The Schreibvogel children grew up in Kansas to hardworking German farmers, according to New York Magazine. Joe Exotic felt that his parents saw their children as farmhands and he recalled that no one in his family ever said "I love you" to each other," according to the outlet.
Exotic claimed to New York Magazine that he was repeatedly raped when he was 5 years old by an older boy and that this happened in his own family home. He noted that a drawer in the bathroom could be opened to hold the door shut.
Exotic's father moved his family "from Kansas to Wyoming to Texas," according to New York Magazine, when he decided to raise racehorses instead of farm. Because of this, there was a rootlessness to Exotic's teen years, as the outlet explained, "Few of Joe's classmates from those years remember him, and his photo is often missing from his junior-high yearbook." When he was in high school, Exotic got bullied by jocks, who teased him for hanging out with girls.
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