Victims ‘For survivors, the aftermath is a life sentence’
Katie Piper, now a television presenter, said she and other victims of acid attacks faced a “life sentence” as a result of their injuries.
Miss Piper has undergone more than 250 operations since her ex-boyfriend ordered an attack on her nearly a decade ago. The 33-year-old was left partially blind, with severe scarring to her face, chest, neck, arm and hands, after sulphuric acid was thrown in her face.
In a moving, open letter in the medical journal Scars, Burns & Healing, published a day after the attacks on moped riders in East London, she wrote: “I couldn’t recognise myself when I woke up from a coma, and I wanted to commit suicide.
“I will continue to need operations and therapy for life. For acid attack survivors, the aftermath is a life sentence.”
The Metropolitan Police has reported a huge rise in acid attacks in the past two years.
In April, at least 12 people were treated in hospital for acid burns after an attack in a nightclub in Dalston in East London. In February, three schoolboys, aged 12, 13 and 15, were arrested in Dagenham over an alleged acid attack in a school.