“I can’t tell you what it will be like to look at my face again,” said Lynda Moore as she tried to hold back tears when asked about her impending facial restoration through reconstructive surgery.

A Seattle resident, Moore is one of the 1.3 million women who have reported being a victim of domestic violence in the United States just this year; nearly 8,000 were reported in Seattle during 2006.

She speaks across the country about domestic violence awareness and is now the executive officer for Let’s Come Together, a non-profit outreach center mainly for victims of domestic violence. Moore looks forward to the visits that she will have with Dr. Philip Young, a Seattle-based facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon who will operate on her in the coming weeks.

Young, a Seattle local, received his bachelor’s degree from the UW in molecular and cellular biology. From there he went to the Tulane University School of Medicine and received many honors, including the McGraw-Hill Award for Outstanding Academic Acheivement, given only to the top two students in a two-year period. He trained with top plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills and world-renowned surgeon Dr. Frederick Stucker in Louisiana. Young is double board certified by the American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and the American Board of Otolaryngology in head and neck surgery.

Along with his wife Katrina, Young recently opened a new practice in Bellevue called Aesthetic Facial Plastic Surgery for facial cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery. In starting his own practice, he hopes to do more than just face-lifts by performing surgeries on those who have suffered facial deformities from birth or on clients such as Moore who have endured severe trauma under domestic violence.

“Because I have been going to China and Vietnam to do this abroad, I thought, well, I want to do more here,” he said.

Young just returned from a week-long medical mission to Linyi, China through Face to Face International, a non-profit organization that helps women and children in foreign countries who have been abandoned due to facial deformities caused by birth or trauma, or have suffered from domestic violence, war and natural disasters.

“As a participating surgeon for Face to Face in Vietnam, I worked on around 10 cases, including cleft lips, palates and injuries on women that suffered from domestic violence,” he said. “During my recent 10 days in China, I was the primary doctor for two children and one woman with more complicated cases.”

Through this charitable association, the long process of emotional and physical healing for local victims of domestic violence can be shortened as Young will take on several pro bono cases this year, Moore being one of them.

In Moore’s case, her face was left scarred from the attacks that fractured both her eye sockets and tore an earlobe.

“He took a dimple out, he ripped out my ear, can’t wear earrings … had both my eye sockets broken,” Moore said. “When I look in the mirror, I know its me, but somehow or other, it just doesn’t look like me … I don’t look like me.”

To perform facial reconstructive surgery after a violent trauma can be a challenge.

“Blood vessels and tissue may have suffered damage and require grafts, which I have training and experience in performing,” Young said.

Not only is Moore grateful to have Young get rid of the visible scars left on her face, she hopes to forget the damages done that can’t be seen.

“I have scars on the inside too,” she said.

Young believes there’s a connection between physical healing and emotional healing.

“There are endorphins in the brain that help your healing and that’s really based on how well you feel. I think eventually they’re going to prove … how a person feels or looks on the outside will affect how well they feel on the inside,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time before they come up with studies showing that.”

He told a story of an individual with a deformed nose, saying that after the cosmetic surgery, that person regained his confidence and his way of life.

The individual who underwent the surgery told him: “Before I had this procedure, I would not want to leave my house because I had this thing on my nose. I didn’t feel confident. But after I’ve gotten this done, I can go outside. I feel so much better.”

Similarly for clients like Moore, it is not only an issue of restoring how she looked before her injuries occurred, but more importantly, how she felt.

“It’s these [scars] that make me feel older than I am,” she said.

Last year, Young published a ground-breaking theory on beauty that won him the Sir Harold Delf Gillies Award for Best Basic Science Research Paper by the Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in 2005.

In his paper, Circles of Prominence, he laid waste the model sense of beauty by the rules of thirds and fifths as developed by Leonardo da Vinci and explains the dimensions your eyes look for when looking at a face in defining aesthetics.

“If you have something that’s visible physically, it’s a constant reminder of what has happened to that particular person, the whole incident,” said Katrina Young, the co-founder of the AFPS.

Through pro bono, the Youngs can give back to the community while their clients are left overjoyed.

“This is unbelievable to me that someone would give of their time and money, for me,” Moore said.

For Young, to work on clients such as Moore is about more than healing them physically or restoring the function of their bodies.

“Helping people feel better ultimately means the most,” he said. “I feel honored that my experience and pro bono services may help victims recover physically.”

Reach reporter Brian Farn at features@dailyuw.com.