Stephen Dale Fielding, is the victim of severe child abuse with a long criminal record, who during the filming of his story was arrested (he was eventually convicted) for sexually abusing his 8-year-old cousin. A childlike man of limited intelligence and no impulse control, Stevie, as he is called, is not entirely unsympathetic, but he isn't especially likable either. We meet his sister Brenda, the grandmother Verna, who cared for him after his mother, Bernice, dumped him in her lap, and his mentally retarded girlfriend Tonya. The movie, set in the hardscrabble rural world of southern Illinois, argues that the physical and psychic wounds inflicted on children leave irreparable damage and lead to lifelong social dysfunction.