TV presenter Katie Piper has spoken out about her struggle to find love and trusting men following an acid attack that left her with facial disfigurements.
The 30-year-old, who became a mother for the first time in March, revealed in her latest autobiography Beautiful Ever After, how she never thought she would kiss a man again after the 2008 attach which was arranged by her rapist ex-boyfriend.
In excerpts included in the Mail On Sunday, Katie revealed:
“Often I’d get chatting to a guy and he would seem interested in everything I said. I’d get excited, feeling sure we’d really connected.
“The next day I’d be gutted when a text message arrived asking me to open his village fete or draw the raffle ticket at his work Christmas do.”
The blonde presenter went on to detail one experience, where a banker ‘Ryan’ walked out on her mid-date, without letting her know he was leaving.
Katie believes that Ryan, who she had met in a nightclub, got up to ‘talk to some colleagues’ after seeing her in the light, but failed to return to the table:
“I felt hot, sick and embarrassed all at the same time. I had to face the fact he’d left. Humiliation and nausea washed over me. My voice wobbled when I asked for the bill, my hands shook as I paid.”
Katie, who has undergone more than 100 operations to repair her face, has since met a carpenter James, who is father to her daughter Belle.
She added: ‘I learned the hard way in my mid-20s you simply can’t control everything that happens to you. If you try to change the things you can’t, you’ll tie yourself in knots – and you may miss out on the good things and new opportunities that might be right in front of you.’
