When she was 4, her mother poured gasoline on her to fight lice and she found herself on fire and with a deformed face

When I barely had Chatrity Sutter, four years old suffered an accident that would change his life forever. His mother, in a desperate attempt to eliminate the lice that afflicted him and which persisted despite all the remedies they had tried, He decided to spray her head with gasoline and after a walk in the kitchen, a spark set her daughter on fire, deforming her body and face forever.

“It was my grandmother who came up with the idea. She told mom that they were using kerosene to treat head lice at the time and that it worked better than anything else she had tried. Looking back, I don’t know how he even thought it was a possibility, it was so dangerous. “ Charity, now 21, told The sun.

The young woman now lives in Flint, Michigan, United States, and remembers her tragic accident as if she was telling something unusual. Although he was able to move on with his life, he never came to forgive his mother for what he did.

According to Charity, chic was a epidemic in his family nucleus, since they had also affected his sister and cousins, and that meant that when a child seemed to come out of the annoying parasites, the others would contaminate him again.

Therefore, and advised by the grandmother, Charity’s mother opted for the supposed home remedy. He decided to take some gasoline he had extracted from his lawn mower and cover the heads of the young girl and her sister with the highly flammable substance. She did this in the bathroom and after leaving the kerosene in their hair for a while she rinsed it out, braided it and went into the kitchen to cook dinner.

Charity says she remembers her mother in the kitchen, and that at one point she lit a cigarette. She was nearby and a bit of burning ash fell on her head. He was immediately set on fire.

“I remember it smelled so bad it almost made me sick. We went downstairs and she started to cook dinner. I went to talk to her but she was smoking a cigarette and the ash fell on my hair. With kerosene and standing next to a lit burner, I set myself on fire like a bonfire “, said the young woman.

Charity ended with burns third degree which covered 60% of your body and he was lucky to survive.

“I remember my mom screaming, but strangely, I don’t remember the smell because most of my body caught on fire. I think it was so traumatic that I saved it somewhere in my memory ”, added.

Charity’s mom tried to put out the flames, wrapped her in a towel and carried her out of the house, suffering from burns to his chest and arms in the process. A neighbor who saw the smoke and fire called for help and her mother ran to get her sister out of the house, who luckily escaped unharmed.

But it was unclear whether Charity would survive. “They took me to a local hospital, but my burns were so severe that I was airlifted to the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor, which has a specialized burn unit. He had burns all over his face, neck, left arm and parts of his left leg. I had back burns and the doctors said I had third degree burns on over 60% of my body. “, said the young woman.

At that point, her life changed from being a normal girl to being an inmate for months and years in hospitals, go to the operating room several times to undergo skin grafts.

The first interventions, painful skin grafts and plastic surgeries, They did so with her in an induced coma, which lasted for months. “Really, I’m glad I don’t remember the pain I must have felt. I remember the nurses and doctors being very kind to me and the physical therapy I received daily to firm my skin and help me walk again. I was very determined to be ‘normal’ and my goal was to go back to school to see my friends. “says charity.

As Charity lay in hospital and struggled to survive, local child welfare services her mother was forbidden to be with her. His father eventually got full custody while he recovered. According to Charity, her mother had a drinking problem.

Getting back to normal life was a challenge, the young woman grew up overprotected by her father and had a very lonely childhood. But he says that all started to change when he entered Michigan’s Great Lakes Burns Camp, a burned children’s center, at the age of 8.

There she met friends and learned to accept herself, to realize that it was not just her burns but what was inside her. Teachings he took with him as he grew up.

Now, at 21, she can’t wait to make a difference for other young people who are going through situations similar to the ones she has been through, so she is training to become a burns nurse.

In addition, it has a fireman boyfriend named Jacob, also 21, whom she met on the dating app.

Charity still does not see her mother and says their relationship is “complicated”. “I can never forgive her for what she did to me. She has never apologized or accepted responsibility and that really bothers me. It’s good because I can’t waste my precious time worrying about her. I still can’t believe she thought it was okay to put kerosene in our hair. I am very happy that the same has not happened to my sister “, he stressed.

For charity it is important Inspire it is up to others not to give up and to keep fighting for their dreams, even if adversity takes the form of terrible burns all over the body. “Believe that you deserve to be happy and it will come”, complaints.

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