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From the beginning, Mindy McCready has claimed that she had good reason for taking her 5-year-old son, Zander, from the home of her mother, who has legal guardianship, and fleeing to Arkansas, where the pair were discovered earlier this month.

As part of her recent interview with ABC News, the troubled country star opened up about the nature of the mental and physical abuse she says the boy's grandparents had long been inflicting.

"Zander was being beaten with a wooden spoon," Mindy told ABC, as also reported in the NBC 'Today Show' clip posted below. "There are scars on Zander's back. There are scars on his bottom and legs from the spoon."

Mindy has also charged her mother, Gayle, with practicing strange religion in the household.

"My mother believes she is a prophet sent from God," she said. "They see dead people in their home all the time."

Gayle has denied the allegations, claiming that her daughter -- who has long struggled with drug and alcohol addiction -- is in need of help.

"There are some underlying problems, and the only time a person really gets help is when they want to help themselves," Gayle tells NBC of her daughter, who has been in and out of jail on drug and alcohol-related crimes, along with several stints in rehab.

Mindy, who says she's clean, in a steady relationship and pregnant with twins, lit out for Arkansas with Zander last month, touching off a search that ended with authorities raiding her boyfriend's home.

The singer told ABC that U.S. Marshals came in with "assault rifles" drawn, and that Zander witnessed the whole spectacle from a couch, not from a closet hiding space, as initial reports had suggested. The boy is currently in foster care in Arkansas, and as both sides ready for a court battle, Mindy maintains that she's a changed person.

"I have vigorously gone out and tried to learn from my mistakes and tried to better myself in every way possible," she told ABC's '20/20.' "There's nobody that wants to be better at being me than me."

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