes a terrified David to the police station. The officer calls David’s mother to tell her that David is now in the custody of the San Mateo Juvenile Department. David is still apprehensive and thinks he’s going to jail, but the officer reassures him that not only is David not in trouble, he’s finally free.
(Shortform note: Pelzer doesn’t say what specific incident precipitated his removal from his home or why it didn’t happen sooner if the school nurse was aware of his abuse. After he’s taken from his mother’s custody, he enters the foster care system, which he chronicles in his second book, The Lost Boy.)
Before David’s abuse begins, his family life is idyllic. His father is a San Francisco fireman and his mother stays home to care for David and his two brothers. She’s a caring mother who goes to great lengths to create memorable and magical experiences for her children.
Once, Mother takes David and his brothers to San Francisco’s Chinatown, describing Chinese culture and history along the way. When they get back home, she plays Chinese music and decorates the dining room with Chinese lanterns. She wears a kimono while serving the dinner she’s prepared, and gives the children each a fortune cookie for dessert; David later finds this fortune cookie and reads, “Love and honor thy mother, for she is the fruit that gives thou life.”
Mother also orchestrates cherished family vacations, the most notable of which is a trip to the Russian River at the end of David’s kindergarten year. David and his brothers spend each day exploring and Mother teaches David to swim. One night, the family watches the sunset over the river, and as they watch, David’s mother hugs him, making him feel both proud and protected.
In addition, Mother creates enchanting holiday traditions. For example, she adorns every room in the house with Christmas decorations, makes a family event of hanging ornaments on the tree, and then tells the children stories as they all sit around the fireplace drinking eggnog. In stark contrast to the abuser she later becomes, during these happy holidays Mother sometimes cradles him to sleep.
(Shortform note: In contrast to the author’s detailed description of his father, he only vaguely describes his mother as “average size and appearance” and says he can never recall her eye or hair color. This lapse in his memory, contrasted with his vivid details of abuse, has fueled questions about the book’s veracity. However, our summary of The Body Keeps the Score explains that varying degrees of memory loss is common in trauma survivors.)
David’s memories of his happy early years also include hints of his mother’s unusual behaviors.
In one instance, when David is about five years old, he notices that Mother seems unlike herself. She claims to be sick, but after dinner hurriedly paints the garage steps and then covers them with rubber mats before the paint has dried, making a mess of the wet paint in the process.
Afterward, as she lies exhausted on the couch, David asks her why she didn’t wait until the paint dried to attach the mats. She simply replies that she’d wanted to surprise David’s father.
In another instance, Mother stands crying as David and his brothers revel in their gifts on Christmas morning. When David asks why she’s crying, Mother says they’re tears of joy for having a “real family.” This is a brief detail, but it begs a question about whether her own family background offers any clues for the abusive behavior that later surfaces.
(Shortform note: As adults, David and his brother Richard—who’s given the pseudonym Russell in the book—have attributed Mother’s abuse to a possible mental illness, being overwhelmed by raising five children with little help, her own experiences of child abuse, and her alcoholism.)
Around the time David’s in first grade, Mother’s behavior shifts dramatically.
Mother singles out David among his brothers for increasingly cruel punishments. The only explanation David can come up with is that his voice probably carries more than his brothers’ and that he often has the bad luck of being the only one to get caught when they all get into mischief.
At first, Mother punishes David with time out in a corner of his bedroom. After a while, she ups the punishment: Mother shoves David’s face into a mirror and then forces him to stand in front of it, looking at his reflection and repeating, “I’m a bad boy!”
At one point, Mother starts sending David and his brothers on endless searches through the house for some item she’s lost. The searches last for months and are never fruitful. Eventually, David is the only one she forces to search, and he dreams of finding the item and getting his mother’s praise and affection in return.
David’s father works 24-hour shifts at the firehouse. On the days Father’s home from work, Mother largely refrains from—or at least limits—her abuse.Consequently, David sees Father as his protector, and he stays by Father’s side whenever Father is home.
David’s parents seem happy. They have a habit of celebrating their own happy hour, drinking and dancing around the kitchen together from 3 p.m. until the boys’ bedtime. But these good times don’t last long.
When Father is home, Mother gets dressed, does her makeup, and is in a generally good mood. But on days when Father is at work, Mother sometimes wears only her robe and spends the day watching TV on the couch. These are the days when Mother’s Mr. Hyde emerges and David endures the worst abuse.
One day, as Father is leaving for work, he tells David to be a good boy. In this instant, David feels that Mother must be right, that he really is a bad boy.
One day, while Father is at work, David hears Mother storming toward the room where he and his brothers are playing. Mother’s drunk, and she begins hitting David for no apparent reason.
Mother punches David and pushes his hands away as he tries to use them to cover his face. David puts his left arm up over his face and Mother grabs it as she loses her balance and stumbles back a step. Suddenly they hear a pop. Mother acts like nothing has happened and walks away.
David’s arm is limp. After dinner, Mother sends him to bed and tells him to sleep on the top bunk, although he usually sleeps on the bottom. She wakes him in the middle of the night and tells him he fell out of the top bunk and hurt his arm. Acting worried, Mother drives David to the hospital, where David recounts the bunk bed story to a skeptical doctor. David is too afraid to reveal the truth.
Mother’s terrorizing gradually encroaches on every part of life where David previously found joy.
One example is school, which David considers a retreat from his hell at home. One day, Mother berates and beats David for supposedly failing the first grade, even though he’s sure he gets good scores on more assignments than any of his classmates.
Another example is the family’s annual vacation: The summer after David’s first-grade year, his parents drop him off at his aunt’s house on their way to the campsite. David is shocked and heartbroken as he watches his family drive away. Ironically, David yearns to be with Mother, and he tries to run away from his aunt’s house to rejoin his family on their vacation; but when David and his family are back home and Mother finds out what he’s done, she beats him for it.
Finally, David’s once-magical Christmas turns into another way to punish and isolate him from the rest of the family. Whereas each of the boys had dozens of presents under the tree in years past, David now has only a handful of presents from other relatives. When Father sneaks a couple small gifts under the tree for David, Mother becomes furious and insists that Father has undermined her.
One day, the abuse reaches a turning point.
Mother has David stand in the kitchen and remove his clothes. She tells him that she drove by his school during recess and saw him playing on the grass, which she forbade. David assures her that he hadn’t, but she responds by punching him in the face and turning on the gas burners.
Mother grabs David’s arm and holds it over the flame. When David breaks free, Mother tells him to lie on top of the stove. He begs her to relent.
David realizes that his only hope is to stall until his brother gets home, because Mother won’t be so extreme in front of anyone else. He asks questions to delay, and although his questions make Mother angrier and she starts hitting him, he knows that keeping himself off the stove is a victory.
His brother gets home and David immediately snatches his clothes from the floor and runs to the garage, where he dresses and literally licks the burn on his arm. David realizes his quick thinking has saved him, and he feels elated and proud. David vows to take responsibility for his survival and outsmart Mother any way he can.
Withholding food is Mother’s primary punishment for David. She seldom feeds David dinner or breakfast—at most, if he finishes his morning chores in time, he gets his brothers’ cereal leftovers.
Father tries to help David, but he doesn’t dare cross Mother to do so. Sometimes Father sneaks food scraps to David or gets Mother drunk in hopes that it will help, but alcohol only makes her crueler. And worse, Father’s efforts cause fights between him and Mother, which Mother blames and takes out on David.
Additionally, Mother ostracizes David and essentially forces him into the role of “family slave.” She:
David gets so desperate for food that he resorts to stealing food from his classmates’ lunches when he’s in first grade. His classmates soon catch on and tell the teacher, who reports it to the principal, who calls David’s mother. It becomes a vicious cycle: David steals food, gets in trouble, is punished by getting less food at home, and becomes even more desperate to find something to eat.
When David gets to second grade, his teacher Miss Moss notices his bruises, constant tiredness, and ragged clothes. Miss Moss asks David what’s going on, but he simply repeats the lies Mother has instructed him to tell. Unconvinced, Miss Moss talks to the principal, who calls Mother; when David arrives home from school that day, Mother is irate and beats him until his nose bleeds and he loses a tooth.
Mother has to go to the school to meet with the principal. Surprisingly, she comes home elated: She brags to David that she convinced the principal that David makes up stories and even hurts himself to get attention. Mother told the principal that the school staff shouldn’t believe any of David’s tall tales about being hurt or hungry.
David is devastated. First, even if he musters the courage to ask for help from anyone at school, now no one will believe him. Additionally, the meeting has bolstered Mother’s confidence and David fears that it will make her more brazen and brutal.
By third grade, Mother doesn’t let David ride to school with his brothers. Instead, after David finishes his chores, he has to run to school, leaving him no time to steal his classmates’ food.
School is no longer a refuge for David. His classmates tease him for stealing food and for wearing tattered, smelly clothes. David’s ostracized both at home and at school, and he feels completely alone; building on the vow he made after the stove incident, David reminds himself only he can ensure his survival.
Since David’s classmates are already aware of his food-stealing schemes, he devises other plans to find food.
First, David plots to sneak away from school during lunch recess, run to the nearby grocery store, and steal food. He gets away with it for a while, but eventually the store manager calls Mother and David faces a beating.
Then, David comes up with a plan to steal frozen lunches from the school cafeteria. He sneaks into the cafeteria right after a frozen lunch delivery, snags a few trays, and inhales them in the bathroom. He feels full, accomplished, and excited to do it again the next day.
But when David gets home, Mother has a hunch that he’s found food. She forces him to vomit, and she’s triumphant when the frozen hot dogs appear from his stomach. Mother forces David to collect his vomit from the toilet into a bowl.
Later that night, Mother shows Father the bowl as evidence of David’s stealing. But worse, Mother forces David to eat the bowl’s contents. Father—having failed to talk Mother out of it—looks on numbly. This is the first time Father witnesses and passively allows such blatant abuse in front of his face, and it devastates David, who has always considered Father to be his protector.
In addition to withholding food, David is also forced to eat disgusting and harmful things—sometimes as a form of Mother’s punishment, and sometimes out of desperate hunger.
The summer after David’s second-grade year, he and his family take their annual vacation to the Russian River. It turns out to be their last.
One day during the vacation, Mother berates David for being too loud as he’s playing with his brothers. As a consequence, she tells David that he can’t go on an outing that day with his father and brothers.
When everyone leaves and David is left alone with Mother and his baby brother, Mother pulls out one of the baby’s dirty diapers and wipes it across David’s face. Then she yells at David to eat it.
David tries to remain stoic, but this only angers Mother, and she starts hitting him. David tries to be strategic and decides he needs to stall—the way he did in the incident with the stove. He begins crying as she continues to beat him.
When the baby begins crying it buys him a few minutes, but then Mother returns with a second dirty diaper and lays it on the kitchen counter. Mother shoves David’s face into the diaper so hard that his nose starts bleeding, though he’s able to keep his eyes and mouth shut tight.
Soon they hear David’s father and brothers get home and Mother rushes to clean up the evidence of what happened. She banishes David to the corner, and although he still has some excrement in his nose, he considers it a small victory that he resisted eating it.
Back at home, David’s hunger leads him to desperation. Each night after dinner he’s allowed back upstairs from the garage—where he’s banished for hours each day—so he can wash dishes from the meal everyone but him has just eaten.
David starts to eye the food scraps that have been scraped into the kitchen trash. Eventually, David starts picking through the trash can and eating bits of food that hasn’t been contaminated by cigarette butts and other trash.
Mother catches David soon enough, and the next time he eats from the trash he becomes sick from food that she had purposely let spoil and then planted there, knowing he would eat it.
David continues to snack on scraps when he can, but that comes to an end when Mother starts pouring ammonia into the trash can to poison everything.
After Mother catches David the day he steals frozen food, she subjects him to daily vomit tests after school. David determines that if he can find food earlier in the day, he’ll have time to digest it before he’s forced to vomit for Mother.
David begins to knock on random doors on his way to school, telling the people who answer the door that he’s lost his lunch and asking if they can spare any food. But one day, he knocks on the door of a woman who knows Mother.
David dreads Mother’s punishment. When he arrives home from school, Mother simply watches him perform his chores and says that his survival will depend on his speed. David doesn’t understand what she means, and the anticipation builds to become unbearable and exhausting.
After David’s brothers go to bed, Mother finally brings David into the kitchen. Mother pulls out a tablespoon, fills it with ammonia, and pours it down David’s throat. Instantly he can’t breathe and collapses to the ground. David is sure he’s about to die, until Mother slaps him on the back and he’s able to breathe once again.
Mother does it again the following night in front of Father. This time David tries to resist and manages to slosh most of the ammonia onto the floor. Still, Mother gets enough of it into David’s mouth to torture him, as Father looks on.
Mother feeds David ammonia only on those two occasions, and she does the same with Clorox on a few others. More often, she pours dishwashing soap down his throat.
The first time, David drinks water and is quickly overtaken with diarrhea. Mother refuses to allow him out of the garage to use the bathroom, so he’s forced to soil his pants until eventually he squats over a five-gallon bucket.
However, in another instance, David manages to refrain from swallowing until he finishes his chores and can secretly spit the soap out in the garage. He feels accomplished and proud of himself for circumventing Mother’s scheme.
By now David has developed a survival mentality. David feels he can rely only on himself, and every time he endures or even outsmarts Mother’s abuse he swells with pride and resilience.
By the summer before David’s 11th birthday, the abuse has worsened.
David is accustomed to his role as the family slave by now. David’s not allowed to look at Mother or his brothers without permission, and while the family’s eating dinner, David now must sit on his hands with his head tilted back like a prisoner of war, as Mother says.
David seldom gets breakfast, even when he finishes his morning chores. While school’s out for summer break, he never gets lunch. Typically, David gets dinner once every three days, but even that is contingent on him completing his chores within the time limits Mother dictates.
One night after dinner, Mother is giving David his list of chores and time limits. As usual, she’s drunk. Mother holds a knife in her hand as she barks at David, threatening to kill him if he doesn’t finish his work on time.
She begins to sway. Mother struggles to regain her balance and in a moment the knife in her hand strikes David’sstomach.(Shortform note: There’s little detail about whether she falls and how exactly this occurs. The author says he’s focused on looking into her eyes, sees the knife out of the corner of his eye, and then feels the stab.)
David blacks out. When he comes to, Mother is dressing the wound. Despite all the abuse he’s endured, David acknowledges that this was an accident and wants to tell Mother that he forgives her—but he soon blacks out again.
When David wakes up again, Mother’s still working on his wound. He thinks that this must be the end of his abuse; there’d be no way Mother could cover this up to the doctors.He’s relieved and heartened by the prospect.
But nobody takes him to the hospital. Mother simply finishes wrapping his wound and tells him he has 30 minutes to wash the dishes (she’s granted an extra 10 minutes given the circumstances). She’s acting as if nothing has happened, just like she did after dislocating his arm years ago.
David is gobsmacked. He finds Father and tells him what happened, certain that Father will take care of him. David still considers Father his hero, despite years of passively allowing his abuse.
But Father merely asks why Mother stabbed David and urges him to get back to his chores before Mother finds him and gets angry.As a supposed consolation, Father promises not to tell Mother that David has told him about the stabbing. David’s faith and respect for his father shatter.
David manages to do the dishes, finding ways to maneuver that minimize the shooting pain he feels. At first, Mother shows less hostility than usual but stops short of compassion as she nurses David. For example:
But then Mother surprises David by telling him he can play outside with his brothers. Mother even calls David by his name and holds his shoulders somewhat affectionatelyas he watches his brothers play. David wonders if this might signal the end of his torment.
David’s brothers don’t react to his wound when he joins them, but they don’t reject him either. He feels a connection to his brothers that he hasn’t felt in years, and which he never expected to feel again.
That night, Mother gives David a small amount of food and checks on him throughout the night, bringing a cool wash cloth when he runs a fever from the wound.
When David wakes up the next morning, it’s business as usual. Mother doesn’t nurse his wound or check his fever; she tells him to clean up and start working on his chores.
David’s wound quickly becomes infected, but the vow he made years ago to survive through self-reliance prevents him from asking Mother for help. He secretly cleans his wound in the garage with a dirty rag and a few drops of water from the faucet.
David forces himself to clean the pus from the opening of his wound. He wills himself to block out the excruciating pain. When David finally finishes, he feels proud that he’s kept his vow and hasn’t let Mother see his pain. He imagines that he is Superman, saving himself.
Despite David’s repeated disappointments in Father—and Father’s failure to defend David—David still loves Father and considers him his protector because Mother limits her abuse when Father is home. Father tells David that he’s working on a plan to get them both out of the “madhouse.”
However, Father still refuses to cross Mother in order to protect David, and as time goes on, Father spends more time at work and out at bars to avoid being home. When Father is out of the house, Mother unleashes her cruelest forms of abuse.
David often goes days without eating, but in one instance he far surpasses his typical three days: For 10 days, David survives only on water.
In one of her “games,” Mother puts a plate of cold food scraps in front of David on the sixth day and tells him he has two minutes to eat. But as soon as he picks up the fork, she grabs the plate away from him.
Mother repeats this the next three nights, until finally David is able to tilt the plate and shove the food into his mouth fast enough to beat Mother’s attempt to take it away. David feels triumphant: Again, he’s managed to beat Mother and survive another day.
In another of Mother’s cruel games, she puts a bucket of ammonia and Clorox in the bathroom with David as he’s cleaning. Mother forbids David from opening the door, and the fumes from the chemical mixture fill the room and burn his throat and eyes.
David realizes he has to be strategic in order to endure this treatment, so he takes a few protective measures:
After about half an hour in the “gas chamber,” Mother opens the door. David still ends up coughing up blood, but he’s found a way to survive another torturous game, which Mother repeats about once a week.
The summer before David enters fourth grade, Mother sends him around the neighborhood to offer lawn mowing services for a fee, which she’ll pocket. Mother sets an unrealistically high quota, and when David can’t reach it, she beats him.
Once, in desperation to meet the quota, David steals money from a young neighbor girl. But Mother quickly finds out, returns the money, and beats David.
In another instance, David’s worn clothes and emaciated body elicit a neighbor woman’s pity and she gives him a brown bag lunch. David plans to hide the food before returning to Mother’s house (he never refers to it as his house) but she drives by and catches him with it. Mother assumes David has stolen the food and beats him.
The day Mother catches David with the bagged lunch, she introduces a new form of abuse.
Mother brings David into the bathroom, and he assumes he’s walking into another gas chamber session. But then Mother fills the bathtub with cold water, takes off David’s clothes, and tells him to lie in the bath.
Mother grabs David’s neck and forces his head under water. When she finally lets go, she tells him he must keep his head under the water. David lowers his head until just his nostrils are above the water.
Mother leaves, and David remains like that for hours. He’s freezing, but he’s terrified to move a muscle in case Mother comes in and catches him. A few times his brothers walk in to go to the bathroom, and they give David no pity and hardly any acknowledgement. When Mother repeats this punishment on later occasions, David’s brothers sometimes bring their friends in to gawk at David.
When Mother finally returns, she tells David to get dressed, but she doesn’t allow him to use a towel to dry off. Then she orders him to sit outside in the shade in his typical P.O.W. position—sitting on his hands, with his head back—while the family eats dinner in the house. Father is even home, and it doesn’t make a difference.
Eventually, Father’s presence no longer inhibits Mother’s abuse. In fact, Mother doesn’t even allow Father to see David.
David is truly the family slave. Mother abuses him, Father is forbidden from seeing or talking to him, and his brothers ignore him entirely.
At this point, David loses all hope of a better life. He stops praying to God and stops fantasizing about superheroes rescuing him.
That Christmas, David is stunned to receive a gift: roller skates. But they end up being just a prop for another of Mother’s cruel games. During the winter, she forces David to skate up and down the street for hours in the cold with no jacket.
That spring, Mother is out of the house for a few days when she gives birth to her fifth son, named Kevin. It’s a desperately needed respite for David.
While Mother is gone, Father lets David play with his brothers, who let him join in without hesitation, showing the apparent power of Mother’s influence on everyone in the family.
David and his brothers also spend some time playing at the house of a neighbor, named Shirley, who has a young son. When Mother returns home, she and Shirley become friends—until Shirley begins asking why David faces so much punishment and is forbidden from playing with his brothers. Mother makes some excuses at first, but after a while, she flat-out says that David is bad and deserves punishment.
Soon after, Mother stops speaking to Shirley. Although Shirley hadn’t gotten directly involved, she had been someone kind who had noticed David, and the broken friendship makes him feel more isolated and vulnerable.
After Shirley is out of the picture, a few others outside the family begin to notice that something’s wrong.
During the first couple weeks of David’s fourth-grade year, he has a substitute teacher who intuits that there are problems in David’s home life.
The substitute teacher informs the school nurse. The following month, the nurse calls David to see her, and she asks him about his bruises and tattered clothes.
David initially repeats the lies Mother has taught him to tell. After some talking, David begins to trust the nurse enough to tell the truth, and the nurse invites David to come back and talk to her anytime.
The following summer, Mother apologizes to David out of the blue. Mother says she wants to fix their relationship and start fresh, and David eagerly accepts her olive branch.
For two days, David is a member of the family again. He gets to play with his brothers, eat with the family, take a hot bath, and wear new clothes he’d gotten for Christmas but had been forbidden from wearing. Mother even takes David along with his brothers to go bowling and buys each of them a toy.
David is elated, but apprehensive. It’s such a stark and sudden shift that part of him is waiting for the other shoe to drop.
On the second day, it does: A woman from social services visits the house and asks David questions about his relationship with Mother. She asks if they get along and if he’s happy, and—given the recent change—he says yes. Then the social worker asks if Mother beats him. David hesitates, and the social worker notices.
David realizes the reason Mother apologized and is treating him better: Mother isn’t truly sorry and the abuse isn’t over—it was purely for appearances for the social worker.He’s crushed.
David had known that Mother probably didn’t mean it, but he was so desperate for love and decent treatment that he wanted to believe it. At the very least, he appreciates that he’s had two good days.
(Shortform note: The book doesn’t make it clear who alerted social services.)
After the incident with the social services worker—just before starting fifth grade—David loses faith in God and any hope of having a better life.David’s been praying to God for years, and he can’t fathom how he could live such a miserable life if God exists. David resigns himself to simply surviving each day.
David no longer mourns the lack of dignity and respect he receives. He will do anything to survive, resorting to any means necessary to get food. He even eats table scraps out of the dogs’ food bowl after the dogs have picked through it.
David detaches himself from physical pain and shows no outward emotion unless it’s strategic, when he thinks it will ease the abuse. Whereas he previously used his imagination to escape his torment, David stops dreaming and fantasizing. (Shortform note: Trauma survivors often stop using their imaginations. Read more about the effects of trauma in our summary of The Body Keeps the Score.)
In David’s loss of hope, he comes to hate everyone around him because no one has stepped in to save him.
First, besides hating Mother for the abuse, he hates Father for allowing it. Despite Father’s old promises that he would take David away from the madhouse, their relationship has deteriorated.David’s supposed bad behavior and abusive punishment is the source of so many arguments between Mother and Father that David is convinced that Father resents him.
Making matters worse, Mother often literally brings David into her arguments with Father: She drags David into the room and forces him to say all the foul words Father had used against Mother in the argument. David feels backed into betraying Father, but he goes along with it to avoid the consequences of refusing Mother’s demand.
Second, David hates his brothers—except his baby brother Kevin—who have been so brainwashed by their Mother that they go along with treating David as the family slave.In one instance, his brothers even take turns physically attacking David.
(Shortform note: David’s younger brother Richard released a book, A Brother’s Journey, after this book was published. In it, Richard describes how he went from harassing David to becoming the new target of Mother’s abuse after David was taken out of Mother’s custody.)
Finally, David hates himself most of all and feels responsible for allowing the abuse to continue for so long. David is convinced that he’s weak and that he deserves his mistreatment—in no small part because Mother often forced him to repeat “I hate myself.” (Shortform note: Our summary of The Body Keeps the Score also explains that trauma survivors are often more haunted by unwarranted shame for their own actions or inactions than by their abusers’ actions.)
By fifth grade, school isn’t the escape it used to be for David.
David’s poor sleep and constant hunger make it difficult for him to focus, and his pent-up frustrations lead to unwarranted outbursts. David’s odd behavior doesn’t help the bullying he’s already faced for years, targeted because of his smelly and tattered clothes.
Two bullies are especially persistent: Clifford, who often beats David up on his way home from school, and Aggie, who teases David relentlessly. On a field trip to the historic Clipper Ships in San Francisco, Aggie tells David that his life is so bad that he should jump off the ship.
One bright spot in fifth grade is David’s homeroom teacher, Mr. Ziegler. Once the nurse tells Mr. Ziegler that David’s abuse is the reason for his behavior issues, Mr. Ziegler makes a point of treating David like the other students and not writing him off as a problem student.
Mr. Ziegler chooses David to be on a committee to name the school newspaper. David’s suggestion is ultimately selected, and Mr. Ziegler tells David that he’s proud of him; this is the first positive feedback David has heard in years. Mr. Ziegler also sends David home with a letter to Mother, telling her she should be proud of David’s achievement.
David is thrilled, but as soon as Mother reads the letter she rips it up and retorts that nothing he does will ever make her proud and she wishes he were dead.
That day David realizes that Mother’s hate for him is genuine, and he can no longer attribute it to the alcohol.
David has sunk so low that he wishes he were dead—compared to his life of abuse and isolation, he thinks death will be a relief. David assumes Mother’s torture will eventually kill him, so he decides to provoke her.
David does his chores sloppily and becomes rebellious, intentionally disobeying Mother. Although this brings harsher beatings, it’s liberating not to cower for the first time in years.
On one occasion, while Mother takes David and his brothers to the store, he defies everything she tells him and talks back to his brothers when they say anything to him. David revels in the feeling of power because he knows as long as they’re in the store, Mother won’t make a scene. However, Mother beats David as soon as they’re in the parking lot, and then she has him lie on the floor of the back seat of the car so his brothers can stomp on him on the ride home.
When they get home, Mother puts David in the gas chamber. She throws his rag in the bucket of ammonia and Clorox so that he has nothing to cover his face. David tries sucking some fresh air from the heating vent, but it’s turned off. Mother leaves David in the gas chamber much longer than usual, and when she returns David has to fight to prevent her from dunking his face into the bucket of chemicals.
This punishment breaks David’s short rebellious streak, and he returns to submission.
Around this time, Mother’s other relationships—with Father and her friends and family—become strained. In David’s early childhood memories, Mother and Father were happy. But as Mother became more tyrannical and Father was increasingly absent, their marriage gradually disintegrated.
Mother yells at Father and calls him names constantly. She not only berates him when he’s home, but she also calls the fire station when he’s at work. As a result, Father comes home drunk most of the time and spends his time home working outside.
Mother briefly tries to make an effort to restore the relationship. On one occasion, she prepares an elaborate surprise dinner for Father. But Father shows up hours late and drunker than David has ever seen him. Father is in and out of the house just long enough to pack a bag, and then he leaves for the night.
A few days after Christmas, Father finally moves out of the house. Mother, David, and his brothers deliver Father’s belongings to him at a run-down motel. As they drive away, a few thoughts run through David’s mind:
As if reading David’s mind, Mother says to him that now he has no one to protect him. David is sure Mother will kill him soon, and he merely hopes she’ll do it quickly.
Although David supposedly wrote off God the year prior, he prays.
(Shortform note: David’s parents faced no charges after he was removed from their custody. His father died in 1980 and his mother in 1992. Mother’s funeral was the first time David and his brothers were all together since social services removed David from the family home.)
This is the only part of the book that offers David’s retrospective as an adult, as opposed to his childhood perspective.
David reflects on how helpless he felt during the abuse and how endless it seemed—until one day it abruptly ended when he was taken from Mother’s custody.
David attributes his survival to the fact that he took control of himself and his circumstances any way he could. He also credits his horrific experiences for shaping him in several ways:
Despite losing faith during the height of his abuse, David feels that God has always been beside him. Having survived and escaped, David vowed to make the most of his life by creating success and pushing himself to be the best person he could be.
As an adult, David found a community and a feeling of purpose as a member of the United States Air Force. Later, he had his own son, Stephen, and fostered a loving relationship with him in spite of his dysfunctional relationship with his own parents.
David still returns to the Russian River whenever he can—and now he brings Stephen so they can enjoy the area’s beauty and serenity together.
David felt completely alone in his abuse, but thousands of children endure similar atrocities. (Shortform note: As of 2015, the United States had 2.9 million child abuse cases reported annually.)
You’re likely to hear about unusual cases of abuse—such as grisly murders and extreme neglect—in the media. But more often, victims suffer quietly, join gangs, or run away from home.
The hardship is seldom over when the abuse ends: Adult survivors of child abuse are more inclined to lash out or engage in self-destructive behaviors than the general population. (Shortform note: Child abuse survivors are 59 percent more likely to be arrested as a juvenile and 28 percent more likely to be arrested in adulthood.)
Many survivors also struggle to build and maintain healthy relationships because they’ve had such poor models; David intentionally broke the typical cycle of abuse in his relationship with his son.
David shared his story of abuse for two reasons:
David emerged from his experience determined to overcome his troubled childhood by becoming a success. This drive inspired him to serve his country by joining the Air Force, and he feels that he continues to serve others by sharing his story, giving talks, and leading workshops. David wants other victims and survivors to know they’re not alone, and he wants everyone to know that it’s possible to endure anything and emerge triumphant.
The end of the book includes short notes written by a few people who are either connected to David’s case or to the broader issue of child abuse.
These people are:
Their reactions to this book include a few key points:
While this book inspired innumerable child abuse survivors, many others have questioned Pelzer’s motivation and truthfulness.
First, critics claim Pelzer exploited his experiences for profit. The Guardian wrote that Pelzer’s vivid descriptions of horrific abuse is “pornographic” and turns child abuse into perverse entertainment. The New York Times described Pelzer as being obsessed with his books’ standings on the Times’s bestseller list (this book and the other two in the trilogy were on the nonfiction paperback list for a record-breaking 448 weeks combined). The Times also noted that Pelzer bought books in bulk to sell at his speaking events—and at the time the article was reported, Pelzer was doing events more than 270 days a year.
Second, critics suspect Pelzer exaggerated details of his abuse. There are three main factors:
Pelzer’s story of persevering and triumphing through adversity offers inspiration for overcoming any obstacle in life.
Describe a recent incident when you had to overcome a major hurdle.
How did you maintain the will to persevere?
What’s your biggest takeaway from Pelzer’s story?
How could this have helped you through your recent hurdle?
How can you apply this next time you face a challenge?