Rapper Nicki Minaj’s mother, Carol Maraj, who runs a domestic abuse foundation, announced on Friday that she is partnering with a popular New York City plastic surgeon to offer domestic violence survivors free plastic surgery.
Maraj, 63, contends that getting plastic surgery can help fix injuries women have had inflicted on them by their abusers and give them more confidence as they recover from their ordeal.
“So often, when [women] finally break free it is with scars, broken bones, and disfigurements,” Maraj noted during an NAACP-hosted luncheon on Long Island. “We will give these victims a new start that includes helping to restore their physical confidence.”
Cosmetic surgeon Dr. Scott Blyer offered his services pro-bono at the pre-Mother’s Day lunch. He is vowing to help victims with no cap on the price of the surgeries.
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On Instagram, he wrote, “I’m teaming up with Nicki Minaj’s mother, Carol to provide FREE COSMETIC SURGERY TO THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN EFFECTED BY DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, done by your truly❤️•••”
“A lot of women are embarrassed or ashamed or fearful to go to the hospital,” he told those in attendance at the luncheon. “We’re going to be donating our services, all of my surgical fees and so forth will be free of charge for anyone who has the courage to step away from a situation where they were involved with domestic violence.”
“Perhaps a broken nose, a laceration, [is] something where we can help them out,” Blyer altruistically offered.
Minaj’s mother founded the Carol Maraj Foundation in 2013. She recounted what it was like to grow up surrounded by horrific domestic abuse in Trinidad and Tobago.
“I saw my father hit my mother in the head with a flashlight and we just moved on like it was nothing. I came to America and realized this is abuse, this is domestic violence, I’ve been living,” she remarked, according to the New York Post.
The famous rapper’s mother published her memoir “Leaving My Pain” in 2020. In that book, she told of the abuse that she suffered at the hands of her late husband and Minaj’s father, Robert Maraj. The book reveals a terrifying attack that occurred on Dec. 31, 1989, when Maraj was reportedly dragged from her car and subjected to a “rain of blows” to her “head and face.”
“After a while everything felt numb,” she wrote in her memoir. “I felt blood running down my face, my nose was bleeding and I was in a state of shock from that many hits to my head.”
Carol Maraj, the mother of Nicki Minaj, has joined forces with a renowned plastic surgeon in New York City to provide complimentary plastic surgery procedures for survivors of domestic violence. pic.twitter.com/jqYlmicg6I
— Episodes (@episodesent) May 12, 2023
As is so common with victims of domestic abuse, Maraj did not leave her husband after the incident for another 10 years. She only got out once he checked into a rehab center. But she never did divorce him, according to an interview with Hollywood Life in 2021.
Her husband was killed by a hit-and-run driver named Charles Polevich while walking along a snowy road on Long Island in February 2021.
In Long Island alone, over 9,000 victims of domestic abuse came forward in 2021, according to New York State Division of Criminal Justice data cited by NAACP.
According to the New York Post, “Overall, more than 35% of women in the US suffer rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime.”
Miraj also announced on Friday that she will be partnering with Sammy Gonzalez of the Suffolk County Legislature and the Islip Chapter of the NAACP in her efforts to get domestic abuse survivors surgical help.
The Carol Maraj Foundation website asserts that it is dedicated to ending domestic violence and aims to “advocate, help and restore battered women to a place of wholeness.”
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