acid attack: ‘I’m not angry with my attacker. I just want to know why they did it’ — Naomi Oni

But now, with the attacker still at large, Naomi has appeared on This Morning to say she wants to know who her attacker was – and why they targeted her.
‘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.
Demonstrating extraordinary bravery, Naomi told Philip Schofield on today’s show that the attack had changed her. ‘I feel blessed to be alive,’ she says, fighting back tears.
‘I’m the same personality but stronger.
‘I want to say to my attacker, “you can burn my skin but you can’t burn my soul”. They may have burnt my face but me as a person, they can’t hurt me.’
Before the attack, Naomi says she was a ‘girly’ girl. ‘I took three hours to get ready,’ she said. ‘I was bubbly, friendly. I can be shy and reserved but I was a lovely person.’

Fighter: Naomi says the attack has made her stronger

Before

Now, she has said she finds it hard to leave the house and has to travel to her hospital appointments by taxi.
The attacker is still at large, and the police have no clue as to a motive or an identity .
But despite the shocking suffering the perpetrator put her through, Naomi has managed to find it in her heart to let go of any anger.
When Philip asked what she would say to her attacker if she knew he or she were watching, Naomi replied she wanted them to know the attack made her stronger.
‘I want them to realise the pain they put myself and my family through,’ she said.
‘I don’t want them to do it to anyone else. For other girls to go through what I’ve gone through.’
‘I don’t hate them. I just want to know why they did it.’
‘I hope they don’t do this to anyone else,’ she added. ‘Whatever they tried to do they failed. Because they actually made me a stronger person. I’m actually happy.
‘Whoever they are, if they can come out and reveal themselves, I would just like to know why. I don’t hate them… I just want to know why.’
Naomi, who is the sole carer for her 52-year-old mother at their home in Dagenham, Essex, also revealed the horrific details of the fateful evening that changed her life forever.
‘I remember being on my way home, getting something to eat,’ she says. ‘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.’
Naomi was just five minutes from her house. 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. ‘That’s when I thought, someone’s out to kill me,’ she says.
‘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.’
She arrived at her home shouting and banging on the door, shouting ‘acid, acid’.
Her family came to the door together hinking she was excited about something.
Then when her mother opened the door, Naomi recalls everyone’s faces ‘just dropped’.
‘Within that second my life just changed,’ she says.
Naomi’s godmother doused her with water while they waited for police and an ambulance – which Naomi says seemed to take ‘forever’.
She was raced to hospital where she underwent operations to save her eyes and skin grafts on her head and face.
‘I had sustained burns to my left thigh and right hand. My scalp is burned – I have a bald patch in the middle. They had to put a skin graft over that.’
Naomi says she first realised the extent of the damage when she started losing her vision.
‘When I first saw my face and when I started to go blind I thought that was the end. Thought I’d never be able to see again,’ she says.
‘My vision was blurry – I forgot acid had gone into my eyes. I thought, forget about my face, what about my eyes? I thought I would never again be able to see my family, my boyfriend or my friends.
Then, with the little vision she did have, Naomi looked at her face – and says she was ‘shocked’. ‘I had two operations within four weeks,’ she says, before paying tribute to her loved ones for helping her cope.
‘Without love of my family and boyfriend I wouldn’t have been able to do it,’ she says. ‘I was shocked and angry someone had done that to me – to make me like that.’
Now Naomi, who had dreamed of being a make-up artist, says she will continue to pursue her dream – but she has tweaked her goal slightly.
Now once she has complete her training she plans to work with other women who have suffered facial injuries.
Visit itv.com/thismorning for more.