A Child Called It

The life of Dave Pelzer was extremely terrible and heartbreaking. Was raised in Daly City, California. Up until the age of four, he grew up in a loving and caring family. His mother Catherine Roerva was a homemaker and his father Stephen Joseph was a firefighter. The life of Dave Pelzer made a sudden change when his mother began drinking. When Dave's life made a sudden turn he was only four years old. From the point his mother began drinking Dave began a painful terrible life-threatening adventure that lasted eight years. His mother singled him out from his family and friends because of his behavior. In reality, Dave did nothing wrong. His mother referred to Dave as "The Boy" and then eventually called him "It." Regardless of the effort Dave made to please his mother she just kept on abusing him. She made him stand in front of a mirror for hours and repeat I am a bad boy, put him in the bathroom with ammonia, starved him, made him run to school while she drove his brothers, burned him, and stabbed him. It took some time for Dave to develop some tricks to stall his mother from carrying out her cruel and unusual punishments. Amazingly Dave was able to overcome the abuse by learning how to play his mother's cruel games. Dave's only escape at the time was school. The only food Dave was able to consume besides the food he stole from the cafeteria and classmates was the spoiled scraps his mother fed him after finishing his chores. He was eventually discovered and his mother was informed. This made things much more difficult for Dave to eat at home and at school. His mother punishments began to get worse. After eight long years of abuse and neglect His mothers games came to an end. In 1973 two of Dave's teachers reported the abuse in which Dave was in to Social services. Social services began to check out Dave's home life and decided to immediately remove him from the home.