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| Before and after acid-attack photos of Naomi Oni (2012). |
The store assistant had just got off the
bus and was talking to her boyfriend Ato Owede, 23, on her phone when she felt
someone walking behind her in Lodge Avenue in Dagenham at around 12.40am.
She said:“I’d been working a late shift
and was talking to my boyfriend about what we were going to do for New Year
when I saw this Muslim woman wearing a niqab covering her face. I thought it
was a bit strange at that time of night, but she didn’t say anything and I kept
on walking.
Then I felt a splash on my face. It
burned and I screamed out. I started running and screaming, holding my face,
all the way home. I didn’t look back.
I got home and I was screaming and
banging on the door. I was hysterical. Luckily my godmother, who is a
pharmacist, was at home with my mum and she helped me and kept dipping my face
in water and trying to calm me down until the police and ambulance got there. I
was in shock. Saying: ‘Who would do that? Who would do that?’ How could anyone
do this?”
Ms Oni
sustained burns to her face, neck, arms, legs and body. She was released from
Broomfield Hospital's burns unit last weekend after spending almost a month in
specialist care.
She has
released images of her shocking injuries in the hope they will help police find
her attacker, whose face was unrecognisable under a veil.
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| Niqab-clad women in-front-of Victoria's Secret. |
"I
look in the mirror and it just isn't me. I'll never look the same again. I've
always been outgoing and confident in my job and in my personal life, used to
getting attention for the way I dress or my hair, but now I don't want anyone
looking at me," she said.
"I
don't want people to see me in public. I don't want to get the tube or the bus.
If I have to go to the hospital I take a taxi. I don't know if I'll ever be
able to go back to my job. I was planning to go to college in September to
study media and fashion, but I don't even know if I'll be able to do that."
Ms Oni
has been left with only partial vision in her right eye and is facing extensive
skin grafts and surgeries. With her
attacker still at large, she said she no longer felt safe at the council flat
she had shared with her mother, and the pair have since moved to a friend's
house.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said acid
attacks were “extremely rare” and that detectives were keeping an “open mind as
to the motive.” Officers from Barking and Dagenham are investigating. No
arrests have been made and inquiries are ongoing.
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| Niqab-clad Muslim women in East London. |