Michael is a smart fifth-grader who brings home straight A's.

His report cards are proudly taped to the wall of the small living room, right near pictures he's drawn and framed homilies professing a house filled with love.

Details paint a grimmer picture, however.

The bottle of Seagram's whiskey peeking out from a blanket discarded on the futon. The note on the report card from the teacher asking Michael's mother to come talk.

Michael's voice wavers as he describes life with his abusive mother. She never lets Michael forget that she works three jobs to support them. She hatefully tells him she should have had an abortion.

"She hardly ever smiles," he'll say.

You can go to hear Michael's gut-wrenching story - and those of a handful of other children whose abuse is played out in The Lisa Project, a multimedia exhibit meant to expose people to the realities of child abuse and trigger a desire to help prevent it.

The free exhibit - on display throughout April at St. Rose of Lima Park at Seventh and K streets - is constructed as a series of rooms, each one depicting a different child and the abuse he or she suffers. Cues from an iPod guide each visitor through the exhibit.

"We're asking you to figuratively take a child by the hand and let them tell you their story," said Gene Hardin, the project's director.

The exhibit differs starkly from such prevention efforts as public service announcements or poster campaigns, said Regan Overholt, a program officer for First 5 Yolo who recently went through The Lisa Project.

"Being in those staged scenarios makes it much more real and allows you to really understand the environments in which these situations occur," she said. "This is just riveting in its presentation."

Because of the disturbing nature of the content, children under 13 years old are not given the audio devices if they visit the exhibit, and counselors are stationed at the end to talk to visitors who may need them.

The children's stories are real - culled from public records, making them ethically permissible to use. Names have been changed to protect identities.

"Even though the stories sound very specific to the children, they are not unusual stories," said Lindy Turner-Hardin, executive director of the San Joaquin County Child Abuse Prevention Council, the nonprofit behind the project. "They are duplicated in every county and multiple times in every county."

The nature of the abuse presented, however, is in the minority when it comes to the typical cases that come to the attention of Child Protective Services, said Ross Thompson, a developmental psychologist at the University of California, Davis, who works on child abuse issues.

More typical are cases of neglect, he said - children who aren't going to school, getting medical care or eating properly or regularly.

Rates of child abuse have been on the decline over the past five to 10 years, thanks to public awareness efforts, but the impact of economic deprivation is going up, he said.

While neglect is a part of the abuse suffered by one of the subjects in the exhibit, it's not the focus of the project, Turner-Hardin said.

The stark scenarios presented could prompt people to start thinking about neglect, she said.

The mission is to "get people to empathize with these children because then it compels them to act," Turner-Hardin said.

"We want people to hear the voices of these children because they are crying out for help - we're just not hearing them."

And once you do, they are voices you will long remember.

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