Verified Document

Lost Boy Term Paper

¶ … Lost Boy Roerva

Catherine Roerva was David J. Pelzer's mother. Mother was likely too kind a word for this biological incubator for a human child to whom she referred to as "an It."

Roerva loved her Cub Scouts and demonstrated some nurturant tendencies toward her other children, but visited countless atrocities upon the body of her child named David.

She starved him, stabbed him, smashed him face-first into mirrors, forced him to eat the feces from his sibling's diapers, force fed him ammonia, and burned him on a gas stove.

An alcoholic sadist, Roerva was not impeded - for many years - in her attempts to torment the young boy. She improvised maniacal games for David, defying him to breach even one of the...

Her parents were divorced - outcasts in a religious community in Salt Lake City - and Catherine was often locked in a closet, denied food, and told repeatedly how despicable she was.
In spite of - or perhaps because of - her own experiences of horror as an unloved child, she visited the same evils upon her own son until he was 12 years old when he was taken from her.

Although the last encounter with her son was the final opportunity to make an effort at explanation and amends, she derided David with taunts that the only reason she didn't kill him was because she had no safe way to dispose of his body.

Learned response behavior was evident in…

Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Lost Boy
Words: 447 Length: 1 Document Type: Term Paper

Lost Boy by David Pelzer is an account of the author's life from the age of 12 to 18, when he lived in foster homes after leaving his family because they abused him. This book is well written, but it is hard to read because the boy suffers so much abuse from his mother, and then searches for love because he does not have a real family, and keeps getting

Lost Boy by Dave Pelzer: The Foster
Words: 3354 Length: 10 Document Type: Book Review

Lost Boy by Dave Pelzer: The foster care system in the United States has long been a subject of much negative attention. In many ways, individuals who were part of this system were regarded in a negative way, and were placed upon a great deal of stigma. The Lost Boy, a book that discusses this subject from a highly personal perspective, aims to explain both the internal and external aspects of

Lost Boys of Sudan, They
Words: 1955 Length: 6 Document Type: Research Proposal

Alepho's mother is not so richly described like in Benson's case. Benson's attachment to his mother and his admiration for her and women in general is transpiring again in his stories about the war with the lion and the lioness. First, he presents his father's hero deeds who courageously fought the lion and killed it. His next story will be about the lioness and this time he will places

Lost Boys of the Sudan
Words: 358 Length: 1 Document Type: Term Paper

When the boys come to America, through the generous efforts of relief organizations, the boys must not just learn a new language but adjust to a society where cars and supermarkets are a way of life. The boys also enter a far more diverse society, where even African-Americans judge skin tone and color differently than their own society. The ethnic conflicts that spawned genocide are not present, but America

Lost Boy: A Foster Child's Search for
Words: 671 Length: 2 Document Type: Book Review

Lost Boy: A Foster Child's Search for the Love of a Family David J. Pelzer is a child-abuse survivor who has shared his experiences as a public speaker and an author. He tells his own story in a series of three books. Pelzer is the son of an alcoholic and extremely abusive mother and he lived his life moving frequently in and out of foster homes. Pelzer is a strong

Critique of the Lost Boy
Words: 2320 Length: 8 Document Type: Book Review

Lost Boy David Pelzer's autobiography The Lost Boy (1997) is a very moving and disturbing account of his childhood experiences of severe abuse by his mother and abandonment by his father. He was removed from his mother's custody at age 12 by Child Protective Services and ended up in a series of foster homes for the next six years. He rarely spent more than a few months in each one, and

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now