British singer Susan Boyle says she was bullied, beaten as child with learning disabilities

From the New York Daily News:

Adding another layer to her triumph-over-adversity story, Susan Boyle has revealed that, as a child, she was repeatedly beaten and bullied.

"You're looking at someone who would get the belt everyday," the 48-year-old star told Britain's Daily Mirror.

The reason? Learning disabilities - ones pronounced enough to earn her not only beatings from teachers but also cruel taunts from classmates.

"I'm just a wee bit slower at picking things up than other people. So you get left behind in a system that just wants to rush on," Boyle said. "That was what I felt was happening to me."

"There was discipline for the sake of discipline back then," Boyle told the paper. "But it's all very different now. I think teachers are taught to understand children with learning disabilities a lot better."

In some ways, the treatment by her classmates hurt even more.

"There's nothing worse than another person having power over you by bullying you and you not knowing how to get rid of that thing," Boyle said.

Boyle also has a long religious background, having served for years as a church worker in her small town of Blackburn, West Lothian. That obscure upbringing made her worldwide breakthrough on the show "Britain's God Talent" even more astonishing.

No one was more surprised about her success than she.

"I went to L.A. and there were crowds waiting for us at the airport," Boyle recalled. "It was quite something. Nothing a woman like me was used to. The hotel I was staying in, apparently Frank Sinatra used to take his women back there! And I dipped my toes in the same pool Grace Kelly has been in. This is a world I had never seen before and never dreamt that I would get to see."

But the culture shock took its toll and, after being beaten out in the final round of the reality talent show by dance troupe Diversity, Boyle was taken to the Priory Clinic in central London suffering from exhaustion.

"I hadn't slept properly for a week and I didn't know what was wrong with me," the singer said. "I was in there for three days and I've never felt so tired. But I look back on it now and it was a necessity. I wanted to get a rest, a break without all the cameras."

Now the singer says she feels ready for the onslaught of attention that will surely greet her debut CD, "I Dreamed a Dream," which comes out on Nov. 23. Already the disc is the most pre-ordered of all time.