Reformed Skinhead Endures Agony To Remove Tattoos

[dave32]

 

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Julie Widner 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 him as a father.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — A reformed skinhead, Bryon Widner was desperate to rid himself of the racist tattoos that covered his face — so desperate that he turned to former enemies for help, and was willing to endure months of pain. Second of two parts.

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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 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 safely remove the facial tattoos. 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.

 

So 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 organizing 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." Jenkins suggested that 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, Leyden understood the revulsion and self-condemnation that Widner was going through. And the danger. "Hide in plain sight," he advised. "Lean on those you trust." Most importantly, Leyden told him to call the Southern Poverty Law Center. "If anyone can help," he said, "it's those guys."

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When Widner called, says Joseph Roy, "it was like the Osama Bin Laden of the movement calling in." Roy is chief investigator of hate and extreme groups for the SPLC. The nonprofit civil rights organization, based in Montgomery, Ala., tracks hate groups, militias and extreme organizations. Aggressive at bringing lawsuits, it has successfully shut down leading white power groups, bankrupted their leaders and won multimillion 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 Roy.

Over the years, Roy had dubbed Widner the "pit bull" of skinheads. "No one was more aggressive, more confrontational, more notorious," Roy said.

 

And yet, over several weeks of conversations with Bryon and Julie, 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 Roy and an assistant flew to Michigan. 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 Bryon 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," Roy said. "This was a guy who was fighting for his life." 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. For his part, Roy promised to ask his organization to do something it had never done before — search for a donor to pay for Widner's tattoos to be surgically removed. Widner didn't hold out much hope. But for now, he agreed not to experiment with acid.

 

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Articles goes on.

[gobbledonk]

So she married a guy who looked like that ?? Words fail me.

[Julian2]

She was from the same back ground.

I wonder what changed their hard line racist views?

[khunsanuk]

Hi,

 

"So she married a guy who looked like that ??"

 

We've not actually seen pictures of her, have we? So, maybe her options were limited

 

Sanuk!

[Flashermac]

I taught a black GI (staff sergeant) at the NCO Academy in the 1990s who told me he had belonged to the Crips. He said you don't leave the Bloods or the Crips, you are in for life. If you try to leave, they will kill you. He joined the Army, figuring it was the best way to stay alive. He said if he ever went back to LA, they would still probably kill him. Nice folks.

 

Glad this guy came to his senses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[gobbledonk]

I taught a black GI (staff sergeant) at the NCO Academy in the 1990s who told me he had belonged to the Crips. He said you don't leave the Bloods or the Crips, you are in for life. If you try to leave, they will kill you. He joined the Army, figuring it was the best way to stay alive. He said if he ever went back to LA, they would still probably kill him. Nice folks.

 

 

I believe that. Some of the shit that goes on in the jails just leaves me shaking my head, and its being replicated here. I dont know why they spend so much money trying to reform hardcore gang-bangers - much cheaper to give them the same 'justice' they seem to think society deserves.