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.
“So many women missed their kids,” explains Katie. “It started to make me think, ‘This is my last chance to have another baby, I’m going to be 40. And if I don’t do it now, I never will.’” Katie flew home and spoke to husband Richard Sutton. “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 started trying.”
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 hamsters, we’ve had rabbits but it was me cleaning them out all the time,” says Katie. “We started volunteering and dog walking while still trying for a baby, and it just came to a natural conclusion. So we got our dog from Battersea. There was a litter of eight dumped with the mum and I went to meet Alison. I handled them all and spent some time with Alison and she actually helped me pick the right dog for us – a female with a calm temperament.”
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. Katie’s looks were changed forever when she was attacked aged just 24. “I experienced how society treats women who lose what they would deem their strongest currency: beauty and youth. I learnt that at 24, and when you turn 40 people are ready to devalue you once again. If life expectancy is our eighties, I’m just halfway through!
“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.”
Katie has created an enviable career, a beautiful home and a loving family unit in the 17 years since she was held captive for eight hours, raped and then attacked with acid leaving her facing years of ill health and surgery. 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 become older and start to test their independence, she’s determined that the brutality she endured will not cast a shadow over their lives. “You can’t avoid crime,” says Katie matter-of-factly. “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 careful.’ Once you’ve been a victim of something like that, you go to therapy to find there is nothing you could have done. Of course you don’t take unnecessary risks… you don’t go jogging alone in the dark, just like you don’t walk across a motorway. You’re more likely to be in a car accident than you are to be attacked and raped.”
Katie’s kids have always known how she got her scars. When they started nursery they realised their mummy looked different and she’s always been open with them about the attack, which the judge condemned 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. Since then, Stefan Sylvestre, who threw the acid on the orders of rapist Daniel Lynch, has gone on the run while on licence. Despite her ordeal, Katie is a regular volunteer in women’s prisons and believes the majority of prisoners can be rehabilitated.
Her latest TV show Locked Up In Louisiana sees her meet women serving time or awaiting trial for murder. It comes after her previous series, Jailhouse Mums, which showed motherhood behind bars. “Gun violence is rife and violence against women is rife,” says Katie. “Many women were in the position of shoot or be shot, even though the law doesn’t protect them from defending themselves.”
Having been a volunteer in British jails for some years, Katie is skilled at gaining the confidence of inmates and many shared their stories with her. All too often the story was the same. “They’re carrying guns, they get assaulted and they shoot,” says Katie. “And because there’s no self-defence law, they are now in prison.”
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?” After listening to the women and seeing their anguish over being separated from their children, Katie can’t help but feel pity.
It might seem that Katie has nothing in common with killers, but like them she knows that your whole life can change in one day. “It is quite sobering knowing that none of us are really that far away from prison,” says Katie. “It could be a bad day, a bad choice, a bad set of circumstances thrust upon us. For lots of women, if they hadn’t committed their crime, they might be dead themselves.”
Locked Up In Louisiana is available from Sunday 27 April at 9pmon U&W, stream free on U. Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.
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