Lost Boy

¶ … 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 "rules." Summary Catherine Roerva began drinking at the age of 13. 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 Roerva's parenting - she mimicked her own parents. Prior to "child selection" when she accidentally broke David's arm, she was a nurturing and loving mother. Alcoholism, guilt, rage, and possible medical causes could be the causative factors in her abrupt change, but there is now no way to know for sure as she is deceased. Stephen Stephen Joseph, David's father was a firefighter, known for saving children from inevitable death in burning buildings. He didn't or couldn't save his own son.

Married to Catherine Roerva, he allowed her complete run of the household and only meekly interjected his opinions and objections to her abuse of David. A coward, Stephen would occasionally sneak David some bread but deny complicity when confronted by his enraged wife. Complicit by his silence, Stephen Joseph finally gave up on his family and left.