I don’t  know why I ever chose to torture myself and willingly read A CHILD CALLED IT,  but Dave Pelzer broke something inside me – I haven’t been right since.  Knowing that, you’d think I’d have learned a lesson, (yeah, I know… I’m audibly laughing right now, too).  Nope. Years after ‘ACCI’ I decided that I wanted to read THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, and I let Jack Ketchum walk right in and start poking at the wound that David Pelzer left with a big, pointy stick.  I think it was the masochist in me who invited Mendal W. Johnson to drop by and sucker-punch my PTSD in the back of the head.  As far as the ‘Let’s Go Play At The Adams‘ fiction/non-fiction debate’ goes – I’m sticking with IT’S FICTION, but I’m sure all the atrocities have been committed, many times, and on many different Barbaras. 
Like LGPATA, THE ABUSE OF ASHLEY COLLINS is not a true story – but it very well could be. Watching the decreasing sanity, and the elevating brutality of Ashley’s parents demonstrates just how fast situations can escalate. One little poke at the wrong moment, and all control is lost – you can’t come back from certain things.

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. It is disturbing, and hard to read at times, but the author is not exploiting issues to gain shock value for a horror story. Jon Athan comes at the story from every possible angle, from every p.o.v., and sheds light on problems that most families would keep hidden in the dark. Let me misquote one of my favorite movies before you start reading…

WARNING: This book contains scenes of graphic violence, including violence towards children. This book is about abuse—verbal, physical, and emotional. This book does not feature any explicit sex scenes, but it does discuss sexual abuse. This book is not intended for those easily offended or appalled.

Ashley Collins, a sixteen-year-old girl, has severe behavior issues. She regularly fights with her parents, Logan and Jane. When the fights become personal and physical, Logan and Jane decide to take matters into their own hands. They chain their daughter in the basement and abuse her in an attempt to rescue her from her bad behavior… while delving into their own deviance and depravity.

This is a story of family and abuse. This is a story of violence and discipline. This is the abuse of Ashley Collins.

Jon Athan, author of A Family of Violence, brings you an uncompromising vision of human horror. Can the cycle of abuse be broken?

Find The Abuse of Ashley Collins on Goodreads, Amazon, and it’s available through the KU program.

Connect with the author via Twitter – @Jonny_Athan, Facebook,  through the officialJon Athan Website, or his author pages on Goodreads, BookLikes, LibraryThing  &Amazon. You can email him directly at: info@jon-athan.com, or head on over to the West Coast and start stalking him the old fashioned way!

This is a really heart-wrenching story, but a fabulous read! Break out the tissues for this one!

A Child Called "It" is a story about a kid named David whose is getting abused by his mom. She hits him all the time and she says he's no longer apart of the family. She calls him "the boy" and "it". She blames him for everything. Even David's brothers want anything to do with him. David says his mother brain washed his brothers. Davids' father doesn't help David or defend him. He just tells David to be good and listen. His mother always beats David. She no longer feeds him. He'll just get scraps of food. It's a great book. I would recommend it. Some things are horrible. It's hard to thing someone would do these things to their own kid.

I'm kind of conflicted on this story. Aside from some telling me it's true, and others telling me it isn't, the manner in which the mother treats Dave is a bit off. Being a survivor of child abuse myself, I know all about the random beatings, the "games", and the starvation methods. While my mother didn't do any of them (except the beating part, child services was a common visitor at my house from 1st-5th grade), I at least knew why my mother hated me. Dave seems to never actually be told the reasons for his mother hatred toward ONLY him and not his other four or five brothers who seemed to never punished let alone beaten. Normally if a child's singled out from a group of siblings it's because that child reminds the parent either of the other parent or themselves, but there seemed to be absolutely no reason that she started to abuse Dave who at the time was the youngest. Normally in abuse cases, it's the oldest or middle child. Now by the end of the book, Dave is the middle child I think, but he was the youngest in the beginning.

Another inconstancy I found in this work was the father. The man was a firefighter and yet cowed and allowed his wife to not only beat and starve his son, but watched her pour ammonia down his throat? I don't know about the rest of you, but that doesn't sit right with me. Firefighters are not cowards, it's not in the job description, yet this man was portrayed as anything but a man. I don't know a single man in a job like that that would allow that behavior to go on.

Despite my feeling that this story is less than accurately told, it's still one that will tug at the heart strings. Any story where a child suffers like the one in this story is. And while it IS inconsistent in a lot of things, the message is still there. I believe this book should be mandatory reading for parents who have had their children taken by child services. I believe the greatest punishment they parents can ever receive is reading what their brands of torture do the child they could have easily given up for adoption rather than torture than torment or in some cases either kill.

For the messages this book hold and ONLY for those, I give this book 3 of 5 paws.