It's a story of survival and sisterhood

Spending time in a female prison has helped presenter and activist Katie Piper put aside her preconceptions, and acknowledge the trauma that leads women to commit crime

- SALLY SAUNDERS

Katie Piper is counting her lucky stars today, and when someone who has suffered as she has tells you they're feeling fortunate, you can't help but listen. The TV presenter, writer, activist and model has spent the past few months jetting back and forth to America, spending weeks at a time in female prisons, to explore how women parent behind bars.

And it is an experience that has made her very grateful for her own upbringing. We weren't wealthy - we didn't have a lot of money - but we had our parents' time, and we had consistency and stability. I now realise we were really privileged. It was a really rich childhood,' she says.

It's the polar opposite of what she has been witnessing, meeting women incarcerated in the US who are desperately trying to raise their children within a prison environment.

But it wasn't an experience she had planned. 'It isn't necessarily a place I would have naturally been drawn to; it wasn't something I put myself up for. But I was contacted by a group at a women's prison in the UK. They were looking at women who had inspired them, and they'd done this project on me. They'd even named part of the prison after me!

"They asked if I would come in and meet the women, and I felt like I couldn't really say no, they'd put so much time in. It wasn't something that I would have volunteered myself for without prompting, but I hold my hands up now and say that my prejudgment was completely wrong: it wasn't as black and white as I thought.'

Piper says that working with the women, both in the UK and later in America, 'opened her eyes' to the realities they have faced in their lives.