David Rothenberg was six years old and living with his mother, Marie Rothenberg, in the
Carroll Gardens neighborhood of
Brooklyn, New York, when his father, Charles Rothenberg, took him to
California. The parents were divorced and in conflict over
custody of David; after the two argued on the telephone, on the evening of March 3, 1983, at a motel in
Buena Park, Charles gave his son a sleeping pill and after he fell asleep, poured
kerosene on the bed and set fire to it. He left the room and watched from a telephone booth across the street while other guests rescued David. David had
third-degree burns over 90% of his body; he required finger and toe amputations and received a total of more than a hundred
skin grafts. He was badly disfigured and during one grafting operation experienced brain swelling that led to
seizures and other complications. Charles Rothenberg, who stated that he had originally intended to kill himself as well as his son, was sentenced in July 1983 to 13 years in prison, the maximum permitted at the time for his offenses; guidelines were changed as a result of the case. After two years he fled, but turned himself in to authorities. In 1996 he was tried for a shooting in
Oakland, at which time Dave, then 19, visited him in prison; he read a statement to him in which he stated that Charles Rothenberg was "not a father but an imposter". and on a broader level in fundraising for the
UC Irvine Burns Center. Marie Rothenberg married Richard Hafdahl, a police officer who had supervised the fire investigation, and moved to
Orange County, California with David. Marie Rothenberg and Mel White published an expanded version of the book in 2019 as ''David's Story: Burned by His Father's Rage, Healed by His Mother's Love''. ==Later life and career==