Acid In The Face Of A Pretty Girl: There’s More To The Story Than You Might Think

by John Hawkins | September 17, 2010 1:05 pm

It was one of those disturbing little stories that briefly catches your attention and makes you mutter a little curse about the unfairness of the universe before you move on. A young, pretty girl was randomly attacked, and hit with acid that disfigured her face[1],

A 28-year-old woman severely burned when a stranger threw an acid-like liquid in her face has vowed that the attack will not ruin her life.

Bethany Storro was about to walk into a Starbucks cafe when a female approached her out of the blue and asked, ‘Hey pretty girl, do you want to drink this?’.

The total stranger then threw a cup of liquid in Miss Storro’s face – and doctors believe it was a kind of acid.
She is now recovering in the burns unit at a hospital in Portland, Oregon, having undergone surgery – and she held a press conference today recounting her ordeal.

…Heavily bandaged after her operation, and flanked by her mother and father, Nancy and Joe Neuwelt, she said: ‘It was the most painful thing ever. My heart stopped. It ripped through my clothing the instant it touched my shirt; I could feel it burning through my second layer of skin.’

…She revealed that she had spinal meningitis twice as a child, which robbed her of most of her hearing, and said, ‘Oh my gosh, to be hard of hearing and blind? That would drive them nuts’, referring to her parents.

…She added: ‘They have to be in the same room for me to hear them. I’m just so glad it’s a miracle.’

About her attacker, who struck in Vancouver, Washington, she said: ‘I have never, ever seen this girl in my entire life. When I first saw her, she had this weirdness about her – like jealousy, rage.

‘Was it a dare, or did the woman wake up Monday morning and tell herself that today, she was going to “carry some acid in a cup and throw it on the first person I see?”.’

Vancouver police spokeswoman Kim Kapp said that doctors and authorities are trying to determine what kind of substance caused Miss Storro’s facial burns.

…Dr Nick Eshraghi said Miss Storro suffered second-degree burns and perhaps deeper burns. He added that his goal during the surgery was to remove as much damaged skin as possible.

It makes you want to weep for humanity, doesn’t it? What kind of sick mind would look at Bethany Storro’s pretty face and think, “I’m going to destroy that! I’m going to twist, ruin and deform her for life, just because I can!”

Well, today, there’s some good news. The police have caught the person responsible for the attack. The bad news is that the perpetrator wasn’t as much of a stranger[2] to Bethany Storro as she pretended,

Police on Friday described a Vancouver, Wash., woman who poured acid over her own face and then claimed to have been attacked as an “upset, shaking, crying, very sad, very sad little girl.”

Speaking on the TODAY show, Commander Marla Schuman said investigators had quickly come to the conclusion that Bethany Storro, 28, had faked the Aug. 30 attack, but that “until you actually hear it from her own mouth” they could not be entirely sure.
Police Chief Clifford Cook said at a Thursday afternoon news conference that Storro told detectives the truth during an interview after increasing discrepancies emerged in her story.

Her interview was conducted after a search of her home, which she shares with her parents, police said. Interviews with her family are continuing, they said.

…The revelation followed the cancellation of Storro’s scheduled Thursday appearance on “Oprah.”

Police will turn over their findings to prosecutors who will decide if charges will be filed against Storro.

That is, of course, one of the most bizarre stories I’ve come across in a long time — but, it’s not unprecedented. There were actually monks out there who’ve spent 6 long years slowly, painfully killing themselves[3] for reasons that probably wouldn’t make any more sense to most people than whatever cockeyed reason Bethany Storro had for putting acid on her own face.

It reminds me of something that Margaret Thatcher once wrote[4],

It is one of the great weaknesses of reasonable men and women that they imagine that projects which fly in the face of commonsense are not serious or being seriously undertaken.

There is a moral here: We often assume that people everywhere are roughly the same. They have the same motivations we do, want the same things we do, and can be dealt with the same way that we can. So, that means we can deal with them in the same way someone would be wise to deal with us were we in their place. Unfortunately, that’s not even remotely true. Wise people take that into account when dealing with other human beings, particularly people from alien civilizations, who haven’t grown up in a westernized, Christian, democratic, capitalistic society like America. The more alien the culture, the more likely it is that the people in it have ideas that would be as strange to you as disfiguring your own face with acid.