'Quite honestly, I was unprepared for the torrent of public reaction that followed telling the truth about my childhood and the subsequent difficulties of my personal journey on to freedom as a fully fuunctioning adult human being,' she said. Miss Crawford, in a speech about child abuse, presented at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual meeting earlier this year, told of the pain inflicted by unsympathetic persons after publication of 'Mommie Dearest.'
Her crusade, strongly supported by her spouse, producer David Koontz, is her life's work now. Miss Crawford says vivid memories of her helplessness as an abused teenager nearly 20 years ago keeps her going when her crusade becomes personally unbearable - as it did often soon after 'Mommie Dearest' came out. 'I was told by the officer if I couldn't get along at home I would be taken to Juvenile Hall and booked as an incorrigible.
'I did what I could and the next thing this officer was there. My adoptive mother accused me of lying and I wasn't. 'It was 1952,' she said, recalling one incident, 'and I was 13. Miss Crawford, 42, has been going to bat on behalf of abused children since she wrote about herself as an abused child - at the hands of her adoptive mother, Joan Crawford - in her book 'Mommie Dearest.' When one dies, the secret about what happened, how the life came to a painful early end often will be kept by, to use the police word, the perpetrators. Not knowing anytime where to turn for help. An alert doctor or nurse won't buy the 'story' and will start in motion the official process of child abuse investigation, a process that is much easier these days as a result of crusades against child abuse.īut most often, Miss Crawford says, the abused boy or girl - including some teenagers big enough to look down on their abuser - will just suffer the abuse this day, as any day. Some will be taken to the hospital by an adult who tells the nurse or doctor the kid fell down the stairs or the baby slipped in the tub and almost drowned. The bigger ones will scream, cry and try to run away. The abused infant will scream and cry and may die - murdered. 'We must remember,' Miss Crawford says, 'that abused children are punished, threatened and humiliated for their entire childhood and adolescence.' The punishment goes on year 'round, year in and year out. It's an epidemic, Miss Crawford contends - up from 1 million cases when the problem of child abuse first started getting official notice not long ago.