Maggie Drew will show her temper, then retreat behind a wall. Skim the pages of her life, the ones in her mind and those on paper, and the anger she feels after years of abuse by her father is palpable.

Watch her body language - the way she twirls her dark hair, bends her fingers back and looks down to avoid eye contact - and the barrier erected by an unsure young lady is clear to see as well.

But there's one constant: Maggie, a 16-year-old junior at Newfound Regional High School, wants you to know where she's been. She wants you to read her story.

"People are going to be like, 'This girl was abused and she overcame it,' " she said, sitting at her kitchen table. "People might try to help other kids or say, 'Let's help her find a publisher.' Or maybe they'll write to me and tell me I'm a tough woman."

How tough? Tough enough to lose 140 pounds over the past four years. Tough enough to pursue her love of art and writing after a hopeless childhood.

And tough enough to shoot you an attitude now and then that Robert De Niro would envy.

You talkin' to me?

"If somebody lashes out at me, I will be a bitch right back," Maggie said. "And it's not something I'm really proud of. They look at me and say, 'You're fat, you're angry, you must hate the world.' No, I hate people like you in the world."

Added Ben Drew, her uncle and - since last November - her adoptive father, "As you can tell, she still has a lot of anger."

Ben works nights at Elektrisola in Boscawen. His wife, Linda, is a receptionist during the day in Plymouth. They have a daughter, Cara, a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Maggie arrived at their home in Bristol from foster care three years ago, in a world far away.

"She was very protective of herself," Ben said. "She'd just go to her room. It got so bad, we were thinking of not doing this anymore."

Good thing they stuck with it. Where would Maggie be without Ben and Linda? They opened their home to a niece they barely knew. Only now is she beginning to appreciate how different things are.

"I guess it was either come here or go get adopted by some complete stranger," Maggie said. "But I'm beat up no more. That's a plus."

She was beaten by her father, who still lives in the state. He has a police record in Plymouth District Court that includes six convictions on charges that include two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, criminal threatening and simple assault.

Maggie's memories of abuse begin at 3 and last until the age of 10, when she was removed from her home by the state's child protection agency. She was punched in the face. She was kicked. Her hair was pulled. She was spit at.

"You always wonder every day if you're going to survive, if you're going to get murdered in your sleep," Maggie said. "I slept with a knife under my bed."

Holidays were "the worst time of year." Her father might toss the Christmas tree out the door or burn the presents or dump the turkey in the garbage.

She weighed 300 pounds by the age of 11. Her classmates called her things like Saggie Maggie. She fought back, lobbing expletives at them. And eating more.

"I needed something to make me feel good," Maggie said.

Relatives like Ben and Linda, Maggie's aunt on her mother's side, knew nothing of the beatings. But they saw signs that Maggie's mother had suffered abuse.

"(Maggie) was sheltered from the rest of the family," Ben said. "My wife hardly saw her sister at all, but we knew there was abuse to Linda's sister. We did see some bruises on (her)."

Alerting authorities

Maggie describes her mother as meek and obedient. She said her mother looked the other way when Maggie and her two older brothers were hit.

"She just cleaned the house, cooked the food and had the kids; that's about it," Maggie said. "For years I hated her guts, but in the last Christmas I realized in her own way she did protect me. She tried to get me the best toys that she could." (next page »)