After celebrating her 40th birthday in October 2023, Loose Women star Katie Piper has admitted it’s an age she never expected to reach.
The model was ‘shocked’ when people implied that reaching her fourth decade was almost something to fear, as ageing in women is often portrayed, given how she had to fight for her life in her twenties.
Katie first became known to the world in 2009 when she waived her anonymity after an acid attack, fronting a documentary to tell her story after life as she knew it was destroyed.
She suffered life-changing injuries the year before when her ex-boyfriend, Daniel Lynch, hired 19-year-old Stefan Sylvestre to throw sulphuric acid over her, two days after Katie was raped and stabbed several times by Lynch. The acid burned through all three main layers of her skin and melted away her features.
Katie, now partially blind in one eye, was rushed to a specialist burns unit in London, where the medical team operated on the worst injuries they had seen.
Her face was rebuilt using a skin substitute, as Katie had lost her nose, half of her ear, and her eyelids. Her mouth and tongue were also damaged, resulting in a first-of-its-kind procedure for the UK.
In the 17 years since the horrendous ordeal, Katie has campaigned tirelessly, having set up a rehabilitation centre of her own and received an OBE in 2022.
Speaking to The Times for a new interview, Katie reflects on recent years, explaining that she wishes to reach multiple generations with her work, specifically in a bid to remind them that ageing is a ‘privilege’.
‘It was quite shocking for me, because turning 40 was only ever positive,’ she said, having been asked how she ‘felt’ constantly in the lead-up to the day. ‘It was a celebration of my life and reaching a milestone I never thought I’d reach.’
Katie has celebrated many achievements in recent years, both on and off the screen.
She’s helped other survivors transform their lives with The Katie Piper Foundation and released a best-selling autobiography. She took part in Strictly Come Dancing in 2018 and joined the Loose Women panel in 2021.
While Katie is extremely aware of how her name became known, she also doesn’t want all her successes attributed to her trauma.
‘It’s not like I’m an actress or a pop star,’ she said, acknowledging that her burns will always be part of her ‘story’.
‘I came to public attention as a news story, as a victim of a violent crime. I hope, 17 years on, I’m doing something different, but I think it’s probably unfair of me to say, “I don’t want to talk about the burns and the attack anymore.”
‘I think it’s more that I don’t want to attribute my success [since] to that man’s actions against me.’
Katie feels that talking specifically about the attack is ‘attributing what [she] has achieved to his actions rather than [her] own resilience’.
Determined for the attack not to be a ‘noose around [her] neck’, she declared that she is much more than a ‘campaigner’.
‘If I’m seen on Loose Women laughing about something entirely different or presenting a totally different show, the public starts to accept visibly different people doing lots of different things. And that is when inclusion and acceptance happen.’
Shortly after she suffered her burns in the late 2000s, society could not picture Katie going on to live the life she has done, which included marrying Richard Sutton in 2015.
Katie is also a proud mum to two daughters: Belle, 11, and Penelope, seven. She and her partner had to abandon their hopes of having a third child when Katie required emergency surgery on her eye.
For a long time, it was assumed that she would be forever ‘dependent on [her] parents’ and have a ‘mediocre existence’.
Determined to permanently shift that narrative, Katie became the person others could look up to.
‘I had to write the rule book for me,’ she states proudly.
Lynch was convicted of rape, GBH, and ABH and given a life sentence with a minimum term of 16 years after Katie’s attack. Sylvestre was also given a life sentence, with a minimum of six years.
Sylvestre was released after nine years behind bars, while Lynch will appear before a parole board next month.
