CHILD abuse is practically a fetish in “The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things,” Asia Argento’s lurid, over-the-top adaptation of the second novel perpetrated by the literary hoax formerly known as J.T. Leroy.

As we have learned in recent weeks, J.T. and his books were the creation of writer Laura Albert, who among many other lies claimed “he” was turned into a cross-dressing truck-stop prostitute by his mother.

Argento, daughter of Italian horror helmer Dario Argento, directs and plays Sarah, the mother of the J.T. surrogate, who carries his “real” name, Jeremiah.

The director’s bleached-blond redneck, Sarah, makes the Joan Crawford of “Mommie Dearest” look like Mother Teresa.

Fresh out of rehab, Sarah takes 7-year-old Jeremiah (Jimmy Bennett) away from his loving foster parents and exposes him to a life of booze, pills and a revolving door of strap-wielding men.

After Jeremiah is raped by one of his stepdads following an abortive honeymoon with Sarah, Jeremiah undergoes a brief course of psychotherapy with a manipulative shrink (played, with no little irony, by J.T.’s first celebrity pal, Winona Ryder).

He winds up living with Sarah’s Bible-thumping father (Peter Fonda), who subjects the youngster to entirely new forms of abuse.

Jeremiah is an 11-year-old street preacher (now played by twins Dylan and Cole Sprouse) when he is “rescued” by Sarah.

She dresses him up as a girl and puts him to work – when he isn’t almost getting blown up in another male admirer’s crystal meth laboratory.

As if this yarn weren’t hard enough to swallow, Argento tricks up the narrative with cheesy special effects, including animated birds and talking lumps of coal.

“The Heart if Deceitful Above All Things” is watchable in a train-wreck kind of way, but you’ll probably want to take a shower afterwards.

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THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS

[*] (One star)

Spare yourself.

Running time: 97 minutes. Rated R (sexual and physical abuse, profanity, drugs). At the Sunshine, Houston Street and Second Avenue.