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David James (Dave) Pelzer (born December 29, 1960 in Daly City, California) is an American author, best known for his memoir of childhood abuse, A Child Called "It".Pelzer is the son of a San Francisco fireman, Stephen Joseph Pelzer (1923—1980), who was of Austrian descent, and Catherine Roerva Christen Pelzer (1929—1992).

Pelzer was born in San Francisco, California, and was the first of three boys. Pelzer wrote in his book that as a child he was continually abused, mistreated, and beaten by his mother, who thought of it as a game. The book documents how his mother starved him, forced him to drink ammonia, stabbed him in the stomach, set him naked on a stove and forced him to eat his own vomit. His teachers stepped in on March 5, 1973 and 12-year-old Pelzer was placed in foster care. In 1979, he joined the Air Force and later became an author. The fourth child by his mother, Richard B. Pelzer, has also written about his own abuse.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "David Pelzer", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0