@nrdsb4:
She was found by this husband and wife team (she lived in Brooklyn I believe), who actually were representing her brother. When she was 12, she was cast in the play of “THe Miracle worker”, and became something of a star because of it (then she later did the movie). Her parents were divorced, and the couple convinced the mother that the best thing for Patty was to live with them, so at 15 she basically was isolated from her parents. The couple basically exploited her, and they both physically and sexually abused her as well. Once Patty became an adult, she broke away from the couple, and then found that they had embezzled pretty much all her earnings (from what I recall, when she lived with them, they handled all her money, and also refused her requests to give money to her family). I don’t know if the law was ever involved with them, given this was the 1960’s, I suspect that the law wouldn’t do much even if Patty had said she was abused, those were the dark ages when people and the law often looked the other way.