Christy Sims started a foundation to help violence victims after her ex-boyfriend, Andrew Fordham, disfigured her.
A woman whose ex-boyfriend disfigured her when he threw acid in her face is now working as an advocate for domestic violence victims.
Christy Sims, who has launched the Christy Sims Foundation to help others, was seriously burned in 2013 and finally saw her ex-boyfriend get locked away this summer.
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In a chilling 911 call of the incident, the ex, Andrew Fordham, is heard saying that her painful injuries were the result of an accident.
"I need an ambulance!" he says in the call. "My girlfriend, I think it's drain cleaner. We were just putting it in the toilet and we slipped."
“She fell?” asked the dispatcher.
“Yes! Send the ambulance now!” he said.
He claimed she fell into a bucket of industrial-strength drain cleaner. Her face was splattered with sulfuric acid.
“I was being burned alive,” Sims told INSIDE EDITION. “Literally the skin burned off my upper torso. They use the skin from the back and front of my thighs to repair. They used my stomach to repair my face."
Sims slipped into a coma. When she woke two months later, she learned that the police had deemed the incident to be an accident.
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That's when she told authorities it was no accident - that her boyfriend had deliberately doused her with acid because she was breaking up with him.
Police listened to the 911 call again, and there was a telling moment when Sims said:
“I can't open my eyes!”
You can hear Sims pleading with him to rinse off the acid. “I hate you! I can't see! Get this off me!” she screamed.
Her boyfriend ignored the instructions. “They told him to rinse it off. He came over to me in a calm voice and said, 'Baby, just sit there. They said not to rinse you off,’” Sims told IE.
Incredibly, he let the acid burn into her skin for 10 full minutes before the ambulance arrived.
“I was a pretty woman. He definitely wanted to disfigure m. He wanted me to be unattractive to any other man,” she said.
A jury found Fordham guilty of aggravated assault earlier this year. At his sentencing in Georgia, Sims stared down the man who destroyed her beauty.
“I'm so sorry for everything that you've been through for the past two years. Not in a million years would I have ever done this to you intentionally. This was an accident,” said Fordham.
“I did not believe his apology whatsoever,” said Sims.
Neither did the judge. “It will be 20 years to serve in the state penal system,” said the judge.
Sims now has to wear a compression mask following dozens of reconstructive surgeries.
“No amount of time would justify what he did to me because I have to live like this for the rest of my life,” said Sims.
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