from www.news.sky.com – A model who suffered a horrific acid attack has revealed the harrowing details of her battle to recover.
Katie Piper was beaten and raped by her jealous boyfriend at a London hotel in March 2008.
Steroid-fuelled Daniel Lynch then arranged for another man to throw sulphuric acid in her face as she walked along Golders Green High Street.
The corrosive liquid burned through all four layers of the skin on the 26-year-old’s face and neck.
She was left blind in one eye, unable to eat from the damage to her throat, and in need of over 30 corrective operations to repair the damage.
Lynch, a martial arts fanatic, was jailed for life for rape and arranging the attack on Ms Piper, whom he met on Facebook.
His accomplice Stefan Sylvestre also received a life sentence.
Surgeons at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, led by Dr Mohammad Jawad, had to remove all of Ms Piper’s skin that had come into contact with the acid.
They then used a pioneering technique to restore her face by applying an artificial skin substitute with grafts from other parts of her body.
Waiving her right to anonymity over the rape, Ms Piper will appear in a Channel 4 documentary which she hopes will raise awareness of the plight of burn victims.
She explained to the News of the World: “I’ve decided to tell my story so that people know what these men did to me.
“To help people understand who have ignorance about people that look different, and for people not to be frightened of burns and the stigma attached to it, to understand that it’s still the same person underneath.”
Ms Piper now wears a plastic pressure mask for 23 hours a day to flatten her scars and keep in moisture.
“I was a fun person. I had lots of friends. If I went somewhere and people met me for the first time they would say ‘Oh, you’re really pretty’ and I would think ‘Yeah, I am’,” she said.
But following the attack and only able to communicate by writing, she had told her mother Diane: “Kill me.”
When Katie first saw her face after surgery, she was shocked.
She said: “I remember thinking, you know, ‘someone’s going to have to hand me another mirror because this one is totally broken’. And then I realised that it was me.
“And I just wanted to just smack it in my face and just cut my face open and tear the whole thing off.”
Miss Piper still suffers nightmares about her terrible ordeal and makes sure that every door and window at her parents’ house is locked before bed.
“I think I’ve got the chance to build a life. I don’t think it’s going to be that easy, but I want to try,” she said.
“I want to move on from my attack, and I don’t want to be a scared little child. I want to blossom into a confident, able woman.
“My dream would be just to live a normal life and after all this be able to meet somebody again and learn to trust a guy and the normal dream: a girl wants to get married and have kids.
“Coming to terms with the fact that my life as I knew it before the acid attack was over, and that my facial appearance had changed forever, has been incredibly difficult.”