Hand Tattoos Fade Biography
Source(google.com.pk)The tattoos that covered a man's face show the hate that was once in his heart.
Bryon Widner was one of America's most violent and well known white supremacists, and his heavily-tattooed face displayed it proudly.
But after shunning his racist beliefs, he was still unable to get work because of his facial scarring, and went through a long and complicated journey to have the tattoos removed, in the hope of starting his life anew.
It wasn't always that way, and during one of his darkest periods of despair, his wife Julie was terrified — afraid her husband would do something reckless, even disfigure himself.
'We had come so far,' she says. 'We had left the movement, had created a good family life. We had so much to live for. I just thought there has to be someone out there who will help us.'
After getting married in 2006, the couple, former pillars of the white power movement (she as a member of the National Alliance, he a founder of the Vinlanders gang of skinheads) had worked hard to put their racist past behind them. They had settled down and had a baby; her younger children had embraced Widner as a father.
And yet, the past was ever-present tattooed in brutish symbols all over his body and face: a blood-soaked razor, swastikas, the letters 'HATE' stamped across his knuckles.
Wherever he turned Mr Widner was shunned on job sites, in stores and restaurants. People saw a menacing thug, not a loving father. He felt like an utter failure.
The couple had scoured the Internet trying to learn how to remove the facial tattoos safely. But extensive facial tattoos are extremely rare, and few doctors have performed such complicated surgery.
Besides, they couldn't afford it. They had little money and no health insurance.
Desperate: Mr Widner wanted to have his son Tyrson, 4, grow up with a father he could be proud of
Desperate: Mr Widner wanted to have his son Tyrson, 4, grow up with a father he could be proud of
Reformed: Widner, left, and his family pray before their dinner at their home
Reformed: Widner, left, and his family pray before their dinner at their home
So Mr Widner began investigating homemade recipes, looking at dermal acids and other solutions. He reached the point, he said, where 'I was totally prepared to douse my face in acid.'
In desperation, Julie did something that once would have been unimaginable. She reached out to a black man whom white supremacists consider their sworn enemy.
Daryle Lamont Jenkins runs an anti-hate group called One People's Project based in Philadelphia. The 43-year-old activist is a huge thorn in the side of white supremacists, posting their names and addresses on his website, alerting people to their rallies and organising counter protests.
In Julie he heard the voice of a woman in trouble.
'It didn't matter who she had once been or what she had once believed,' he said. 'Here was a wife and mother prepared to do anything for her family.'
Mr Jenkins suggested that Mr Widner contact T.J. Leyden, a former neo-Nazi skinhead Marine who had famously left the movement in 1996, and has promoted tolerance ever since.
More than anyone else, Mr Leyden understood the revulsion and self-condemnation that Mr Widner was going through. And the danger.
'Hide in plain sight,' he advised. 'Lean on those you trust.'
Most importantly, Mr Leyden told him to call the Southern Poverty Law Center.
'If anyone can help,' he said, 'it's those guys.'
Love is blind: Both Mr and Mrs Widner were active white supremacists but worked for different groups
Love is blind: Both Mr and Mrs Widner were active white supremacists but worked for different groups
When Mr Widner called, says Joseph Roy, 'it was like the Osama Bin Laden of the movement calling in.'
Mr Roy is chief investigator of hate and extreme groups for the SPLC. The non-profit civil rights organisation, based in Montgomery, Alabama, tracks hate groups, militias and extreme organisations.
Aggressive at bringing lawsuits, it has successfully shut down leading white power groups, bankrupted their leaders and won multi-million dollar awards for victims.
The SPLC hears regularly from people who say they are trying to leave hate and extreme groups. Some are fakes. Some are trying to spread false intelligence. Many are in crisis, and return to the group when the crisis passes.
'Very rarely have we met a reformed racist skinhead,' says Mr Roy.
Over the years, Mr Roy had dubbed Mr Widner the 'pit bull' of skinheads.
'No one was more aggressive, more confrontational, more notorious,' Mr Roy said.
And yet, over several weeks of conversations with Mr and Mrs Widner, he became convinced. There was something different about this couple a sincerity, a raw determination to put the past behind them and to seek some sort of redemption.
In March 2007 Mr Roy and an assistant flew to Michigan. Mr Roy still marvels at the memory of the guy with the freakish face walking out to greet them, wearing a 'World's Greatest Dad' sweat shirt, holding his baby boy in one arm while a little girl clung to his other one.
Over the next few days they got to see the suffering Mr Widner was going through. They listened in horror when he told them he was considering using acid on his face. 'He was in a bad place,' Mr Roy said. 'This was a guy who was fighting for his life.'
Mr Widner shared information about the structure of various skinhead groups, the different forms of probation in some gangs, the hierarchy of others.
He agreed to speak at the SPLC's annual Skinhead Intelligence Network conference, which draws police from all over the country.
Reputation: Given his storied past, many were cautious of Mr Widner's sincerity
Reputation: Given his viilent past, many were cautious of Mr Widner's sincerity
For his part, Mr Roy promised to ask his organisation to do something it had never done before search for a donor to pay for Mr Widner's tattoos to be surgically removed. Mr Widner didn't hold out much hope. But for now, he agreed not to experiment with acid.
Financially and emotionally, things were getting tougher.
Mr Widner found part time work shovelling snow and odd handyman jobs, but barely enough to support a family. The vicious postings on the Internet continued. Pig manure was dumped on their cars. There were hang-up calls in the middle of the night. Anonymous callers left threatening messages: 'You will die.' Several times, tipped off by sympathetic friends that a crew was on the way to 'take care' of them, the family fled to a hotel.
So when Mr Roy called a couple of months later saying a donor was willing to pay for the surgery, Mr Widner could hardly believe it. The unnamed donor, a longtime supporter of the SPLC had been moved by Mr Widner's story and shocked by photographs of his face.
'For him to have any chance in life and do good,' she said, 'I knew those tattoos had to come off.'
She agreed to fund the surgeries at a cost of approximately $35,000 on several conditions. She wanted to remain anonymous. She wanted assurances that Mr Widner would get his GED, would go into counselling and would pursue either a college education or a trade.
It was easy to agree. These were all things Mr Widner wanted to do.
It would take up to a year to find the right doctors and schedule the operations. Meanwhile, it was clear the family had to leave Michigan. The white power web forums were wild with chatter about the race traitor couple and their family. Through local police, the FBI warned that they were in danger.
In the spring of 2008 they packed their belongings and moved to Tennessee, near Julie's father. They rented a three-bedroom house in the country and joined a church. Helped by his father-in-law and his pastor, Mr Widner found some work. The threats subsided.
Dr Bruce Shack, who chairs the Department of Plastic Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, vividly remembers the first time he met Mr Widner. After seeing photographs and talking to the SPLC, he had agreed to do the surgery. But he was totally unprepared for Mr Widner's face.
'This wasn't just a few tattoos,' he said. 'This was an entire canvas.'
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
Hand Tattoos Fade Love Anime Images Drawings Love Couple Landscape Love Heart Girl God Flower
No comments:
Post a Comment