American Idol's Kellie Pickler Says She Was a Child Abuse Victim

American Idol's Kellie Pickler has admitted that she was a victim of child abuse.  The blonde songstress comes clean in this week's Us Weekly Magazine.  Fresh off her debut album, 'Small Town Girl,' Pickler tells the weekly entertainment magazine about her struggles as a child growing up in Oklahoma.

Idol's Kellie Pickler Admits Suffering Child Abuse

The magazine gives a tease of the story on the blog and reports that while most American Idol fans already knew that her father is a drug abuser that has been cycled in and out of prison for armed robbery, Pickler reveals for the first time that she was a victim of physical and mental child abuse at the hands of her mother.

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Pickler even tells the magazine that her mother told her to commit suicide:
 
“I remember my mother and I were in the kitchen and I said, ‘I wish God would take me away, I’d much rather be dead than live here with you.’ She took a knife out, set it on the counter and said, ‘Here, do it then.’ I was in fourth grade. Of course I never would have acted upon it, but it’s done a lot of emotional scarring."

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One would think that is the case.  People magazine reported earlier that it was her grandparents Faye and Clyde Sr. that raised her.

Pickler says the hardest thing she has had to endure was the death of her grandmother from lung cancer when Kellie was 15. "I called her Mom; she was my best friend," says Pickler. "We would always sit together on the front-porch swing. She had all these hymnals – with 'Amazing Grace' and 'Jesus Loves Me' – and I would sing to her on the swing."

Pickler cries at the memory of their final moments together. "The last thing she said to me was, 'I love you. Be careful.' "

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She added that she has no idea of her mother's whereabouts now.