Please Help Malanie Erase a Trauma

I’m setting up this GoFundMe to help someone I love heal by erasing an enduring symbol of trauma. She didn’t want to appeal for charity, but I talked her into it.

Malanie was only 13 when she was tattooed against her will. Her mother—neglectful, abusive, drug addicted—was living with her boyfriend, Scott, a 6’7” ex pro wrestler, neo-Nazi and Satanist who would beat Malanie’s mother in front of her and ran a meth ring out of their house.

Just before her 14th birthday, Malanie got home from school to find Scott and one of his friends waiting with a dirty tat gun. “I heard you’re getting a tat for your birthday,” he'd said—something Malanie’s mother had told him she wanted. But Malanie didn’t want a tat and had never told her mother that she did; she tried to stall but knew she’d walked into a potentially dangerous situation. Scott pressed. “Looking at these two terrifying guys, I realized that if I tried to go in my room things could get worse—I didn’t know if they’d grab me or whatever. I’d tried to stand up to this guy before, and he backed me against a wall and screamed in my face while beating my mom.”

Frozen and half in shock, Malanie didn’t resist as Scott tattooed—badly—a demonic figure, complete with pentagrams, guns and flames, and laughing while his friend, a filthy, scabrous meth addict, held her down. His hand, with its dirty fingernails, inched up her thigh. She panicked and was allowed to get up. “We’ll finish it later,” Scott had said, but he never did—instead he got high and eventually left Hawaii.

At first she tried to live with it. At school, she pretended she’d done it deliberately, too ashamed to tell and retell the real story. Later she tried burn it off with sticks of incense, but all that did was scar her. So she saved, sold her possessions and walked into a Waikiki tattoo parlor with $200, a scared, underage girl. She didn’t care what tat she got, and she hated the black, abstract design the artist came up with. But at least it covered the earlier tattoo.

As an adult, she tried to have it removed, but the lasers at the time were excruciatingly painful and she gave up after two tries. Instead, she approached a renowned tattoo artist to cover it with a floral design, thinking "that if I put something beautiful there, maybe I wouldn’t think of the pain." The first session was promising, but the artist never finished—he “got mixed up in drugs, lost his kids and wife,” Malanie says. “I was like, ‘Not again!’ I just wanted to kick myself.” She never went back, and it remains unfinished.

Now, she says, “I stare at it every day. When I look at my body, my eye goes instantly to it, and the whole sequence of events flashes. Why couldn’t I have had a normal, good life? People always ask questions about it, and it’s in a provocative place for a woman. I’ve been trying to make the best of a bad situation, but it’s a product of abuse.” She's determined to have it removed.

Having lost her job to the pandemic, and living on assistance as a single mother of two, Malanie’s saving whatever she can. Laser technology has advanced to the point where the pain is tolerable, but one session can run $700, and removal will require several. The scar tissue from trying to burn the tattoo away complicates removal and requires more sessions than a tattoo on undamaged skin would. After removal, the scar tissue will likely have to be treated as well. Insurance won’t cover any of this, and Malanie’s been turned down by programs designed to help people remove gang-related tattoos. 

I want so much for her to erase this terrible mark, and I hope some of you—our friends and family—can spare a few bucks to help. Even if we don’t hit the fundraising goal, we’d be profoundly grateful for any contribution. “It’s a reminder of a terrible childhood,” she says. “It would be an incredible relief not having to look down and recall it.”

If we are fortunate enough to reach our fundraising goal, and if there are any funds left over, Malanie will donate them to a local charity that helps at-risk and abused children.

Even if you don’t contribute, thank you for taking the time to read this.