MODEL KATIE PIPER ACID ATTACK see the video at http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/01/12/katie.piper.acid.attack.cnn London, England (CNN) — Katie Piper had everything going for her — a blossoming career, a wonderful life and a beautiful face. But that all changed after a horrific acid attack in March 2008 destroyed everything as she knew it. The young model and television presenter, who was 24 years old at the time, was leaving her apartment in a London suburb when she was attacked by a stranger waiting for her with a cup of sulfuric acid. Stefan Sylvestre threw the cup of corrosive liquid on Piper, burning the skin on her face, neck, chest and hands. She was also left blinded in one eye. Sylvestre was asked by Piper’s former boyfriend, Danny Lynch, to throw the acid on her face because she ended their short relationship. To make matters worse, two days before the attack, Piper was raped by Lynch in a London hotel room after ending the partnership. “It wasn’t a random attack and there was a motive if you like,” Piper told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Connect the World. Meanwhile Piper’s parents were called by the police to tell them what had happened. “I can remember going ‘not her face, please not her face’,” Piper’s mother Diane wrote on The Katie Piper Foundation web site. “I knew if anything happened to her face as far as she was concerned it would be the end of everything.” Piper spent nearly two months in hospital and was placed in an induced coma for 10 days. The attack also severely damaged Piper’s throat and she was forced to be fed through a tube in her stomach. Today, Piper now wears a special plastic pressure mask for 23 hours a day, in an effort to flatten her scars. “You can see looking at me that it physically changed my appearance, but it goes a lot deeper than that.” “It changed my life as I know it — it changed my career, it changed my relationships with people. Lynch was found guilty of inciting the acid attack in October 2008 and subsequently convicted on the rape charge in April 2009. He was given two life sentences, and will serve at least 16 years in jail. Sylvestre received a 12-year sentence for throwing the acid. With her attackers behind bars, Piper is determined to get her life back on track and rebuild what she can. “Time was a great healer and I’ve managed to not get my old life back, but I can rebuild. And I think I’ve stayed focused and determined.” “It was an attack with the intent to destroy me, and I decided that it wouldn’t destroy me and that I would still have a life. I try to stay positive.” Piper has told her story around the world and has started the Katie Piper Foundation to help raise money for burns victims across the UK. Since the attack Piper has made remarkable progress. Surgeons took the drastic measure to remove the skin from Piper’s entire face and use a skin substitute called Matriderm to re-build the foundations before grafting skin from her back and buttock onto her face — it’s the first operation of its kind to be done in one operation, according to Piper’s Web site. Piper plans to continue her work raising money for burn victims and to help spread the message that there is life after difficult challenges. “I think it’s important to try and set yourself many goals — try to take each day as it comes,” Piper said. “I think there’s a lot of strength that can be gathered from support.” http://www.katiepiperfoundation.org.uk/index.html Dear Katie, you are incredibly smart and focused. And you are still extremely beautiful, in fact he felt…. as you survived and you remain stunning. Why are those things happening in the world? I cannot understand it….. I lost my face in a car accident when I was 18 years old. Unless Katie’s case, it was my fault, I was not playing enough attention to the road and made a fatal mistake, my car bounced and crashed into a stone wall. My 18 years of life played a few seconds in front of my eyes. Then came the crash, inevitable, silent, in slow-motion, then sudden and powerful. When it was over, I thought I had died after hurting the wall, I could hear people screaming around my car and rushing, it was day time on a busy road. Blood was everywhere, the music still playing a silly song on the radio as if nothing had happened. I was afraid the car would explode and burn me alive inside it. But I could not move because of the chock. People then took me out of the car and lied me down waiting for the ambulance. because of the strong wind hurting my opened wounds, someone covered me completely with a blanket, also people arriving on the site were telling each other that I had died. I thought i was dead ut could hear everything like they tell in the movies… Not good feeling at all! The ambulance came quickly and took me to the hospital. All what I could think about at that time, was how much pain I would give to my family…. also I did not want to give any contact details so that nobody could tell my parents… so silly of me. My parents found out that something was wrong when i did not come home at night from College and they found out that I was at the major hospital emergency services into intensive care. I went into a 5 hours surgery, small pieces of glass were slowly removed from my skin and 86 stitches were made on my face only. I stayed in the hospital for 2 weeks and I could not see my face. The building where i was hospitalized was made for people like me or Katie, without any mirror so that we would not crash mentally and I would keep healing one step at the time. I stayed home for almost a year, barely seeing people outside of my relative, doctors and close friends. Until the day I went to see The Police in concert in Montpellier and Sting, the lead singer saw my troubled face (I was in the front row) and he dedicated “Every Breath You Take” to me…. (Coincidentally I met him at the Ritz Carlton gym while I was there exercising as well. I did not mention anything to him of course but remembered it like it happened yesterday). This made me realize that it was time for me to move on and make the best of what my face had became. I have then 4 plastic surgeries withing the 5 following years to reconstruct my face as much as possible. I have many scares on my face, lots of them… but I wear them as jewelry, there are part of me, there are my friends and not my enemies. This is what I always tell women: -”love yourself with your imperfections because they can transcend to become your special charm”. I was chatting with Jennifer Lopez’s bodyguard while she was doing her hair and make-up for a shoot and he said that the best of me was… the scares on my face (he had a lot as well because of a crash and street fights). If you suffered from an accident, if you have scares, if your body is not conventional, if your mind sets you apart, if if if if…… in fact it makes YOU special, unique, different and interesting from others. This is how you have to see it…. BE POSITIVE and cherish yourself, because nothing really matters if you have attitude! Trust me!