Featured Image Credit: Instagram/katiepiper_
Topics: Mental Health, Health, UK News, Crime, Celebrity
Olivia Burke
Topics: Mental Health, Health, UK News, Crime, Celebrity
If you're ever in search of a source of inspiration, just take a look at Katie Piper.
The model, mum, activist, writer and TV star is living proof that in life, it's not about the cards you're dealt, but how you play the hand.
Despite suffering life-changing injuries in March 2008 after a horror acid attack orchestrated by her ex-boyfriend, she has gone on to achieve great things.
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She first shot on her screens 16 years ago with Channel 4's hard-hitting documentary, Katie: My Beautiful Face, where she bravely shared her experience with the world.
Nowadays, Piper's got a string of presenting gigs under her belt, has released a best-selling autobiography and has even earned a coveted spot on the Loose Women panel.
But her ordeal still haunts her to this day - as the Hampshire-born star recently revealed she has 'reached the end of the road' after many years struggling to remedy the damage to one of her eyes.
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She was blinded in her left eye when she was ambushed in a London street by Stefan Sylvestre, who her former partner Daniel Lynch had enlisted to help him with the sick plot to mar Piper's beauty.
As well as this, the 41-year-old was left with devastating burns across her face - forcing her to undergo over 400 surgeries to repair the damage.
In an emotional appearance on The Recovery podcast in 2020, Piper recounted what happened on that fateful day.
She explained that despite trying to cut ties with Lynch, he was 'ringing her constantly' and 'wouldn't leave her alone' - before he then changed tactics.
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Lynch, who was jailed for life with a minimum term of 16 years for recruiting Sylvestre to hurl the acid, then informed Piper that he had sent her a heartfelt email which he wanted her to read.
"I was like, 'Well, we don't have any internet, we didn't pay the bill'," the model said. "I lived opposite an internet cafe, so he said, 'Go across the road and read this email and I promise I'll never talk to you ever again'.
"So for me I was like, 'Oh finally, I can get rid of this psycho!' So I left the house."
But what Piper didn't know at the time was that Sylvestre was lying in wait, armed with sulphuric acid.
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She continued: "Then this guy comes towards me with a hood up and a coffee cup, so I was like, 'Oh this poor guy is like begging'.
"As I turned away to get the money out, I'm like, 'Oh s**t, this guy has just thrown petrol at me and flicked a match at me, because my body is so hot'. I'm on fire.
"So that's what I thought had happened to me, but in fact, he had thrown a full cup of sulphuric acid in my face. For ages, I thought I was on fire.
"And then annoyingly, because it's London and rush hour, everyone ignored me. Because it's not visible like fire. It was ages until I got help."
Piper explained that she was left in 'phenomenal' pain but somehow managed to stumble into a nearby cafe to seek help before she was then rushed to hospital.
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Heartbreakingly, her mother Diane revealed that although her daughter was unable to speak, she was jotting things down on a notepad - and in one note, Piper simply wrote: "Kill me."
The star faced a gruelling road to recovery and has undergone hundreds of surgeries and procedures in the years since her ordeal.
But amid all the pain, Piper found the courage to face the outside world and pursue her dreams of becoming a TV star - which, as we all know, she made a reality.
"At that moment, I decided to take control of my future," Piper said.
In 2009, she set up the Katie Piper Foundation to raise awareness for burn victims and those who have suffered other disfigurement injuries.
Piper got hitched to carpenter Richard Sutton in November 2016, who she shares daughters Belle Elizabeth and Penelope Diane with.