The Marks We Stop Seeing

Yesterday, a young couple in Singapore were jailed over the death of their eight-month-old son. He had been abused for most of his short life, and no one stopped it.

Abuse often leaves signs. Sometimes, the hard part is recognizing what we’re seeing.

Before I became a psychologist, I taught swimming to people with physical and intellectual disabilities. One of those swimmers still haunts my mind.

He lived in a children’s home. His skin was so leathery that he looked like an old man, and it was covered in unusual marks. There were so many that we assumed they might be part of his condition.

One day, I asked his social worker, a highly respected professional, what she thought the marks were. She said she'd never really thought about it.

“They look like cigarette burns,” I said.

She was horrified.

I didn’t know whether that was what they were. But until then, we had treated something we couldn’t explain as something we didn’t need to question.

None of us had deliberately looked away. He was gentle and appreciative, and those qualities were easier to see than his scars.

Shortly before Christmas, I asked how he felt about the holidays. Speaking with great difficulty, he said, “No money. No fun.”

I wondered what going back to his family for the holidays might mean for him.

I only knew him around the pool, and I never found out what happened to him.

But I still think about how familiar those marks had become. How easily we had explained them away.

And I wonder whose marks I’ve stopped seeing since.