Abused Woman Wore a Mask for 12 Years and Then Nonprofit Helped Her

Saundra Crockett, for more than a decade, wore a mask in public to hide her face: it was her husband’s deepest and darkest secret.

Crockett, who is from Beverly Hills, California, said, “I wore a mask for 12 years.”

Saundra Crockett : elle porte ce masque depuis 12 ans. En-dessous, elle cache un douloureux secret… https://t.co/ZOMsiVY7h8 via @ohmymagfr — Gomes Arthur (@arthurg49733346) May 14, 2016

At the time, her husband beat her so severely that she got an infection that ate away at her face, she said.

“The first hospital said, ‘You know, you’ve got three days to live and you probably won’t make it,’ ” she told CBS LA this week.

However, she survived but wanted to hide her disfigurement.

“They could hear my voice so they knew who I was but they didn’t know who I was because of my face,” Crockett said. “It was ah … pretty awful.”

Crockett later met a woman named Deborah Alessi, who started a nonprofit called Face Forward, which in seven years has provided reconstructive facial surgery to hundreds of people around the world who have been physically abused. “They have to look in the mirror and be reminded this man or this woman or this mother did this to me,” she said.

Crockett was one of those people who were helped.

“This is a thousand times better than what I looked like when this first happened to me. I don’t think I could even describe how awful it was,” Crockett said.

The nonprofit says that patients have to sign a form saying they’ll become advocates against domestic violence.

(H/T – Littlethings)