Mobilizing to Stop Child Abuse

Instead, the teenager is still being toilet trained and only recently started looking at himself in the mirror -- a feat his parents celebrated, his mother said. He has cerebral palsy, optic nerve damage in both eyes and can walk for short distances, but not run or climb.

"The thing with a brain injury is you can regain what you lost," Sanders said. But with Ryan, "there was nothing to regain."

Pictures on Sanders's Web site -- http://www.sbsprevention.com-- show Ryan a day before the incident, a healthy baby sitting in a tub, and a day later, attached to a ventilator.

Ryan has no idea that he is the baby in the picture that has adorned billboards in several states over the past seven years and now buses, paid for through donations to her organization, Shaken Baby Prevention.

The image appears on eight OmniLink buses in Prince William County, some of which travel interstates 66 and 95. The eight Metrobuses are in Northwest Washington. If the bus campaign is successful, Sanders said, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Florida have expressed an interest in using it.

But how does one measure success when talking about a picture, on a bus, for a month?

Sylvester said that she can speak only from what she has seen but that each time the billboards went up with Ryan's picture, a lull in shaken baby cases seemed to follow. It never lasted long, she said, maybe six months, maybe a bit longer.

"But at least for a short while, it does seem to stop," she said.