Essay on Severe Childhood Abuse in A Child Called It

Unfortunately, there are children everywhere who endure a form of abuse. Some experience emotional abuse while others experience physical abuse. Other children, like Dave Pelzer, are faced with both. Dave had to grow up in a family of two alcoholic parents. He was severely beaten and tortured by his mother and was neglected by his father. Dave had to spend his childhood in fear of his life. Although sad, his story gives others hope that they too can experience an abusive childhood and live to tell about it. A Child Called It is a book about one of the most severe child abuse cases in California. The book is written in first person, by the author, David `Dave Pelzer. The main characters in this story include Dave, his father, his†¦show more content†¦Dave had three brothers who never once were abused; his mother chose only to torture him. Throughout his terrible childhood, Dave somehow managed to maintain a hopeful outlook on life and somehow kept his will to survive. The beginning of the book talks about what it was like before things went horrifyingly wrong. The family took vacations together, his mother was a loving mother and wife, and Daves father was his hero. This eventually changed, as did everything in Daves life. His father never turned out to be his hero, but a drunken firefighter who left him, and at times he wished his mother dead. When the torture and abuse began it was minimal, Dave describes it in the book as punishment instead of discipline but as the book progressed so does the intensity. As the story progresses Daves feelings are expresses, he speaks of his mother, as either The Bitch or just Mother there is absolutely no love in the way he speaks of her at all. His anger is also expressed and shown in way he talks about his, once beloved hero, his father and his brothers. The following is one of the games that Daves mother made him play directly from the book: ..Mother got up and strolled over to the kitchen sink. She knelt down, opened the sink cabinet and removed a bottle of ammonia. I didnt understand. She got a table spoon and poured some ammonia into it. My brain was too rattled to think. As much as I wanted to, I could not get my numbed brain intoShow MoreRelatedIntimate Partner Violence And Sexual Abuse Essay1080 Words   |  5 Pagesto see how prevalent intimate partner violence is among those who commit childhood maltreatment. To gather this data, dissociative disorder clinicians reported on the rates of childhood maltreatment and intimate partner violence from 275 patients and assessed the associations between childhood maltreatment and partner violence. 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