Daughter Recounts Childhood Of `Tyranny' With Nancy Reagan

Nancy Reagan was a child beater who lived in a fog of tranquilizers, says her estranged daughter.

Patti Davis says there were times when her mother hit her daily as she was growing up, but when Davis told her father, then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan, he wouldn't believe her.

"He said I was lying, and he said I was crazy," Davis says. "I really realized I was never going to know what it would feel like to have a father."

Davis, 39, also says her mother existed in a tranquilizer cloud, taking five or six pills a day.

"There was emotional abuse," Davis says. "There was substance abuse. . . . There was hitting. There was emotional tyranny in a way."

Davis' recollections about the former First Family are contained in excerpts from an interview to be aired tomorrow night on ABC-TV's "PrimeTime Live." Her autobiography, "The Way I See It," will be released tomorrow.

The Reagans said yesterday, in a statement faxed to the New York Daily News, that they would not comment on Davis' allegations.

But the statement added: "We have always loved all of our children, including our daughter, Patti. We hope the day will come when she rejoins our family."

Davis will recount in her book several episodes in which she says her mother struck her for minor transgressions and typical childish misbehavior.

Once, Davis says, a family friend had to restrain her mother.

Davis says the beatings began when she was a little girl and

did not end until she was in college.

Davis, a sometime actress, sometime author, has not spoken with her parents in years.

Nancy Reagan has been publicly snubbed by former Soviet First Lady Raisa Gorbachev, trashed by author Kitty Kelley with tales of a backstairs White House affair with Frank Sinatra, and accused by former White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan of being the power behind the forgetful throne.