Naomi Oni, a Nigerian acid attack victim today granted her first TV interview on the programme This Morning.
Oni, 21, was said to have been walking home on December 30, 2012, when a corrosive substance, later identified as acid, was thrown in her face by her friend, Mary Konye, wearing a niqad veil to cover her face.
The attacker, also 21, was later arrested and found guilty of the crime.
Oni said: ‘I was told there was no way of finding who this person was and after being questioned by the police and realising they were looking at me, trying to say that I done it to myself, I thought this is not going to happen.
Read the Daily Mail report below:
‘I’m not going to sit there and let them tell me that.
‘So I decided to come on the show and let everyone know what’s happened to me and let them know that someone is out there that attacked me.’
She added: ‘Knowing that someone had burnt your face, literally burnt you alive, that is horrific and to look at yourself in the papers and see something else.
‘Then to be told that you’ve done this to yourself – I had no clue what was going to happen to me.
‘That should not have happened to me and I should not have been accused.
‘It was horrific. I was in hospital getting my eyelids repaired when I heard what had happened.’
Brave: Naomi Oni breaks down in tears speaking on This Morning when she said she felt suicidal
Admitting that it made her feel suicidal, Miss Oni said: ‘I felt like I was left alone.
‘I felt like authorities and support teams that I should have been getting didn’t want to help in terms of my housing and I felt like someone has randomly attacked me, destroyed my life, taken my face, and now my whole life was being taken away from me. I don’t feel like a normal young girl.
‘I felt like “this has happened to you, deal with it” – it does make you feel suicidal.’
CCTV footage obtained by police after the attack showed Konye following Miss Oni as she left her job as a shop assistant in Victoria’s Secret in Westfield Shopping Centre, Stratford, East London.
False allegations: Naomi Oni spoke about being accused of dousing acid on herself for fame and money
Konye, who will be sentenced next month, now faces jail after she was found guilty of the acid attack at Snaresbrook Crown Court last week.
Miss Oni suffered serious burns to her face and chest, lost her hair and eyelashes, and required skin graft surgery to cover the burns.
Talking about her attacker she said: ‘She was a close friend and I’d known her since I was about 11.
‘I believe, from what I hear, that she’s always had a jealousy, a type of hatred, which I didn’t realise.
‘She would be very on and off with me. She’d treat me like a puppy, pick up and drop me.
‘One minute she’s not friends, one minute she’s friends and as we got older I feel like it just spiralled.’
Hmmmmmm dis bad close friend my foot .
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