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I think there are so many different reasons for self-injury and self-injurers from all walks of life... that I don't agree. I've seen self-injurers who post who are abusive towards their children or who put their children in abusive or otherwise negative situations because they don't care enough for their own selves, their own happiness, to work towards lifting themselves out of the negativity that tends to drive a lot of self-injurers.

I am the daughter of a former self-injurer who was verbally and emotionally abusive. When he found out I was self-injuring he punched himself in the face, his glasses caught, and he started bleeding. That was the overt. There was also the covert where he would beat his legs black and blue after screaming at me or one of my siblings.

I think that it's nice to think that by self-injuring and not learning to deal with pain or negativity in a less self-destructive way we are saving others pain but I think that the best way to save others pain is to learn to deal with our pain and transform it into something better.

I can't say I've never caused anybody pain by self-injuring. I've screamed, thrown accusations, struck out physically with my nails (though not since my teens), etc. I remember all the tears and pain my family has gone through during all these dark years. Most of the time they remain unaware of individual acts of self-injury but the mental illness that is behind my self-injury and other self-destructive tendencies, the self-hatred, the physical scars, they are completely aware of and it has caused a lot of pain. 

Self-injury does not exist in a vacuum and I don't think self-injury is a cure for abuse -- either sexual, physical or verbal/psychological -- directed towards children or other people. If people are going to abuse, they are going to abuse whether or not self-injury is in the picture. 

Bottom line, treatment of past abuse or treatment of an underlying mental illness or treatment of whatever other stressors drive self-injury will do far more towards making a self-injurer good to themselves or other people than self-injury.