David Equalizer

Naomi Oni was walking home from her shift at Victoria's Secret when a figure in a black niqab threw sulphuric acid in her face. It burned her tongue, her body, and the eyelids off her right eye. For months, police hunted the stranger in the veil. Weeks after the attack, Naomi threw her 21st birthday party. Her childhood best friend sat next to her and cried. She was the one under the niqab. It was just before midnight on December 29, 2012. Naomi was 20 and worked at the Victoria's Secret store in Westfield Stratford, east London. CCTV later showed a figure covered head to toe in black following her out of the shopping centre, onto the train and onto her bus home to Dagenham. She got off the bus on the phone to her boyfriend. As she crossed the road towards her house, the figure threw a glass of concentrated sulphuric acid at her. Naomi ran to her front door screaming "acid." The woman under the niqab was Mary Konye. The two had been friends since secondary school. In 2011 they fell out after Naomi accused Konye of calling her an "ugly monster" in a text to her boyfriend. During that fight, Konye threatened to throw acid on her. In the video below, Naomi describes the moment of the attack, the phone calls she got from Konye while she was screaming in the burns unit, and the birthday party where her attacker sat beside her and cried. The acid burned her face, neck, chest, hand and thigh. Her hair and eyelashes fell out. She lost the eyelids on her right eye. Surgeons took skin from her thigh to rebuild her face, and at her birthday party she was still on a walking stick. The day after the attack, Konye texted her in hospital: "OMG, I can't believe it." She kept calling during Naomi's treatment, asking if it was really that bad. Police identified Konye in April 2013. She had spent months planning the attack. She had asked Muslim classmates at college where to get a niqab, saying it was for a pretend funeral. Prosecutors said the two girls had once talked about Katie Piper's acid attack, and that Naomi had been deeply shaken by it. Konye knew exactly what Naomi feared most. Before trial, Konye claimed Naomi had planned the whole thing herself for fame and money. In March 2014 she was jailed for 12 years. The judge called it a deliberate and wicked act. Naomi said her attacker's sentence would end, but she would live with her injuries for the rest of her life. Naomi is now 32 and speaks openly about life after the attack. In 2018, she said she had forgiven Mary Konye. Could you forgive a best friend who did this to you?

Robert Chelsea was driving home from church when he pulled over on a Los Angeles freeway to wait for roadside help. A drunk driver slammed into his car and it exploded into a fireball with him inside. The fire took his lips. For years he drank through a syringe like a baby. He couldn’t go near a pool, because the water would pour straight into his mouth and drown him. Children called him a zombie. When his own daughter first saw him, she was terrified. August 2013. He was in his early 60s, with a daughter in college. His car overheated. He did everything right. He pulled onto the shoulder and called for help. In the video below he tells it himself. He was sitting there, waiting. Then the impact. Then the flames. The fire burned his face, his arms and his legs. He spent six months in a coma. When the police called his daughter, she thought it was about money. “I had no clue that I had been that severely burned.” People looked away. Some looked afraid. Doctors said he needed a new face. He waited longer than others, because they had to find a donor whose skin matched his. In July 2019, at 68, 45 doctors spent 16 hours giving him one. He became the first African American, and the oldest person ever, to get a full face transplant. He can eat again. He speaks at medical schools. “I certainly wouldn’t have chosen this route, but I’ve been treated too well to have any regrets.” How do you forgive a stranger who got drunk, got behind the wheel and burned your face off?

Her ex posted her naked photos for millions of people to see. She lost a $100 million court war against the Kardashians, had her body pumped full of silicone, and was drinking so hard she says she was tired of waking up as herself. It all started with a girl who just wanted to pay for college. Then, at 4 a.m. one night, she called her bishop and told him she was deleting everything. In the video below, she explains the moment she decided to kill “Blac Chyna” and become Angela again. Her name is Angela White. She grew up in Washington, D.C. The summer after high school, she started dancing in strip clubs to pay for college. She says the name “Blac Chyna” was born on a strip club stage in Miami. The character took over. Rappers’ music videos. Instagram fame. Reality TV. Then she got engaged to Rob Kardashian and had his daughter. In 2017, after they split, he posted explicit photos of her on Instagram. Instagram took them down. A court gave her a restraining order. But the photos were already everywhere. She sued the Kardashian family. In 2022, a jury ruled against her. She walked away with nothing. In 2020, in the middle of that court fight, she joined OnlyFans. She says she made millions. She had silicone injected into her body. Fillers in her face. She partied. She relapsed again and again. She said: “I was honestly just tired of myself.” In May 2022, she asked friends to find her a church. She got baptized a few days before her birthday. On September 14, 2022, she quit alcohol. That winter, she called her bishop and shut down her OnlyFans. No backup plan. Then she started taking the character apart. She had the silicone removed. She dissolved her fillers six times. She had a breast reduction. She made peace with her estranged mother. Her mother said: “Seeing her sober, no makeup, fillers gone, this is who I birthed.” Today she goes by her real name, Angela White. She says she has been sober since September 2022. Can you really kill a character the whole world fell in love with, and still find the person underneath?

Bunnie Xo’s mother walked out when she was three months old. She says she was molested at 5, raped at 16, and spent her twenties stripping, overdosing on meth, and being strangled by a boyfriend until a doctor found a cracked bone in her face. In 2026, her memoir became a bestseller and Hollywood bought her life story. In the video below, she tells how she survived all of it, in her own words. Her real name is Alisa. She was born in Houston in 1980. Her mother left when she was a baby. Her father raised her. She says the abuse started when she was 5. At 16, she was raped. That same year she had an abortion, and she says complications left her struggling to have children for the rest of her life. Then she started stripping. She remembers her first dance and her first client. She did a scene for Playboy TV. Playboy scouts once told her she was too heavy at 120 pounds. The drugs came with the job. Ecstasy. Cocaine. Crystal meth. She says one overdose left her unable to move for three days. Then came a boyfriend who beat her. She says he strangled her. A doctor told her she had a cracked orbital bone. In Las Vegas, she met a rapper with a face full of tattoos who was trying to get his life together. His name was Jason. The world would later know him as Jelly Roll. They married in 2016. By 2018, she says, they were both fully sober. She started a podcast called “Dumb Blonde” from home. It blew up. Dolly Parton came on. Jon Bon Jovi came on. In 2020, she moved to OnlyFans and reportedly made $50,000 in her first month. Then she walked away from sex work for good. She called it one of the hardest decisions she ever made. In February 2026, she published her memoir, “Stripped Down.” A month later, the studio behind “Yellowstone” bought the rights to turn it into a movie. In May 2026, Jelly Roll filed for divorce. She kept going anyway. She says: “I had faith & let God have it & he made sure I made it back 10 fold.” Can anyone really outrun a childhood like that, or do you just learn to carry it?

At 22, a girl from Washington state flew to San Diego for what she thought was one of her first real modeling jobs. Instead, she was taken to a hotel room, pressured to drink, and raped on camera from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m., and the video ended up on Pornhub. In September 2025, the man behind it was sentenced to 27 years in prison. In the video below, she tells in her own words how she was tricked, and how she took her life back. The ad looked real. Sports apparel modeling. Good money. Flights and hotel paid. A man picked her up at the airport. From that moment, she was never alone and never around other people. They took her to one hotel room. Then another. They pushed papers in front of her she didn’t understand. They gave her marijuana and shot after shot of vodka. She couldn’t leave. They told her the video would never go online. That it would only be sold to private buyers overseas. That no one she knew would ever see it. It was a lie. Within weeks it was on Pornhub. Before she could stop it

At 2 a.m. in August 2014, porn star Christy Mack’s ex-boyfriend, an MMA fighter called War Machine, walked into her Las Vegas home and beat her until 18 of her bones were broken. The moment he stepped out of the room, she ran out the door and went house to house, begging strangers to let her in. Someone finally did. In the video below, she describes the night he tried to kill her, and how she got away. Christy was one of the most famous young stars in the adult industry. Tattoos, pink hair, awards. Her boyfriend was Jon Koppenhaver, a cage fighter who had legally changed his name to “War Machine.” She says he used chokeholds on her during their relationship. She didn’t fight back. Friends warned her to stay away from him. She left him. On August 8, 2014, he showed up at her house anyway. She was home with a friend. He beat the friend, threw him out, and turned on her. He made her undress and get in the shower while he watched. Then he dragged her out and started beating her. He cut her with a knife. Her hands. Her ear. Her head. He cut off her hair. He kicked her so hard her liver ruptured. On the 911 call, you can hear her screaming: “Jon stop! Jon stop it!” She said later: “I believed I was going to die.” Then he left the room. She ran. She went door to door through the neighborhood until someone opened up and helped her. He went on the run for a week. U.S. Marshals caught him in California. The photos she posted from her hospital bed went around the world. Missing teeth. A broken nose. Her face swollen shut. In 2017, a jury found him guilty on 29 counts, including sexual assault and kidnapping. The judge gave him life in prison. He won’t even be eligible for parole until he’s 71. And Christy? She retired from porn. She launched a clothing line to raise money for domestic violence survivors. She testified to his face. She told her story on HBO. She once said that no prison sentence could ever end her fear. But she’s alive. And he’s in a cell. Why do so many women stay, even when everyone around them says run?

A man on a porn set slammed her head into a wall while the director kept filming. Most girls quit within six months. She didn’t. In the video below, she tells the whole story herself, from the trailer she grew up in to the day she decided nobody was going to break her. She grew up in Savannah, Georgia, in a small trailer with no money. Her father was never around. Her parents met working at McDonald’s. At school she was the quiet girl in Walmart clothes and big glasses. Kids made fun of her. But she was brilliant. She finished high school two years early and started college at 15 on two scholarships. She wanted to be a pharmacist. Then she followed a guy to Miami. Everything he’d told her was a lie. His friends stole the laptop her grandmother gave her for graduation, the only nice thing she had ever owned. She ended up alone, sneaking into hotel rooms to sleep. A man who said he was a modeling agent offered her work. Then he told her what kind of work. She hung up. A few days later, she called back. She needed a place to live. Her mom gave her one piece of advice: if you’re going to do this, don’t be the girl who made one video. Be the best. So she was. Directors said she was better than women who’d been there for decades. She won her first award, and it meant everything to her. Then came the assault on camera. She says she gave every sign that she wanted to stop. She called it what it was: rape. She could have disappeared after that. Instead, she stayed, and started speaking up about drugs on set and directors who pressure 18-year-old girls into saying yes. The industry average is six months. She’s lasted nine years. Today she’s 27. She wants to direct. She wants her own studio, her own podcast. She says anything she does, she goes big or goes home. The girl from the trailer survived everything they put in front of her. What do you think made the difference: her mom’s advice, or the fact that she’d already survived worse before she was 18?

In 1972, Linda Lovelace starred in the most profitable adult film ever made. It grossed over $600 million.She was paid $1,250. Her husband took every cent. Fourteen years later, she sat in front of a government commission and said there had been a gun to her head the entire time. In the video below, the most famous adult film star of all time explains what was really happening behind the camera. Her real name was Linda Boreman. She grew up in New York, in a strict Catholic home. At 20, she was in a serious car crash. While she was recovering at her parents’ house, she met a man named Chuck Traynor. At first he was charming. Then he became her manager. Then her husband. Then, she said, her captor. She said he beat her, kept her under control with a gun, and forced her to sleep with other men for money. The film was shot in six days at a motel in Miami. She said she covered the bruises with makeup between takes. Deep Throat became a national phenomenon. Celebrities lined up at theaters. Her name became a punchline on late-night TV. She left Traynor, remarried, and had two children with a cable installer named Larry. In 1980 she published a book called “Ordeal.” The woman who had become the face of porn joined the feminists fighting against it. In 1986, she told the Attorney General’s commission: anyone watching that movie is watching her being raped. Not everyone believed her. Some co-stars called her a liar. She contradicted parts of her own story over the years. The car crash from her youth came back too. The blood transfusion had given her hepatitis. In 1987 she needed a liver transplant. In April 2002, she was in another car crash in Denver. Her family took her off life support three weeks later. She was 53. Larry and their two children were at the hospital. He told reporters that everyone knew her as something else, but they knew her as Mom. Chuck Traynor died the same year. Was Linda Lovelace the industry’s first victim, or a woman who rewrote her own story to escape it?

Bob Costas was 18 when his father dropped dead at JFK airport. At the wake, a man handed him a thick envelope with $6,000 in $100 bills. It was everything his father left behind, and a bookie would never have paid it to a dead man. In the video below, he tells the story himself. His father, John, was a big-time gambler. Not casinos, not racetracks. Ball games. Bob says the mortgage was literally riding on his bets. When the games went the wrong way, he threw things, cursed and yelled. Bob’s mom and sister would leave. Bob stayed, because watching the games with his dad was the only way to be close to him. Friday, May 15, 1970. A cop knocks on the door. Before he says a word, Bob’s mother asks, “My husband’s dead, isn’t he?” John Costas had a heart attack walking through JFK. He was 42. At the wake, one of his gambling buddies walked in with the envelope. “Your father was up when he died. Give this to your mother.” A bookie never pays a dead man, so the friend went to the bookie himself and said John sent him to collect. Decades later, Bob Costas refused to read sports betting ads on air. Today the bookie lives in everyone’s phone. Is that progress?

Dave Foley was ordered to pay his ex-wife $17,700 a month in child support. That was five times what he actually earned. If he set foot in Canada, he would be arrested at the border. When he asked the judge how he’d feed his daughter from his second marriage, he says the court’s answer was simple: “They can rot in hell.” In 1997, Foley was starring on NBC’s NewsRadio and making about $1 million a year. That year, he separated from his first wife, Tabatha Southey. An Ontario judge set his payments at $17,700 a month, or $212,400 a year after taxes, based on his sitcom salary. Two years later, NBC canceled the show. His income dropped by nearly 80%. He went back to court to lower the payments. The judge said no. The court ruled he had made $1 million once, so he should keep paying like he still did. His ex-wife lived in a $2.5 million house on a park in Toronto. Foley rented a small loft in downtown LA. By 2011, he owed more than $500,000 in back payments. Ontario threatened to pull his passport and issued a warrant for his arrest if he came home. In the video below, Foley explains the math: “I’m paying about five times my income every month in child support, based on a show that hasn’t been on for 12 years.” He couldn’t work in Canada again until he landed a new sitcom in 2014 and had his paychecks garnished at the source. The case for the court: a parent shouldn’t get to slash support just because their career slows down. The case for Dave: locking a canceled actor into 1990s sitcom money under threat of prison is extortion. Should child support be tied to what you earn today, or the best year you ever had?