Music: Dear Mr. Jesus

Sharon Batts is an unlikely candidate for pop stardom. But at age nine the brown-eyed third-grader from the Fort Worth suburb of Bedford has successfully bypassed the music-industry moguls with a hit single about a subject few would pick for Top 40 playlists. "Dear Mr. Jesus,/ I just had to write to you," Sharon's tinny voice sings plaintively. "Something really scared me/ when I saw it on the news./ A story about a little girl/ beaten black and blue." After imploring Jesus to come to the rescue of abused children, the song concludes, "Dear Mr. Jesus,/ please tell me what to do./ And please don't tell my daddy/ but my mommy hits me, too."

Recorded in September 1985 by the Bedford-based Gospel Workshop for Children, a nonprofit evangelical Christian "music ministry" organized by Sharon's mother Jan, Dear Mr. Jesus first aired in 1986 on a Port Arthur, Texas, radio station. Word of mouth and a 4 1/2-minute music video starring Sharon and her doll Bessie slowly spread the song on stations in Florida and Texas, where it attracted a response from hundreds of overwrought callers eager to discuss their own experiences with child abuse.

Last month Scott Shannon, a deejay at New York City's top-rated WHTZ-FM, who obtained a copy of Dear Mr. Jesus from WRBQ-FM in Tampa, played it in honor of Lisa Steinberg, the six-year-old girl allegedly beaten to death while in the care of a Manhattan couple. Within 24 hours, Dear Mr. Jesus became WHTZ's most requested song; it still prompts 3,000 calls a day. Since then, stations across the country have discovered the same phenomenon. Last week New York- based Island Records was one of several companies seeking the rights to Dear Mr. Jesus. It hopes to have the single and a video available in time for the holidays.

Sharon's song is not the first hit about child abuse. Last summer Folk-Rock Singer Suzanne Vega reached the Top Ten with Luka, a more understated and artful approach to the topic. Nonetheless, the mournful plea of Dear Mr. Jesus clearly strikes a chord. "You can go on with child-abuse announcements and public service all you want," says Buddy Scott, program director for WBBM-FM in Chicago, "but this song causes an emotion in you that you really are not prepared for."