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?

Noname. A couple of months ago, John Broadhurst was convicted of manslaughter of his girlfriend of 6 months, Natalie Connolly.

She had over 40 injuries on her body, including a spray cleaning bottle shoved into her vagina, a broken eye socket consistent with being stamped on and bleach sprayed on her face. Broadhurst stepped over her dying body and went up to bed.

He said he didn't mean to do it, it was a sex game gone wrong. He got less than 4 years.

I can find you hundreds of similar examples.

Please don't make out that the law is skewed in women's favour - it's a lie.

I don't where all these MRAs are getting the idea that this case might open the floodgates and men might start getting away with killing their wives and girlfriends for silly reasons. News flash: they already do. I've seen plenty of cases over the years where men got away with, or got paltry sentences for, killing women because "she was nagging me and I just snapped" or "honestly, she loved being beaten half to death and having bleach poured on her, it was her kink, it just went too far this time and I'm devastated" . Or "she came at me and I had to defend myself" when the medical evidence says the opposite. And, in those cases, the MRAs are always the first to say "ah, but it's innocent til proven guilty" and "you can't let sentimentality over the victim drive the process" .

OrchidInTheSun - cross post! Natalie Connolly was the first person I thought of.

If, as she claimed, her marriage was so toxic, why leave then return?

Please look up trauma bonds.

2 women a week are killed by a partner or former partner in the UK. The law does so little to protect women who have left an abusive relationship.

If, as she claimed, her marriage was so toxic, why leave then return?

What about Stockholm syndrome, is this not a similar thing?

Hang on, I have not in anyway said the law is in favour of women!! I said if the genders were reversed, this would be not be getting the support it is. I’m fully aware of the fact that men are getting away with killing their partners on a daily basis claiming consentual ‘rough sex’ or some other bullshit. I signed the petition that asked for a review of the Connolly case. However I fail to see why that means I can’t also believe that battering someone to death with a hammer is an unacceptable response to any situation. Am I supposed to think that because there are so many men out there abusing their partners, I should let one go for my ‘team’? Sorry - no. I’ll say it one more time, battering someone to death with a hammer is never excusable.

If the genders were reversed Sex, the word is sex, not gender, ffs! When you live in fear of your life at the hands of a violent man, who rapes, beats and mentally abuses you, come back and let us know how you feel about that poor woman.

Women who murder their male partners are usually charged with murder because of premeditation. As women are the weaker sex they wait until he is either asleep or not expecting to be attacked. Men use crime of passion type defence as in she drove me to it, or she liked to be beaten up during sex lies.

I also haven't lived her life so I have no comment on the rights or wrongs of her case

IDo Have you got the right case? The claim is cohersive control and response is shattering a skull with over 20 blows and then shoving a rag in the mouth and down the throat to make sure the victim isn’t breathing.
I have different opinion to you which I believe is allowed? There is no need to wish rape and physical abuse on me because I disagree with you.

There is no need to wish rape and physical abuse on me because I disagree with you

There’s no need to twist my words and you know it.

Maybe you should try doing some research.

This is one expert who believes she should not have been convicted.

*Prof Evan Stark, an American academic expert on the theory of coercive control, told the court of appeal that “coercive control” was designed to subjugate and dominate, not merely to hurt.

“It achieves compliance by making victims afraid, depriving them of their rights, resources, and liberties without which they cannot defend themselves, escape, refuse demands or resist.”

“It produces a hostage-like condition of entrapment,” he added, saying it was “not widely understood”.

Major elements could include physical violence, sexual coercion, intimidation and isolation – cutting victims off from family, friends, co-workers, “so the only sense of reality you get comes from the person who is abusing you”, he said.

@Noname99 stop being so utterly ridiculous! Wishing rape on you, that's exactly the type of twisting of words a coercive person does. Oh and yes he did also rape Sally, but that wasn't the single act that proved too much for her broken mind... it was a part of it though!

This feels like Appeal by media - which always gives perfect results

Are we now being expected to give new laws retrospective effect?
Coercive control only became law in 2015 and we didn’t conceptualise it in any real sense prior to this.
We now have to try to apply this to this case with only the accused’s version being able to be examined.

Sally knew the night before killing him that he was seeing someone else. She googled the woman’s name and the dating site.
The next day she dialled 1471 and knew he had called the woman whilst she was out.
Are we to believe the hammer in her handbag which she then used to kill him was coincidental?

If this were a man would be be clamouring to have him released? Would we want to listen to his only hacking into his wife’s phones, following her etc was because of her abuse? Would we believe she deserved this because he said she was controlling. Would we be celebrating a new trial for him?.

Also if Sally Challen were a man and his children supported him we would say it was because either they wanted one parent or more likely because he had also groomed them over the years

Are we now being expected to give new laws retrospective effect?

No. The Court of Appeal feels that the conviction is unsafe, because of new evidence about Sally suffering from psychological conditions at the time of the killing. Those conditions, if established, may be sufficient to give her at least a partial defence to murder, in which case the proper outcome may be to convict of manslaughter, in which case sentence should be reviewed, or acquittal.

New evidence often arises from improvements in scientific understanding, you wouldn't expect people to remain at large because DNA advances had proven their guilt after an earlier lack of evidence, would you? Or that the wrongly convicted should be released when new evidence exonerates them?
Of course not.

And yes, if a husband were so damaged by domestic abuse that he killed his wife or partner in circumstances where such a partial defence was available, he should also be able to plead that partial defence.

A very dear friend of mine was a victim of coercive control for most of her adult life.

She ended the relationship but that did nothing to end the coercive control. It carried on, in increasingly new and fucked up ways.

No agency did anything to help. My beautiful, talented friend was irreparablely damaged.

She killed herself last year.

I can well believe that Sally Challen believed she had a bleak set of choices.

@SmileEachDay, that's so sad and the OH should've been charged with manslaughter at the very least. You've echoed my saying if you break my arm you'll be prosecuted but if you break my mind you can just walk away.

Christ - so I’m now “coercive” because someone suggested that I needed to be raped and abused to understand their point of view and I politely pointed out that was inappropriate.
I am allowed my point of view - I haven’t insulted or in anyway abused anyone in stating it.
At the risk of repeating myself, this person smashed her husband’s head in with a hammer, hitting him over 20 times, and then stuff a cloth down his throat to ensure he stopped breathing. She was not living with him. Prior to meeting him, she googled the alleged girlfriend and so knew he was seeing someone else. She then agreed to meet him and took a hammer with her which she used to batter him to death. This thread asked for opinions - I have given mine. Some people don’t agree - that’s fine but it doesn’t require an attack.

And whether you “break my arm or my mind” I don’t get to smash your head in with a hammer and that be ok.

Nobody said anything of the kind to you, Noname, and it's a shitty piece of behaviour for you to pretend that's what they said. Behave!

And nobody is suggesting it's OK to smash in someone's head with a hammer. What is being said is that the Court should consider the psychological impact on the woman concerned of decades of abuse, because it may be that the impact was such as to diminish her criminal responsibility for her actions, in which case it's possible that her sentence was unjust.

@Noname99 for gods sake...... when did anyone say it was ok! It's extenuating circumstances and Sally broke!

It's a reap what you sow situation.... you want to push a person to breaking point and they will break!

At the time her psychiatric report did not show mental illness bar situational depression which the prosecution psychiatrist argued against that effectively

This ‘mental illness’ are we also diagnosing this retrospectively?

If scientific advances support it, of course. Just as if we might absolve a parent convicted of harm when it Is discovered that the child had some previously unknown disease causing brittle bones, for instance.

...because men are scared women will laugh at them
...because women are scared men will them

noname do you see yourself, and your twisting?!