DEMEANING?
Why DID Vicky, who lost her leg in the Alton Towers crash, pose for this erotic photo? Before you judge her, read this haunting interview
Little more than a year ago, Vicky Balch, then aged 19, passed her foundation degree in international spa management at the University of Derbyshire with flying colours.
Vicky was the youngest of four children and the first in their close-knit family to attend university. Needless to say, her parents, Karen and Brian, a retired postal worker, were extremely proud. ‘i hoped that she’d finish her studies, then go travelling and see the world,’ says Karen, who works in healthcare.
‘She wanted to work at a spa in Japan or China, so she was trying to learn Chinese. then this happened.’
‘this’ was the Alton towers rollercoaster crash on June 2 last year, when Vicky was terribly injured after the steel safety bar of the rollercoaster car in which she was sitting crushed her right leg. For six weeks, surgeons fought to save it but, after six lengthy reconstructive operations, they had to amputate.
‘When the nurse told me, i broke down,’ says Karen. ‘But look at her. look how beautiful my daughter is now. She looks absolutely gorgeous, doesn’t she?’
She does, in a sweet-faced, girl-next-door sort of way. But what mother and daughter are actually here to talk about is the publication of — well, not your average girl-next-door snap.
Recently, Vicky gave permission for photos of herself from a provocative lingerie shoot to be splashed over the pages of a Sunday newspaper. Casting her inhibitions aside, along with her £60,000 prosthetic leg, she was pictured in the sort of racy shots that would make most mothers blanch.
the photos of Vicky in a black lacy bra and stockings provoked a backlash on twitter, with users of the social networking site accusing her of ‘milking’ her injury and calling her actions ‘sad’ and ‘depressing’.
Karen couldn’t disagree more. ‘if you’d told me a year ago i’d be seeing my daughter half-naked in a newspaper, i’d have been shocked,’ she says. ‘We brought her up properly. But when i saw those photographs, i didn’t look at what she was and wasn’t wearing. i didn’t even notice the leg. i just looked at her face — how pretty she is.
‘Victoria cried when she saw them. She felt she’d never look like that again. that’s why we encouraged her to do something with them and show the world you can have control of your body again after losing a leg.’ She stops. Shakes her head. ‘My daughter’s life — all our lives — changed that day. everything she was going to be, everything she’d worked for, was taken from her. For months, it was like having a baby again. i had to wash her, dress her, dry her hair. She was in indescribable pain.
‘the doctors couldn’t control it for five weeks. Some mornings, she’d be clinging to the bed, crying because she was in so much pain.
‘But she has been so brave. She wants to help other people with disabilities now. that’s what drives her. People need to understand what Victoria is going through before they start judging her.’
Vicky is in tears listening to her mum. She is in pain today, but would never complain. She suffers from stabbing stomach cramps, sweats and insomnia as she tries to reduce her dosage of the strong painkillers to which she became addicted after months of surgery.
‘it’s always when i think about my mum that i cry,’ says Vicky as she wipes her eyes. ‘i’m horrible to her sometimes — snappy — and that makes me feel so bad.
‘i get irritated with her. i don’t mean to, but i hate not being able to do things for myself. i was living an independent life at university before this.’
Vicky remembers every moment of that fateful day. Perhaps, in truth, it would be better if she didn’t.
After queuing for 25 minutes, she was with her friend, Daniel thorpe, in a carriage with leah Washington, who also lost a leg, and Joe Pugh when, at the crest of the ride, the Smiler rollercoaster suddenly stopped.
‘We’d been waiting so long, we were that close to walking away,’ says Vicky. ‘A couple in front of us gave up, so we ended up in their carriage.
‘We’d been asked to get on and off several times before the ride, so i was feeling really uneasy, but i didn’t want to be a wimp. then, when you’re finally off, they play a tune that’s really creepy — it laughs at you.
‘When we were at the top of the hill, the car stopped. i wanted to scream “Get me down”, but no one would have been able to hear. there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re not in control.
‘We set off again and i got a really, really bad gut feeling. i was screaming. i didn’t like it. i was scared.
‘then we came round a loop and i saw the car in front of us. Dan told me to brace myself. i thought: “it’s not there. this is a trick of the ride.”
But it was there.
ONlY later did Vicky find out that an empty ride maintenance car had been left on the track.
‘i didn’t close my eyes at any point. We bumped into it...’ She blinks as if trying to erase the image.
‘i remember hitting it. the pain in my legs was...i can’t remember ever being in that much pain. We rebounded, then went back towards it. that’s when i passed out and had a seizure.
‘i woke up to Dan shouting my name. We were still swaying. i was in shock — trying to breathe, not hyperventilate. the pain. i didn’t know what to do. People were screaming. Crying.
‘Over and over, i kept thinking: “When is this going to end? When?”
‘i looked down. My leg was dripping with blood. You couldn’t see the bar, it had gone through my leg that much. All you could see was ripped jeans, blood and tissue. Joe was screaming.
‘i just remember Dan holding my hand, saying: “it’ll be all right” and telling me to stay awake.
‘i kept saying: “i’m never going to be able to walk again.” Blood was trickling out the whole time.’ it took 20 minutes for emergency services to arrive and another four hours and ten minutes for Vicky to be cut from the wreckage. they were unable to give her transfusions because of her unstable blood pressure.
‘A fire officer was holding my hand the entire time,’ says Vicky. ‘He was squeezing it and wanting me to respond, but i couldn’t care. i just wanted to not be there.’ She wanted to die? ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘it was that painful. they tried to saw through the bars or something. We were all screaming. the vibrations hurt the inside of our legs.’
Vicky was eventually lifted from the wreckage and taken by air ambulance to the Royal Staffordshire Hospital.
‘i was constantly asking everyone around me to ring my mum. they wanted to take me to theatre and asked me to sign a consent form to amputate. i can’t remember going under, just waking up. Being in agony.
‘i had a cage on my leg. i didn’t know where i was or what had happened. i just wanted my mum.’
Vicky is crying now.
KAReN recalls: ‘When i got to the hospital, the anaesthetist said they didn’t know if she was going to live or die because her blood pressure was going so high and then so low.
‘He explained that she’d injured both legs, but one was much worse than the other. then he said: “i’ve been holding Victoria’s hand and talking to her. All she keeps saying is: ‘i know this is serious. thank you for helping me’.”
‘i got to the recovery room, saw her and cried. She cried and then she said: “Mum, who’s going to want me like this?” i felt really emotional and said: “i don’t care who wants you. i will always want you. i don’t care if you have no arms or no legs. i am your mother and i’ll always want you.”’
Vicky was taken to intensive care, where she stayed for three weeks while surgeons decided whether to try to save her leg or amputate it. ‘i had no concept of time, but i refused to sleep,’ says Vicky. ‘i didn’t want to close my eyes. i was scared i’d have flashbacks. i was on morphine and ketamine, but still in so much pain that i was hallucinating. i kept seeing dragons.’
Surgeons decided to try to reconstruct her mangled leg, so a nine-hour operation followed. the operations continued for five weeks but, after the sixth, Vicky became conscious of a ‘foul smell’.
‘My friend Hanna was visiting. She’d stay for three days over every weekend. We’d play Monopoly and chat, but that week i slept the entire time. it was as though i’d taken two steps forwards and 200 back.
‘i was supposed to have my last skin graft before going home, but the surgeon said: “if it smells that bad, we might have to amputate.” He came back with a consent form. i said: “if you have to, just do it.’’ ’
Vicky had a panic attack as she was taken to surgery.
‘i remember struggling to breathe as they put me under,’ she says. ‘i woke up, looked around and my mum was there. She was really upset.
‘i looked down and there was a space where my leg should have been, but the pain was gone.’
Vicky doesn’t dwell on those first days of coming to terms with her amputation. Some things are too painful, even for this astonishingly courageous young woman. After eight weeks in hospital, she was discharged to her parents’ care.
‘i didn’t ever see myself being happy again,’ she says.
‘Because of the medication i was on, i put on nearly 2st. that brought my confidence right down. i’d always been around 8½st and was used to getting compliments, but i couldn’t even get into my clothes. i couldn’t wear my
heels, either. I’d look in the mirror and think I was fat and ugly.’
But Vicky is, as her mother says, ‘stubborn and determined’.
‘I saw this counsellor near the beginning who was all about the accident and concentrated on what I couldn’t do,’ says Vicky.
‘She’d say I couldn’t go to the cinema without my wheelchair and I couldn’t do this and that. I was like: “I can and I will.” ’
Indeed, Vicky was expected to be in a wheelchair until 2018.
But within four months of the accident, she used crutches to walk down the catwalk for a fashion show organised by Models of Diversity, a charity that promotes disabled and ethnically diverse models.
The response on social media was overwhelming. The next month, she relied only on a walking stick to collect her degree at her graduation service. Karen says she and Vicky’s father ‘couldn’t stop smiling, we were that proud’.
There have, though, been ‘bad days’: two relationships with men haven’t worked out and friendships have fallen by the wayside.
Inevitably, Vicky has felt hurt and her mother has shared her pain. The lingerie shoot, which took place in June, almost a year to the day after the crash, was a 21st birthday present from her best friend Hanna, intended to cheer her up.
‘When I saw those photographs . . . I never thought I’d be able to look that attractive or sexy again. I was going to keep them for me, but my mum and the rest of the family said: “You need to do something with these.”
‘I hope they show that, no matter what’s happened, you can still do what you want to do and still look sexy.’
AnD what of online trolls such as ‘Cully1701’, who tweeted: ‘Why is Vicky Balch the only one still milking the unfortunate Alton Towers event? Life-changing, yes, but have some pride.’
Vicky tilts her chin, defiantly. ‘Those are just comments from people who hide behind pixellated profile pictures, who try to make themselves feel better by putting other people down.’
Since the shoot, Vicky has had the confidence to move into her own flat near her mum and dad in Preston.
‘I even got a comment on the street the other day,’ she says with a smile. ‘The sort I used to get.
‘In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been able to wear my prosthesis all day. It still rubs and nips, but you just power through it. I’ve started going to the gym and eating healthily. now, I’m more like my old self.
‘People told me I wouldn’t be walking and I am. They told me I wouldn’t be running and I’m going to do that soon. They told me I wouldn’t walk in heels and, if I can help one person by sharing this, I don’t care what the trolls say.’
She pauses. ‘I know this might sound weird. In one way, I’d love to rewind and walk past that ride, but in another I think I’ve become a better person. I’ve realised that life’s not all about going out with your make-up on and worrying what people think.
‘It’s more important to be happy and be around people who love you. I wouldn’t want to be anyone else other than the person I am now.’