"Keith Bulluck speaks openly about a horrific childhood that would have broken and scarred a much weaker child.

He never knew his father. His mother abused alcohol. Her boyfriends, one of whom was his stepfather, abused her. And little Keith Bulluck was too often alone — sometimes for two days at a time — and virtually helpless.

"You know your mom's getting her (butt) whupped, you know what I'm saying?" the veteran the Giants have tabbed to replace Antonio Pierce at middle linebacker was saying yesterday. "Sometimes I would try and interfere, but what can you do?"

He bounced around Rockland County, living with his grandmother in West Haverstraw, with his two older brothers in Spring Valley. Then his stepfather moved the boy to Nyack, where he befriended a classmate named Danny Welch, and his mother, Linda. Then his stepfather died, and a courageous boy's life thankfully changed inside a New City foster home.

"I was supposed to stay there for two weeks, and two weeks turned into six years," Bulluck said. "Linda Welch, she wanted to do the responsible thing and . . . didn't know what to do, really. I guess then that's when Child Protective Services came in and she did what she had to do to become my legal guardian, and the rest is history."