Editing Traci Lords (section)

== Early life ==
{{stack|[[File:Traci Lords HS Yearbook.jpeg|thumb|right|upright|Lords (age 14) as a freshman at [[Redondo Union High School]] in 1983, the year before she illegally entered the porn industry.]]}}
Traci Lords was born Nora Louise Kuzma on May 7, 1968, in [[Steubenville, Ohio]], to Louis and Patricia Kuzma.<ref>{{harvnb|Lords|2003|p=6}}</ref><ref name=gq>{{cite journal|last=Jordan|first=Pat|date=April 1990|title=Traci Lords With Her Clothes On|url=http://www.bronxbanterblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/1120_001-2.pdf|journal=[[GQ]]|pages=250–304|access-date=March 15, 2016}}</ref> Her father's parents were of [[Ukrainians|Ukrainian]] descent, while her mother was of Irish ancestry.<ref>{{harvnb|Lords|2003|p=4}}</ref> Louis was employed as a steelworker. Lords has one elder sister and two younger sisters. Her parents divorced when she was seven years old and Lords moved with her mother and three sisters to her great-grandmother's house.<ref>{{harvnb|Lords|2003|p=8}}</ref> Following the divorce, her alcoholic, abusive father got partial [[Child custody|custody]]. Around that same time, her mother enrolled at [[Ohio University]] and became employed part-time.<ref>{{harvnb|Lords|2003|p=11}}</ref>

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=left|quote=I never wanted to be like my mother. You know, kids at sixteen, a husband who drinks and beats you. When I hit L.A., I said 'There's gonna be some changes here.' I hated the world. I was hateful to my mother. If I came home from a date at 11:30 and my mother questioned me, I'd say, 'I was out fucking somebody!' I wasn't. I just wanted to piss my mother off.|source=—Lords about her teenage years<ref name=gq/>}}

When Lords was 12, she moved with her mother, her mother's new boyfriend, and sisters to [[Redondo Beach, California]]. She did not see her father for many years after. In September 1982, she began attending [[Redondo Union High School]] but dropped out at age 15 to enter the porn industry.<ref name=krajicek>{{cite web|url=http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/sexual_assault/traci_lords/index.html|title=Traci Lords|last=Krajicek|first=David|date=May 26, 2005|website=[[Crime Library]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150210000122/http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/sexual_assault/traci_lords/index.html|archive-date=February 10, 2015|access-date=March 15, 2016}}</ref> During her early school years, Lords developed a rebellious attitude. She was angry at her mother and found a father figure in her mother's boyfriend Roger Hayes, as she calls him in [[Traci Lords: Underneath It All|her autobiography]]. He was a drug abuser and molested Lords in her sleep. According to Lords, this and a rape by a 16-year-old boy in school she had been seeing, which she called "the single most traumatizing thing that ever happened to me in my life", would be what eventually drove her into pornography. Lords has stated, "My damage drove me into porn. I mean, I was a little girl. And I had like all of this stuff. I'd been raped. I'd been molested. I'd been abused. I was messed up. And I was angry. And the same thing that later helped me to change my life when I was 18 and out of that world that helped me to get sober and helped me to gather the courage to go and do the work I needed to do, to look at some things in my life that were so ugly."<ref name=datelinenbc>{{cite episode|title=Secrets & Lies|series=[[Dateline NBC]]|first=Josh|last=Mankiewicz|network=[[NBC]]|date=July 11, 2003|season=15|number=78|transcript=Transcript of the original source|transcript-url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna3080023}}</ref> After her mother broke up with Hayes due to his drug use, she began dating his friend. Lords refused to follow them to a new place and was left with her older sister Lorraine. Her mother and two younger sisters eventually found a new apartment.<ref>{{harvnb|Lords|2003|p=46}}</ref>