Sally challen and malice aforethought

[jessicawessica]

Whilst i have every sympathy with her 40 years living with an abusive and coercive husband, i can't help wondering how the court of appeal missed one vital issue.
She didn't go to her ex husband's house, get into an argument, find a random hammer lying about in the kitchen, then beat him to death. she already had the hammer in her bag when she arrived at her ex husband's house.
Ergo malice aforethought. Or am I missing something?

Bugs I think you raise a valid point but I wasn't sure how to express it because thankfully I haven't been in that position. You put up with all sorts of shit if you think you are truly the one and are loved.sally Challen thought they were getting back together that no matter what he'd done he loved her. The infidelity showed her he didnt he would never change and he was cruel
The Guardian article is quite telling she is the only one talking about loving and missing him.

If you haven't read the guardian article, it is difficult to imagine reading it and not being convinced she should be free and would never harm again.

Her husband was abusive, manipulative, raped her and their sons would testify against him.

Sadly she still loves him, proving, probably, his hold on her.

I’m troubled by the fact she took a hammer with her in her handbag. It implies premeditation to resort to some kind of violence at least. That being said, her husband sounded like a total cunt and her life a living hell. She should be pardoned. She’s served long enough and she’s not a danger to the public.

What a terribly tragic story. That man ruined her life, living and dead. She never had a chance.

There is a very good Real Crime Profile podcast on this where one of her sons talks to Laura Richards. LR is a psychologist/profiler who was instrumental in pushing for reforms to domestic violence laws to include coercive control.

It’s worth a listen as the discussion is very detailed with lots of information that just never makes the press.

www.stitcher.com/podcast/wondery/real-crime-profile/e/55280704

"But it obviously was premeditated because she went to his house with the hammer in her handbag. what did she intend to do with it?"

Defend herself.

This is were the law let's Women down. When faced with a violent man, unless we are armed, he can easily kill us.

There's Women who have to sleep with knives under their pillow, in case their Partner decides he will kill her, instead of 'just' assaulting her.

Yes, we should end abusive relationships, but we now have a full understanding of the psychological effects of abuse.

"I’m troubled by the fact she took a hammer with her in her handbag. It implies premeditation to resort to some kind of violence at least."

No, it is called, wanting to stay alive.

He was abusive, maybe she had the hammer in her handbag as a means of defence against him, should she have needed it? Having a hammer on her doesn’t mean she intended to go and initiate an attack. It does not mean it was premeditated. It means that it could have been premeditated. It doesn’t prove beyond all reasonable doubt that she intended to go there and kill him. There is doubt there.

One woman with a hammer against a violent abusive thug is a pretty big risk to take, given that women are physically smaller and weaker than men. It is unusual for a woman to attack a man in this way because of the risk of being overpowered, with a weapon like a hammer you have to get up close to the person, so, as I say very risky for a woman to do that to a man.

Anyway, her appeal will be heard on all of the evidence not just this one small factor. Her family are supporting her, they know what her husband was like.

I think a missed point is that whilst she had left the marriage, he still coerced and controlled her. Remember she was with this man since she was 15, he had lived and controlled her for 40 years, he damaged her so much that she could not live a life alone, she thought she needed him but she also hated him.

Love and hate are two sides of the same coin.

Having the hammer with her? Well she probably dreamed about killing him because she lived him and he was hurting her so badly, but the damage he caused could not let her just leave him.

I think so e posters have missed the point that she was so badly psychologically damaged by him.

I pray the retrial means she'll go free. Her life has been ruined by a monster!

I also have issue over the fact that they had already separated once, but he then returned
If you've not lived it, I genuinely think it's impossibly hard to fully understand. Ive seperated from my DV husband. 4 months later I'm happy, but seeing him calm and sweet makes me miss all the good things about him, my brain and no doubt Sally's, after such a long period really loses sight of what normal is....so you end up wanting the good side of that person back in your life. I'm fighting myself so hard about this. I sadly can understand fully how it occurred and I dont think it's anything to do with wanting lifestyle perks, as you suggested. It's very difficult to unpick decades of mind-fkery :(

The complexity of the issues here, both legally and around the issues of domestic abuse, are way above the capacity of people who are not experts in the fields. The problem we have is marrying the two teams together. It is simply a question of whether her circumstances make a difference in law or not. Sometimes no matter how sympathetic we may feel, the law is not able to change the outcome. I don't think armchair lawyers and psychologists as we are can have a prayer of getting it right. This is actually no place for an emotional reaction which is what we are doing. One woman's experience cannot be reflected by another
, We all respond differently to chronic abuse. I don't know what the mental conditions are that have been spoken of.
Op you are making some judgments that may be right or may be wrong. The facts are that we don't know. As in all these cases we unexperts seem to have strong opinions ( classic case Jamie Bulger) It sounds crazy but emotions must be put to one side

As a pp mentioned, what’s happened is that she is getting a new trial as certain evidence on her mental state was not presented at trial.

As a general comment though I am uncomfortable with a reduced sentence in this case. Perhaps she was abused (that’s for the court to decide after hearing the evidence) but it seems that the trigger for her to beat him to death with a hammer (for those who say it was some sort of self defence she has made no allegations of physical violence or need for self defence) was his infidelity. She was not trying to escape from an abusive man but to punish him for cheating. As a society we must recognise the value of all human life. While I think he sounds like an awful man, he had the same right not to be beaten to death as everyone else.

As a general comment though I am uncomfortable with a reduced sentence in this case. Perhaps she was abused (that’s for the court to decide after hearing the evidence) but it seems that the trigger for her to beat him to death with a hammer (for those who say it was some sort of self defence she has made no allegations of physical violence or need for self defence) was his infidelity. She was not trying to escape from an abusive man but to punish him for cheating. As a society we must recognise the value of all human life. While I think he sounds like an awful man, he had the same right not to be beaten to death as everyone else.

And she had the right to not be mentally abused, your opinion is exactly why a retrial had been decided. You can mentally abuse somebody and it's every bit if not more harmful than physical abuse.

So, if she had a black eye and broken nose, then she has the right to fight back, but the coercion and mental abuse she should just absorb.

You could have a physically abusive partner, but they mentally empower their partner and that gives the partner ability to leave or like this man you can get one who doesn't physically abuse, but mentally reduces the person to thinking they cannot live without him.

I am quite shocked that in 2019 people still believe that unless a marriage is physically abusive then it's not really abusive. It's totally depressing that this line of thought is still around.

I haven't really read enough of the detail of the case to be able to comment, but my impression from the interviews that I've read with her sons is that the husband's infidelity wasn't a separate issue to the abuse, but central to it. Namely, he was a serial cheat who would repeatedly gaslight her and tell her that she was mad, that the evidence of her own eyes was wrong. Coming from a family where gaslighting was the norm, I know that that kind of thing can break down your whole personality over a period of years. So it's not as simple as saying "if he was that bad, why didn't she want to see him with someone else?" or "well, the alleged abuse was wrong but she didn't kill him over the abuse, it was about the cheating" . Could have been the last straw in a process of him denying her reality and making her thing she was "crazy" over decades.

(I'm a civil lawyer, not a criminal lawyer, so I'm commenting here on the possible emotional logic behind her actions, not the law. Although I agree with a pp that, last time I checked, "malice aforethought" wasn't a synonym for premeditation).

Zsazsa it’s way more complex than you’ve outlined. Manslaughter may have been the more appropriate charge, in which case her sentence would have been much lower.

Does the hammer imply pre-meditation or self-protection?

"The majority of women who leave an abusive relationship do not go back.
And I speak from experience."

Do you have a larger sample than yourself? I thought a lot did go back. Sally had been with him since she was 15 so knew nothing else and had not developed as an independent adult.

@Nanny0gg I think the hammer implies unable to think straight anymore, so mentally abused and destroyed that all reasonableness has gone. If you are mentally abused for 40 plus years, it won't leave you without damage.

Ok, so my husband breaks my arm, it heals, he breaks it again, it heals, again and it's not healed to week, breaks it again and again and it can no longer heal. It's ruined, destroyed, can't use it successfully anymore.

This man broke this woman's mind, over and over and over, she was literally driven insane.

*healed to well, not to week!

Ahhh....so the ‘he made her do it; he deserved it’ defence. FFS - you can’t take a hammer with you to a meeting and beat someone to death with it. If the genders were reversed, there would be no way it would be acceptable - she was an nasty, abusive bitch who was having an affair so I beat her to death with a hammer?? She killed him in a rage because she was jealous because he was having an affair. And you don’t need a hammer to defend yourself against mental abuse and gaslighting! Terrifying precedent will be set if this is accepted and it will be women who will the victim of it. “She was a mentally abusive to me, she was having an affair, she asked for it ....”
The fact that the victim was a shit is immaterial - the law shouldn’t only protect those who we deem worthy.

@Noname99 I hardly think it'll set a precedent, not many (hopefully) are as extremely abused and coerced as Sally. No one has said she should not stand trial, but not for murder.

As previous PP has said, it wasn't the "affair" it was the gaslighting, the continuous mind bending abuse. So self defence is allowable, but only if physical abuse it present. He broke her mind, because he wanted to! Why didn't he say he didn't want a reconciliation? Why didn't he stop contact with her?

And just think about it for a second... he was beaten to death with a hammer. Would you even watch that in a movie plot line where it’s not real. A human being was battered to death with a hammer.......I feel physically sick at the thought of it.... t’s sick.

Yes Sally was indeed sick, she wasn't born that way, the abuse mad her that way.

No one is saying that abuse can’t be mental
as well as physical. What I’m saying is ‘self defence’ of mental abuse is not to crush someone’s skull with a hammer.

What is self defence of mental abuse then, remember the abuse was over 40 years, she was very damaged by him. His own family support her. This is I will agree a landmark and extreme case and she deserves to be heard again, now we know and understand coercion.