When Katie Piper realized she really wanted a third child, things turned out very differently for the TV star.
Locked up in a Louisiana jail, Katie Piper had an epiphany – she wanted another baby. The TV presenter was spending a month with female killers in America’s Orleans Parish Prison to find out how they ended up there. Away from her daughters, Belle, 11, and Penelope, seven, and listening to the prisoners who were missing seeing their own children grow up, Katie decided the time was right.
“There are so many women who miss their kids,” Katie says. “It started to make me think, ‘ This is my last chance to have another baby, I’m going to be 40. And I’ll never do it if I don’t right away. ” Richard Sutton’s husband and Katie spoke to her when she returned home. “I was turning 40 in the October”, says Katie. So I said to my husband, “If we want another baby, let’s do it now,” and we immediately made an effort.
However, while they were trying to conceive, Katie needed an emergency operation on her left eye, which was damaged when a man she briefly dated had an accomplice throw acid at her in 2008. “I had quite a traumatic event with my eye. I had to have a general anaesthetic and you can’t be trying for a baby and also be having unexpected surgeries,” explains Katie. “So that scuppered that and we had a break. We tried again, but it just didn’t happen.”
Katie considered turning to IVF, but after having had more than 250 operations since the attack, she couldn’t face more hospital appointments and the potential heartache of it not working. Reluctantly, Katie gave up her dream of a third child. “My eye surgery made me realise I don’t want to do IVF,” she said. “I’m done with medical things and hospitals. I didn’t think it would be good for me.”
However, Katie still felt something was missing, especially as her daughters had been so keen to have a baby sibling. So Katie started volunteering at a dog rescue centre. That led her to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home and it wasn’t long before Alison Hammond was helping her choose a puppy to take home.
The trips to Battersea were family occasions, with Katie determined to only get a dog if the whole family was on board. “We’ve had rabbits and hamsters, but it was me cleaning them out all the time,” Katie says. While still trying to get a baby, we started volunteering and dog walking, and the result was a happy ending. So we got our dog from Battersea. I went to meet Alison after the mother and there was a litter of eight that had been dumped. I handled them all, and Alison helped me choose the ideal female dog for our family with a calm temperament after we spent some time with her.
They called the half cockapoo pup Sugar. “It was like a proper democracy,” says Katie. “You had to put the names you wanted in a box and we drew out each one and voted.” With Katie promoting Locked Up In Louisiana and the launch of her new book, Still Beautiful, looking after the puppy has fallen mainly to Richie. “He’s been sacrificing work to be at home, because it is like having a newborn baby,” says Katie. “He’s done very well toilet training her. “We walked around like insane midlife crisis people with this dog in a baby sling. And the kids had a buggy with the puppy in it because she can’t touch the floor outside until she’s had all her jabs.”
Now 41, Katie’s upcoming book talks about ageing well and knowing your worth in a society that worships youth. When Katie was just 24 years old, her appearance forever changed. I saw how society treats women who lose what they would consider their most valuable assets: youth and beauty. I learnt that at 24, and when you turn 40 people are ready to devalue you once again. I’m only halfway through if life expectancy is our eighties.
“What happens to women as they age, generally, is they become more financially secure, more stable, more independent, more established and usually more successful. So it’s really weird to associate only negative connotations with ageing. I’m so grateful for being alive. Deborah James, Bowel Babe, would love to have gone past 40. It’s insulting to devalue that.”
In the 17 years since being held hostage for eight hours, raped, and then attacked with acid, Katie has established an enviable career, a beautiful home, and a loving family unit. In spite of the mental and physical scars inflicted by her attackers, Katie remains resilient and unbroken.
Incredibly, she refuses to be afraid, and as her own children get older and start putting their independence to the test, she is determined to keep her family safe from the brutality she endured. You can’t avoid crime, asserts Katie resolutely. “You’re almost in victim-blaming territory if you think you can because you’re almost saying, ‘ Only a certain type of person is on the receiving end of this, and
I’m not because I’m more cautious. Once you’ve been a victim of something like that, you go to therapy to find there is nothing you could have done. You don’t go jogging alone in the dark, just like you don’t cross a motorway, you don’t take unnecessary risks. You’re more likely than not to be attacked and raped while driving.
Katie’s kids have always known how she got her scars. When they first started kindergarten, they realized their mummy had a different appearance, and the judge had always criticized the attack as “pure, calculated and deliberate evil.”
“I’ve always talked about what happened and how,” says Katie. “Of course, it provokes a reaction from them; ‘Does this happen all the time? Why did it happen?’ Also young children don’t understand adult relationships and they have natural questions like, ‘Why did you date anyone other than Daddy?’ So we have conversations that you might not have with your children. But we’re a unique family.”
“I wouldn’t want to frighten my children,” adds Katie. “I wouldn’t want to hide my 11-year-old away from the world so that she is incapable – and then is vulnerable and does get taken advantage of. I want to equip her with common sense, knowledge and logic. I think being streetwise is really important.”
Katie’s attackers were both given life sentences in 2009. Stefan Sylvestre, who threw the acid at Daniel Lynch’s request, has since been on the run while under the influence. Despite her ordeal, Katie regularly volunteers in women’s prisons and believes that the majority of prisoners can be rehabilitated.
She interacts with women who are currently awaiting trial for murder in her most recent TV show, Locked Up In Louisiana. Following on from her previous series, Jailhouse Mums, which featured motherhood while incarcerated, it is now available. “Gun violence is rife and violence against women is rife”, says Katie. Despite the fact that the law doesn’t protect them from defending themselves, many women were in the position of shoot or be shot.
Many prisoners shared their stories with Katie because she has spent many years as a volunteer in British jails. All too often the story was the same. They carry weapons, are assaulted, and shoot, Katie asserts. They are currently imprisoned because there is no self-defence law.
It’s a complex subject and Katie understands there are two sides to every story, asking, “If somebody shot your son or brother in what they say is self-defence, how would you feel”? Katie can’t help but feel sympathy for the women who have been separated from their children after listening to them and seeing their agony.
Katie may seem like she is unique to killers, but she is aware that a person’s entire life can change in a single day. “It is quite sobering knowing that none of us are really that far away from prison”, says Katie. It might be a bad day, a bad choice, or a bad set of circumstances. Many women could be dead themselves if they hadn’t committed the crime they did.
Source: Mirror
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