An Acid Attack Survivor, Naomi Oni Recounts How Her Best Friend Attacked Her And Her Ordeal Afterwards Is Touching

Naomi Oni, 25, was left scarred for life when acid was thrown in her face in December 2012, at East London; by her jealous friend, Mary Konye while she was on her way home from work.

The memory of the strange woman in the niqab will always haunt her. Five years on, Naomi knows she can never forget the image of that figure swathed in black, her unflinching gaze — and then the sudden, searing shock of the acid as it hit her face.

Konye had been driven wild with jealousy over her friend’s good looks and plotted to destroy her life but a brave Naomi says she will not let the attack ruin her and has even forgiven her attacker, who still shows no remorse despite being jailed for 12 years in 2014.

Konye, of Canning Town, East London, was jailed in March 2014 for 12 years for the horrific attack after police reviewed the CCTV footage of Naomi being followed home from Westfield.

Naomi, then 20, was just five minutes from her house when the unexpected happened. She says that at that moment she felt very uneasy and attempted to cross the road to distance herself from the stranger but as she turned her head, she felt a splash and what happened next will forever be like a dream, Dailymail reports.

“I remember being on my way home, getting something to eat. ‘I got off the bus and I was on the phone to my boyfriend. ‘I had a funny feeling – I looked behind me and saw a person in a niqab. I don’t remember hearing footsteps or seeing anyone getting off the bus after me

No words were spoken. There was no dialogue. I looked back and remember the person just staring at me. The eyes were cold – it was a cold stare.

That’s when I thought, someone’s out to kill me. I thought, “this person is not going to take my life”. I just started running straight home. I knew it was acid. It feels like something is eating away at your skin. I felt it most on my scalp, more than on my face.”

Naomi, the beloved only child of Marriam, who had had to raise her single-handedly after her husband returned to live in his native land -Nigeria, had never been wayward or troublesome, it was gathered.

She went to a strict Catholic Convent School in Forest Gate, East London, and her bond with her mum was particularly strong because Marriam has albinism, which has caused her sight to deteriorate.

”After the attack I asked “why me?” I work so hard, I’m a good person. I was shouting all sorts of things. I started to question so many things. Am I a bad person? I don’t argue, I don’t like confrontation. Being an only child I shy away from it. I like to keep myself to myself in my own little corner.’

The attack has had a huge impact on my life. I’ve found it difficult to get close to people since the attack, especially after being betrayed so terribly by someone I thought was a friend.

I’ve got scarring on my face, neck and chest and there have been times when I’ve felt suicidal. After the attack I couldn’t bear to look in the mirror or leave the house.

When I saw my face, I couldn’t stop crying. I thought, “Who’s going to want to marry me like this?” I felt so low, I didn’t want to live. The guy I was seeing looked past my scars to the person I am inside.

He said I was gorgeous and completely took me by surprise – he approached me in the street and said he’d read about my story and thought I was so inspirational that he wanted to take me out.

Things didn’t work out with us and we’re just friends, but it’s boosted my self-esteem. It made me realise the attack doesn’t have to ruin my life.”

So brutal was the attack that the scars are all too apparent five years on. Naomi was left with 3rd degree burns and doctors feared she may be permanently blind as a result.

Mercifully for Naomi, her sight slowly returned but the restoration of her vision brought new trauma — when she caught sight of her disfigured reflection in a hospital mirror, she contemplated suicide.

”I thought: “I’m never going to look like myself again,” ’ she says. ”I had no hair or eyebrows. My eyelids had been burnt off. I couldn’t recognise myself. A slab of my thigh had been grafted onto my face where my cheek had been burnt away.

I just couldn’t take it in. I couldn’t stop crying. I looked at this vision of my face in the hospital bathroom and just slid down the wall.

I didn’t feel grateful I was alive. I felt angry and thought: “What is the point in living?” I thought about taking my life. But then I gathered myself. I imagined my mum’s face and thought: “I couldn’t do it to her. I couldn’t leave her.”’

Her beautiful face was ravaged, and her eyelids seared away. She looked, as she now recalls; to coincide with a BBC documentary about the attack, “as if I’d melted”.

One would imagine that such an event would have left Naomi, now 25, bitter and numb with rage. Not so! With extraordinary grace and courage, she says she has forgiven her attacker — a young woman whom she had considered one of her closest friends, but who had been driven wild with jealousy by Naomi’s good looks, popularity and bubbly personality.

”I do forgive her. I owe myself the freedom to move on. But I still think she is a callous, vindictive person; a complete coward who betrayed me.”

The woman who had disguised herself by wearing traditional Muslim clothing was Mary Konye, a friend Naomi had known since they were both pupils at St Angela’s Ursuline School.

The court heard Mary was ‘obsessed’ with Naomi and so jealous of her looks that she’d attempted to destroy them.

Konye is now serving a 12-year prison sentence for the attack, for which she has shown no remorse. Naomi, meanwhile, still reels at her former friend’s horrifying treachery.

The night when it happened — December 29, 2012 — is indelibly etched in her memory. She’d begun work at 7pm. It was her turn to do a late shift, but she was loath to go.

”We had a family gathering at home. My godmother, uncle and several cousins had come over from Ireland, and Mum was cooking. I didn’t want to go to work and leave them all.”

But, once at work, the camaraderie of her colleagues buoyed her up. She remembers laughing with them before they all dispersed to go home at 11.30pm.

Naomi went by Tube from Stratford to West Ham, then Barking, where she caught a bus.

”It was late, so during the journey I was keeping myself company by chatting to my then boyfriend on the phone,” she recalls. ”It was reassuring to talk to him.”

And then, in a matter of seconds, her life changed. As the acid hit her, she screamed and fled home to her shocked family.

Naomi’s auntie Nelly, a pharmacist, knew instantly what had happened. She helped Naomi out of her clothes and washed her in the shower to try to dilute the potent effects of the sulphuric acid. Her mom called for an ambulance and her uncle, Charles called the police.

”They washed my eyes with saline and yellow mucus kept pouring out,” she recalls. ”I drifted in and out of consciousness. I remember voices saying “corrosive substance” and “badly burned”.

”I couldn’t see. They told my mum and uncle, but not me, that the chances of me getting any sight back were small.”

Throughout January 2013, she remained in the hospital where she underwent two skin grafts. Her eyelids were reconstructed with skin from behind her ears, and her face rebuilt with skin from her right thigh.

And while, in the aftermath of the attack, the law student boyfriend Naomi had may have ‘drifted away’, today she wisely says: “He was shallow. He just liked me when I was attractive.”

There have been no boyfriends since and her longed-for career as a make-up artist has been stalled. Companies that make their money from selling perfection appear reluctant to employ someone with the disfigurement that Naomi has.

”People stare,’ says Naomi. ‘But I’m learning to block them out.”

Though scarred, Naomi remains striking. There is, too, a defiant beauty in her bravery- her determination not to be cowed by the tragedy, and the courage with which she faces the world each day.

She has completed her course in make-up but has also been rejected from countless jobs.

”But when I look in the mirror, I do feel sad,” she admits. ”I think a lot about what might have been and where I’d have been today if I hadn’t been attacked. When I look back at old photos of myself, I see an innocent girl with big dreams and aspirations, wanting to make her family proud.

”There are still days when I’m unhappy, but I tell myself I’ll overcome it. If something catastrophic can change a life in a second, then great things can happen, too.

”After the attack happened, I thought no man would want me. What I’ve learnt since is that the right guy will see beyond my scars. I’ve become a better judge of character now. I also know that the man who marries me will be lucky to have me.

Photo credit: PA/ Roland Hoskins