By Beth Schwarzapfel
Al Jazeera America

Jennifer Pruitt can hardly remember a time when she felt safe. She says her father beat her until her eyes were blackened. He beat her mother and brothers. He drank and crashed their family cars, she says, and then he came home and beat them some more. And starting when she was about 10, Jennifer says, Denny Pruitt would arrange some alone time with her in a bedroom. When she told her mother about the abuse, her father called Jennifer a bitch and a liar. When she ran away from home, which she did increasingly often, the police would tell her she should feel lucky she had two parents, and then bring her back home.

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