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David's Story

Guerneville writer David Pelzer survived what is reported to be the third worst case of child abuse in California state history. The victims of the other two cases are dead. By Gretchen Mikalonis On March 5, 1973, 12-year-old David Pelzer got lucky. The first piece of luck he had was that he was able to ride to school in the car with his brothers. Usually, he had to run to class while his brothers rode in the station wagon, joking and enjoying the warmth of the heater. Sometimes he didn't mind the run, because it was the only time that he was able to wear his glasses, and he could see individual blades of grass and the character of the sky. But today, David was late with his chores and didn't have time to run the long cold road to school. He was late because his mother had caught him resting his hands out of the scalding, soapy water that he was washing his brother's breakfast dishes in. He had taken his hands out to relieve the screaming flesh on them, flesh that had been stripped of all skin by immersion in a bucket of ammonia during a recent punishment. He was late because it took his mom a few minutes to finish slapping him and bashing his head against the kitchen counter, leaving a large bruise on the side of his face. He was lucky because he was able to slurp down a few milk-swollen Lucky Charms from the dirty bowls before she caught him. He was lucky to get the few floating marshmallow stars and cereal rainbows because he hadn't eaten at all the night before. Or the night before that. And because he was late, he was lucky to be sent to the principal's office. There the school nurse performed a routine that was familiar to David. Speaking gently, she had him remove his shirt so that she could catalog his scars, bruises, and other injuries. She would note the scar on his stomach caused when his mother, woozy with anger and alcohol, had slipped while she was threatening him with a knife and had stabbed him. She would note the scar on his arm where his mother had held his limb into the flames of the gas stove. She would purse her lips as she counted the diminishing number of teeth sitting chipped and crooked in his mouth. What was impossible for the nurse to know was that he had been denied food by his mother for up to 10 days at a time. That he had shakily eaten from the dog's dish or been made to ingest dog feces or the refuse from his baby brother's diaper. That until his mother had started sprinkling it with ammonia, he had taken most of his dinners from the garbage. That he slept uncovered on an army cot in the basement. That he was no longer called David by anyone but school personnel, referred to at home only as "It" or "The Boy." He was 12, and he wanted to die. On this day in 1973, the nurse added a note about the swelling purple lump above his eye to her list, hugged him so tightly that he could smell her good perfume, and alerted the principal. The principal arrived with two of David's teachers. They looked at him, conferred, and called the police. David Pelzer had a lucky day. He never went home again. Today, David Pelzer is the married parent of an 8-year-old son, the author of two books about his childhood experiences (A Child Called It and The Lost Boy, Omaha Press, 1993 and 1994), and a former Air Force sergeant who served in the Gulf war. He was the only American to receive the Outstanding Young Person of the Year award given at the World Congress last year in Japan and in 1993, he was chosen as one of Ten Outstanding Young Americans by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce. This 34-year-old Guerneville resident is more than a survivor, he's a miracle man. Meeting Pelzer at a Santa Rosa coffeehouse, it's hard to believe that anything bad--other than the usual round of life's knocks--has ever happened to him. He speaks quickly, assuming different voices as he imitates people he's known. He is dressed for the Ivy League in a green shirt that sets off the startling blue of his eyes. In simple khakis and weejuns, David could be any one of us who once flew thoughtlessly on a swing or took a friendly pat on the head for granted. He has retained his slender build, but has worked hard to build up those muscles that were so malnourished as a child. The second of five children, David Pelzer was not treated badly when he was very young. He has good memories of a loving mother and father, of presents and embraces and fun. He particularly has fond memories of trips taken from his Daly City home to Guerneville, where the family went for summer vacations. His father was a firefighter, a hero who would rush into burning buildings and emerge triumphantly with a saved child held aloft. The only child he failed to save was his son. His mother was an alcoholic who had been drinking from the age of 13. Brought up in the Mormon community of Salt Lake City, Catherine Roerva Pelzer would hide in the outhouse during Prohibition to wince down bootleg whiskey. Her parents were divorced, which made them outcasts in that religious community, and Catherine was frequently locked in a closet, denied food, and told how despicable she was. Her own childhood experiences, coupled with her alcoholism, eventually led her down a dark path of uncontrollable destructive behavior toward her third child. David Pelzer's parents drank together, sometimes swaying romantically to records in the late afternoon, their sweating glasses draped over each other's shoulders as they danced. Other times, when his father was working a 24-hour shift, his mother drank alone. When he was 4 years old, she accidentally broke his arm in a drunken incident. That night, disregarding his cries, she trundled him off to bed as usual. What was unusual was that she had him sleep in the upper bunk rather than his own spot in the lower. In the morning, she told him that he had fallen from the high bed and broken his arm. Taking him to the doctor, she repeated the story and the boy didn't deny its veracity. "When my arm was broken at 4, that was paramount," says Pelzer, trying to explain why he was singled out for the abuse that his mother would inflict in increasing amounts over the next eight years. "I should have told the doctor, but the stress was of such magnitude that I thought it would never happen again; that she'd never lose it again." "It's called child-selection," he continues. "They [the perpetrators] pick on a child that they can control and get away with. She picked on me because I was shy, and I believe that she thought I was slow, and I was clumsy. Now you take these elements, and you can control the situation. So she picked on me, and a relationship formed." Talking about his past is "more difficult now that I'm 34 than when I was a teenager," Pelzer says. "Then I was used to it. It was right there. I didn't know how bad my abuse was until after I was an adult, until after I was a parent." After Pelzer was rescued, he was placed in a series of foster homes, eventually landing in one and staying on until he joined the Air Force. A stipulation of his placement was that he receive counseling, and after one horrific experience with a misguided Freudian, he found a therapist who helped guide him. While he credits the work done on that couch, he is certain that his will to survive the abuse was self-directed. "I did have some therapy involved, but my therapy was a lot of self-resilience," he says. "A lot of people ask me, 'Well Dave, what turned it around for you, what was the one element that switched?' And I go back to when I was burned on the gas stove." During this incident he had been left alone with his mother. He knew, however, that his older brother was due home shortly, and tried to buy time for his arrival. "I had to trick her very quickly and force her to hit me so that the clock would run out so that she wouldn't burn me. I knew later in the bottom of the basement that if I could do that one thing, what else could I possibly achieve? "So, it all goes back to the gas stove. I wanted more." He continues, "If you take that on a more extended level, you think, if I can survive death several times, how come I can't write a book, how come I can't save a child, how come I can't make myself into a fighter? So you just take these little things. And sure, I'm different from other people. I'm very focused, very driven, and I'm pretty good." One of the extraordinary things that David Pelzer has done is to forgive his mother, who has since died. Why did he forgive? "If it doesn't stop with me, right now, what happens to my son?" he asks intently. "If I don't forgive my mom, I'm just as guilty as she. My grandmother never forgave her father; my mother never forgave my grandmother; it's got to stop with me. Period. Because if I carry around all of this hate and baggage, it's going to destroy me, my wife, and son. "There was a time when I didn't forgive her, obviously. When I was a child, it was always why, why, why. Survivors of abuse are dysfunctional. They're like robots. They want to know why did this person do this to me, and did this person ever have any affection for me? And as a young foster kid, my social workers would say, 'No, don't worry about it.' But it's like a program, you've got to run the program in order to find out about it. Once they find out about the program, they can move beyond it." "If anything, I just feel so sorry for this woman. I mean, if she had been raised now, (1) she would have been reported much earlier, which means (2) she could have gotten some help, which means (3) we would have been reunited as a family. To be pretty frank, I really wish I had a mommy and a daddy." The laws have changed enormously since David Pelzer was a little boy. When his teachers and administrator finally decided to report his case, they feared for their jobs. Nowadays, a teacher must fear for her job if she doesn't report suspected abuse. "Was there such a thing as child abuse back then?" Pelzer asks. "Hell no. Child abuse did not exist. They did not have the legal arm to knock on the door and take my mother to a counselor. People were not talking about this stuff. Maybe in the coffee shops, maybe at private parties, but not out in the open. Spousal abuse, as such, did not exist. Children were to be seen and not heard. "And she knew what she was doing." Before mother died, David interviewed her. "I remember I asked her, 'Mother, was there ever a chance that you could have, um . . .' And she knew what I was getting at, and she said, 'David, honey, I could have killed you hundreds of times, just like that. The only problem I had was where to hide It's body." Pelzer's father, who had never done anything more to help him other than occasionally sneaking him some food, had left the home, "and she wasn't feeding me," Pelzer emphasizes. His other relatives thought that he was living elsewhere. "How can they miss you if they don't even know that you're there? No one had seen me in years." David Pelzer couldn't have prosecuted his mother even if he had wanted to. By the time he was 18, the statute of limitations had run out. Don Sherman, a volunteer law student at the Victim's Resource Center in Sacramento, assures that "there have been some very favorable changes in terms of the victim. There's an extension of the time period that a criminal case may be brought against a person who has molested or sexually assaulted a child. Now a criminal complaint may be filed within one year of a complaint to a law enforcement agency, by a person of any age, alleging that he or she, while under the age of 18 years, was the victim of a crime." Additionally, the statutes for filing civil suits to recover costs of therapy have been extended to age 26, and Sherman is hopeful that they will be extended upwards. However, the decision to prosecute is up to the District Attorney's Office. Sherman notes that "the funding is very limited. They have to have a case that they feel they can prosecute and win. If it looks as though the witness might crumble under cross-examination, or if the details are too sketchy, or if evidence is missing, then they have to make a very difficult decision on whether or not to prosecute." Nick Velichinsky is the head of the Child Welfare Division of the Human Services Commission of Sonoma County. He estimates that his office receives roughly 10,000 calls a year concerning referral. "Not all of them pan out, not all of them are legitimate," he says. "Most of them are neglect and physical abuse." The statistics for Sonoma County for 1994 show that over 11,000 calls were received last year, with 8,259 calling for emergency disposition. Over 3,000 of these were in response to cases of general neglect. Almost 3,000 referred respondents called to report physical abuse, and nearly 1,000 were related to sexual abuse. Calls come from school staff, health workers, neighbors, friends, and relatives. All state employees are mandated to report anything that looks suspicious to them. Velichinsky's office must follow up. If they find that "in fact children are in danger, we intervene to try to change the situation so that they won't be in danger," Velichinsky says. "And to that extent, what we do is we go in, we investigate, we offer services, and we try to keep the family intact. If the child is in imminent danger, we do not have authority to remove the child. Law enforcement has to remove the child." Once a child has been removed from the home, every effort is made to treat the family, and reunite the home. If requested, a judge may allow up to 18 months of effort to be expended to this end. If, by the end of that time, reunification is not possible, the child becomes a dependent of the juvenile court, and is either placed under guardianship, in a foster home as David Pelzer was, or is adopted. Clare Eckhardt, principal of the McNear Elementary School in Petaluma, and Rocky Nielsen-Mengistue, MFCC and guidance specialist for the Petaluma schools, agree that some children are still suffering. What signs do school personnel look for in cases of abuse? "Lots of tardiness, absences, hungry children," says Nielsen-Mengistue. "Little ones who don't bring snacks and aren't independent enough to help themselves," adds Eckhardt. "Being left after school, not being picked up--that's usually a big clue that this little guy is on his own," continues Nielsen-Mengistue. "Often, one of the clues that we're looking for--not necessarily assuming it's abuse, but assuming that something traumatic is happening--is when a child just changes. When his demeanor, his energy level, his ability to make eye contact, his ability to follow through with his work--when all that diminishes, it's like a signal to our teachers." Eckhardt refers "about six to eight cases a year" to state authorities from her small elementary school. "We have a full range in our district from complete neglect and abandonment to sexual abuse," she says. Marie De Santis of the Child Assault Prevention/Women Against Rape facility in Santa Rosa says, "I used to work in a Child Emergency Shelter, and the very worst, the most damaged kids, were severe-neglect kids. They don't even know that they're human. I have seen a lot of things, and you never see the stuff you see in the eyes of a kid who's suffered severe neglect, because it's so warped, it's so distorted of the deepest things in humanity. It's disorienting to your soul." Of Pelzer's case, she comments, "It's just amazing that this man made it out of there. That's the other amazing thing about child abuse, that there are some kids who can make it out. There's some robustness to the psyche or something." "Look at it this way," David Pelzer concludes, "the state of California invested maybe $100,000 in me. I was a ward of the court for six years, they had to pay social workers, and so on. But look at the yield they're getting out of me now. I'm a functional adult. I'm a taxpayer. I'm helping out. And, I know for a fact that there are 10 million more of me out there. "You don't have to be a celebrity icon to be the last action hero." [ Sonoma | MetroActive | Archives ]