Sally Challen met Richard when she was 15. He was 22. They married when she turned 25 and had two children.
From the outside, it was a prosperous household in Claygate, Surrey. Inside, according to her son David, control ruled: humiliation, isolation, money monitored. He had already learned it without having words to name it: “I grew up normalising coercion and control in my home”.
Richard was unfaithful several times. Sally sought medical help for years and in 2009 was referred to a psychiatrist. No one broke the chain.
On 14 August 2010, after discovering that her husband had contacted another woman, she confronted him. She killed him with 20 or more blows from a hammer. The next day, she tried to take her own life on a cliff. She was rescued.
In 2011, a Guildford jury convicted her of murder. The prosecution portrayed her as jealous and obsessive. Life imprisonment. At the time, coercive control was not even a crime.
It became one in December 2015. David knew: that word gave them a language for what was happening in their home. And he began to fight.
In February 2019, the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction. A psychiatrist had found disorders that the trial had never seen. In June, the prosecution accepted her plea to manslaughter. Sally walked free after nearly nine years.
Today, David tells that story in a book, The Unthinkable. He says he buried his childhood with his father and had to dig it up to find the boy he left behind.
Some crimes are judged by what was seen. And years of silence that no one wanted to look at.
