Katie Piper rushed to hospital as effects of horrifying 2008 acid attack continue to manifest
LONDON, UK: Katie Piper said she was recently taken to a hospital for an emergency operation after she was attacked with sulphuric acid, which left her face severely burned and blind in one eye. The TV host, 38, began dating Daniel Lynch in February 2008 after the two started messaging on Facebook. However, the relationship turned into a horrifying experience when Lynch raped Piper and then ordered a friend, Stefan Sylvestre, to carry out an acid attack in 2008. Piper was put in an induced coma for 12 days and also had to undergo skin graft procedures.
In her latest Instagram post, Piper wrote, "On Saturday my husband noticed a small black circle in my blind eye, I was excited thinking I had a pupil again, but by Sunday my left eye was extremely painful and couldn’t tolerate light, so I patched it up and put it down to old injuries. I’m used to being in some level of discomfort and I went to work."
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"By Sunday night I felt nausea and in extreme pain. I got in touch with my eye specialist @sherazdaya @centreforsightuk and unfortunately he confirmed the black circle was a hole in my eye and the eye had perforated. This had always been a fear that it would happen," she added. "Yesterday @sherazdaya sourced tissue for me and operated on me. I cannot thank him and his team enough, their knowledge and expertise but also how kind and caring they all are. There maybe some evil people in this world but there are also some pretty incredible people doing amazing things for people on a daily basis. Huge thank you team @sherazdaya @centreforsightuk You are the best!"
Piper recently opened up about how her life changed after the attack. Talking to panelists Christine Lampard, Coleen Nolan and Janet Street-Porter, Piper said, "When I look back on it and reflect, it does feel like two separate lives. I'm 38, but I sort of feel in my 70s or 80s. Because what's happened to me, I've condensed so much into such a short period, and that happen to some people in their whole lifetime."
"In some ways you can take that as a positive - life experiences enrich us, they build our character and we can go onto use that in our future, but in other ways it was a lot. It took its toll on me mentally and physically. Some of the physical changes are still ongoing in my medical journey," she added.
"Nobody prepares for that.. It was like my life was turned upside down in a matter of seconds. Lots of different things happen to people and what's happened to me is obviously more visual, but we all experience trauma in varying degrees. Trauma's a fact of life, but it needn't be a life sentence," she said.
"It was quite complex because when people think of burns, you think of military heroes or burns in the kitchen or fireworks," she said on how her parents dealt with the situation. "I don't think any of us realised how much it affects so many functions and so many other internal medical problems that we had to educate themselves on…" "It wasn't an accident that happened to me. A long legal trial, several different charges that the whole family was affected - my siblings, my parents…," she added.
Reflecting on her childhood and growing up in a small village," Piper said, "I was a tomboy. I had a dreadful haircut - a bowl haircut. My dad was a barber in the local village, and my mum a teacher, so you either had a haircut from my dad or detention from my mother." "It was innocent, I never had any real pain or trauma at all growing up. My mum and dad were invested in us… They weren't about big ambitions, but about independence and making your own way in life," she added.
Piper's attack was caught on CCTV and Sylvestre was arrested soon after. Lynch was arrested later and the pair were both handed life sentences. Sylvestre was released on October 10, 2018, and was again recalled to prison 13 months later but cleared of taking vehicles without consent. A parole board subsequently said he could go free in 2020. Lynch had been awarded nearly £200,000 ($242,333) of taxpayer's cash in legal aid, it was revealed in 2018.