Caroline Flack documentary

[Finto1111]

Is anyone watching the new Caroline Flack documentary on Disney plus.

Her mother is trying to stand up for her. Its very sad. And interesting . Her mother looked up a lot of information about the assualt case.

It was a night where both of them were very drunk. Caroline found texts from another woman on her partner's phone. She hit him with the phone on his head to wake him up. She shouldn't have done that.

I am just recounting the facts of what happened

Caroline's partner threatened to ring the police. He rang the police and said he wasn't sure what he had been hit with, maybe a lamp or something. (He later agreed that it was a phone).

After he rang the police, Caroline was so distraught that she cut her wrists.

Her mother said that media reported that the room looked like a horror movie. But they made it seem like the blood was her partners. The blood was Carolines.

Her partner was not injured. And he did not want to press charges.

In the documentary it shows that the police initiallly decided not to press charges on Caroline.
Due to
Her having no previous history of violence
Her partner was not injured
Her partner did not want to press charges.

They decided to give Caroline a caution.

However a Detective came on duty later that night and decided to overturn the decision. She decided to charge Caroline with assault.

The documentary also shows notes the police made. They refer a lot to Caroline as a celebrity and a high profile case. Her mother thinks Caroline was charged unfairly as the police had attention on them over this case.

It then shows Carolines texts to friends . She writes "I have lost it all. I don't see any way out".

Its very sad. Has anyone watched it

Is it though? Under those specific circumstances? First offence, small cut and no medical intervention needed, the victim didn’t want her to be prosecuted?

That’s the thing, I think she did meet the threshold for a caution, as you say, depending on the situation. Some circumstances will be too severe for a caution and quite right. My understanding is the original decision was for her to receive the caution and end of, but then someone decided no, she should be prosecuted.

Most abuse isn't visible, most abusers don't knock 'ten bells of shit' out of their victims.

You are minimising abuse and you know it.

Ahh thank you. I had no idea.

I’m sorry you had to endure that’s as it’s horrific. I completely get your point but please don’t think I’m minimising your experience as I’m really not.

All DV situations are different and I’m simply trying to understand why they decided to prosecute her given those particular circumstances.

My neighbours brother smashed the back windscreen of my car because he was pissed and pissed off (an alcoholic so also had MH issues).

Cut his own arm significantly in the process.

CPS still decided to press charges and it went to court.

The joke was the “sentence”. Despite my son’s wheelchair being in the boot rendering him housebound for 2 days until I got it fixed the “sentence” was to pay me compensation of a lesser value than I paid out for the fix. Lessened because he pleaded guilty.

Despite me having to pay on the day the excess to insurance he could pay dependent on how much he could afford. He paid a total of £11 before the payments stopped. 🙄

Fair point but there is no evidence to suggest it wasn’t a one off either.

She was guilty of the crime.
Maybe CPS wanted to contain the reaction and the detective rightly disagreed.

Statistically people don’t call the police in the first instance of DV. Obviously nobody knows in this case but statistics and experience leads one to believe it wasn’t the first time.

Again fair point, however it wasn’t completely random he was chosen. He was on a breakfast news show saying it was the right decision and commenting on it (at the time) so it’s my understanding that’s why she went to him, to see if his opinion would change after reading the files etc…

But his original one didn’t..

Thank you, I normally keep away from threads like this but given the services involved can’t come out guns blazing to defend themselves (aside from relatively short statements), I felt adding some facts and context was necessary here.

Enough ££ can get experts/professionals to say whatever producers want you to say on tv so that it fits the programmes narrative

Ahh but that’s where you’re wrong. People make mistakes as we’re all human. If something is a one off then it can be forgiven more easily than something that happens regularly. A pattern of negative behaviour can’t be put down to a one off mistake, whereby someone is genuinely remorseful and learns from their mistake/action and doesn’t repeat it

I’m not disputing she was in the wrong, she absolutely shouldn’t have hit him. End of, however it will seem a caution would have been used ordinarily

No, it wouldn’t have. Cautions are only very rarely used for domestic violence, even the first occasion. So it wouldn’t have been ‘ordinarily’ done at all.

Enough people are telling you that caution wouldn't automatically be used in this situation, because domestic abuse is not like a one off fist fight between strangers that resulted in little injury.

I'm also not wrong, alcohol does not make people whack a sleeping person over the head with a phone or anything else. You seem determined to minimise domestic violence and I'll ask again, what would you be saying if her boyfriend had done it to her?

The media and public would have still had a bad reaction to her behaviour, if she was given a caution.
The backlash wouldn't have changed, if anything, they would think and say that she got special treatment.

I don’t dispute that and I completely understand why in many and most cases it won’t be the first time. I think this is different in that I don’t think he was calling for himself as such, more because he was worried about what she may do to herself.

Hhmmm perhaps but I’d like (and hope) to think professionals were more trustworthy than that.

Then again look at the newspaper editors, they’re like a pack of hungry dogs chasing a man with a bag of steaks. It would appear some would (quite literally) sell their granny’s for a headline - whether it be true or not!

So why then was there so much emphasis on the fact that she was told originally it would be a caution? The whole emphasis was based on that.

Because that’s the point of contention in her mum’s documentaries. Her mum seems to blame that 1 aspect of the case for the sad events that followed and that it was ‘only done because of her fame’ when police appeals are common and not at all unusual. You just won’t hear about the other cases that are reviewed and the decision to caution is overturned, because the defendants are not celebrities and the case isn’t newsworthy.

It’s not about being trustworthy. Law isn’t a mathematical exercise, it’s entirely possible for 2 lawyers to have different perspectives although most of the time they will come to roughly the same conclusion. They follow guidance but take a holistic approach and like many professions you can always find the odd person who disagrees with the consensus.

but you are minimising it.

And in many cases there is not even a cut, 'just' bruising. Should that be ignored as well because it hasn't broken the skin?

As for "just a caution", if she admitted guilt as some say then she would have been eligible for a caution. If as others say she didn't admit guilt then she wasn't eligible for a caution.

Forgive me for not taking what people on Mumsnet say as ‘fact’ for gospel! Are you a solicitor who deals with DV cases? If not then I’m sure you’re in the best situation to decide what others should/shouldn’t believe.

I’m not minimising DV as I’ve already stated. If you care to read my other posts you’ll see I’ve stated several times that she was absolutely wrong to hit him, but it seems you’ve not read them because you’d know the answer to your questions

Yes it is. For all the reasons that have already been exhaustively discussed on this thread.

In a DV setting it is rarely the first offence, only the first one which has ever been reported.