Visit With Oliver Last Monday & His Injuries (Punched and Scratched)

I documented my son's injuries last Monday, even though the state was writing it all off.

He had several same-type bruises on his legs, which looked like fingerprint marks on some parts, and he had dark bruising on the backs of his thighs. He pulled down his pull-ups to use the toilet and there was also a small mark where it looked like a tiny piece of skin had been picked off--a layer of skin. The square scratch mark was gone from his bottom. But there were other marks.

The other thing I observed Monday was that Oliver was very subdued and didn't want to talk about his owie on the side of his face, which was shielded with a band-aid.

I noticed his nose, the bridge of his nose, was swollen and slightly blue like he'd been hit there somehow, and there were tiny scratches on top of it. He had dark red-purple circles under his eyes from what appeared to be crying. I asked if he'd been crying a lot and he said yes.

He didn't want anyone to remove the band-aid but I looked underneath and there was a whole section of skibn that was scraped off. Like an entire layer, and then there was red burst blood vessels stuff under but barely noticeable. It looked very, very, new like it had happened the day before or that morning. More like the day before.

The monitor told me Oliver had gotten into a scrap while playing and then HE picked off his scab. What I saw was NOT a "picked off" scab. It was a section of skin which was missing and so new it hadn't even bled.

I saw my son's face and his behavior and knew he'd been punched. It looked like someone had attacked my son in the face. And he had the behavior of someone who was afraid to talk about it, who had been abused.

Today, he told me how it happened, and I'll go over that in my next post.

I had to conceal my own grief of seeing my son like this.

So we played and he wanted to imagine different things. First I said we could pretend we were camping outside and he was into that. He turned off the lights in the room and said there were stars and a moon on the ceiling and then turned the lights on for "morning". Then I said we could pretend we were a tain and traveling and we linked up and he got behind me, knowing how to make a train and then pointed things out along the countryside.

I asked him, "What do you see?" and he said he saw a plane.

I asked him what color the plane was and he said, "white". Then he said, "A plane and blocks." He kept saying there were blocks by the plane. Then I asked if he saw any animals and he said yes, he saw Bambi and Bambi was working on the plane and waving to us. Then, he said Bambi had moved on to work on a car. He said some other Disney characters were waving at us too.

Then we did some fishing and the fish were all green again. And we read sonme stories and at the end, he said he didn't want me to go and that he wanted to stay with me. I told him I was working hard to find someone who would help us see eachother more and he nodded very enthusiastically and said, "Okay!"