QUOTE : Self-injury may allow abuse survivors to reclaim their bodies in the same way refusing to eat gives anorexics a feeling of control. They may want to make their bodies unattractive so the abuser will no longer desire them. The wounds may also serve as a badge of proof, a concrete marker to punish an abusing parent—and make the other parent, who may not have abused the child but failed to protect her, take notice. In that sense, the cuts and bruises are a symbolic cry for help or a manifesto of resistance, even if inflicted long after the actual abuse. "It's a reliance on a much more primitive system of communication, like saying 'I've been torn open, intruded upon, broken into' in a very literal way," says Michael Wagner. Through this "body language" of blood and scars, they can communicate much more directly and forcefully than they can speak in words.