Ex-Skinhead Gets His Racist Tattoos Removed After Becoming A Dad

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

no details at the link, not even his name. Just the picture.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/132yamc/exskinhead_gets_his_racist_tattoos_removed_after/

[Deuxcents]

1. If this is true, that took some doing

[Celerity]

2. Erasing Hate: Leaving the Neo-nazi Lifestyle, and Tattoos, Behind

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/leaving-neo-nazi-lifestyle-and-tattoos-behind

2011 Winter Issue

November 15, 2011



Bryon and Julie Widner decided to quit the world of hate. But former comrades, and Bryon’s tattoos, made it an uphill struggle. Bryon and Julie Widner were hard-core racists. Bryon, nicknamed “Babs,” was so committed to the cause that he tattooed his body with racist emblems, including his face, which depicted a bloody straight razor, his weapon of choice. Now 34, Bryon co-founded the Vinlanders Social Club, once one of the most notorious and violent racist skinhead outfits in the country. Julie, now 40, became a leader in the neo-Nazi National Alliance during approximately the same period.

In 2005, Bryon and Julie met at a hate music event and it changed their lives. They married later that year and had a son (they also are raising Julie’s other four children together). After spending 16 years as a vicious brawler and razor-carrying skinhead enforcer, Bryon realized he didn’t want to raise his family in the hostile culture he once embraced. But he knew that his marked face would forever frustrate his efforts to rejoin the respectable world. In a courageous move, the Widners reached out to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), their longtime enemies, for help.

Against daunting odds, both Widners made a permanent break with their pasts. Bryon’s path entailed excruciating physical pain, as he underwent some two dozen laser treatments to remove the tattoos from his face and neck that made it impossible for him to find work. The treatments, which were documented in the recently aired MSNBC film, “Erasing Hate,” were made possible by a generous donor to the SPLC, which had long tracked the Widners. Bryon and Julie Widner spoke to the Intelligence Report in September about the white supremacist movement and why they left it.

What first drew you to the movement?

BRYON WIDNER: I first became a skinhead at 14. We lived in Albuquerque, N.M., in the predominantly Mexican North Valley. When I was young, I didn’t like white people. I learned about skinheads from a relative who was one in the late 1980s. He didn’t indoctrinate me; he just gave me a taste of the lifestyle. To impress him, I shaved my head and drew swastikas and upside-down crosses on my jacket. I got beat up a lot for this. Any normal person would have grown their hair out and quit. I decided to stick with it, probably because in that area white kids got jumped a lot.

snip

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

3. oh.. from 12 years ago... internet folks... always posting stuff as if it's new

[Celerity]

4. he started the operations to remove them on June 22, 2009

https://web.archive.org/web/20111101023655/https://news.yahoo.com/reformed-skinhead-endures-agony-remove-tattoos-162205881.html

On June 22, 2009, Widner lay on an operating table, his mind spinning with anxiety and hope. A nurse dabbed numbing gel all over his face. Shack towered over him in protective goggles and injected a local anesthetic. Then he started jabbing Widner's skin, the laser making a staccato rat-tat-tat sound as it burned through his flesh. Widner had never felt such pain. Not all the times he had suffered black eyes and lost teeth in bar brawls, not the time in jail when guards — for fun — locked him up with a group of black inmates in order to see him taken down. His face swelled up in a burning rage, his eyes were black and puffy, his hands looked like blistered boxing gloves. He had never felt so helpless or so miserable.

"I was real whiny during that time," he says.

"He was real brave," says Julie.

After a couple of sessions, Shack decided that Widner was in too much pain: The only way to continue was to put him under general anesthetic for every operation. It was also clear that the removal was going to take far longer than the seven or eight sessions he had originally anticipated. They developed a routine. Every few weeks, Widner would spend about an hour and a half in surgery and another hour in recovery, while Julie would fuss and fret and try to summon the strength to hide her fears and smile at the bruised, battered husband she drove home. It would often take days for the burns and oozing blisters to subside. Shack and his team marveled at Widner's determination and endurance. The Widners marveled at the team's level of commitment and care. Even nurses who were initially intimidated by Widner's looks found themselves growing fond of the stubborn former skinhead and his young family.

Slowly — far more slowly than Widner had hoped — the tattoos began to fade. In all he underwent 25 surgeries over the course of 16 months, on his face, neck and hands.

On Oct. 22, 2010, the day of the final operation, Shack hugged Julie and shook hands with Bryon. Removing the tattoos, he said, had been one of his greatest honors as a surgeon. But a greater privilege was getting to know them.

"Anyone who is prepared to put himself through this is bound to do something good with his life," Shack said.

[marybourg]

5. Ha, ha. One of the New Mexico hispanic skinheads. This was a big story 30+

years ago when I lived there. They were so dumb, they didn’t realize that skinheads hated *them*, until the reporter told them.

[womanofthehills]

6. I lived in the South Valley in NM for 30 yrs

My family was the only non Hispanic family in the neighborhood. We had a close neighborhood - black, white, Hispanic - all friends. All our kids and grandkids also best friends.

I moved to the country in the middle of NM, but keep in touch with most every family on my old street thru Facebook.

[marybourg]

8. That's how it was mostly. Then there were

these fools. Do you remember this story?

[Baitball Blogger]

7. Love the dad look!

[Karadeniz]

9. He found love and it's transformed him.