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My wife and I saw the movie "Precious" Saturday night.

It is as powerful as advertised, a potent blend of horror and uplift.

Parts of the movie are hard to watch. Even though the reviews and stories forewarned us, the abuse of the title character by her mother and father, as early as age 3, is shocking.

From the very beginning, her mother (played with fierce rage and frustration by the comic actress Mo’Nique) displays fits of unspeakable violence and cruelty, including the heaving of a television set down a stairwell toward her daughter.

Precious' father exploits her in ways that are too monstrous and graphic even to paraphrase here.

Her world is a relentlessly mean, hard place where Precious is made to feel ugly, worthless and less than human.

Yet you see the beauty in her as you get to know her.

One question: Was the constant inhumanity suffered by the obese Harlem 17-year-old, who was twice a mother to children by her father, too harsh to be real?

And , in real life, could a mother possibly stand by while her daughter was being abused in this way?

I considered that for a moment, then remembered the story of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis, whose body was found beside a rural highway in Lee County last week. She had been raped.

Mario McNeill has been charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape of a child in the arrest warrant..

Shaniya’s mother, Antionette Davis, has been charged with felony child abuse and human trafficking and allegedly offered her daughter for prostitution. To settle a debt.

Davis also is charged with filing a false police report, trafficking her daughter and child abuse involving prostitution.

Even worse, say experts, Shaniya’s exploitation was no isolated incident. Human trafficking is a fact of life in North Carolina.

So, is the unforgiving world in “Precious” excessive and over-the-top?

Sad to say, no way.