Flack tragedy forces us to face up to female assault
The heartbreaking death of a much-loved TV presenter does not make the charges against her any less serious, writes Sarah Caden
AT the end of the inquest into Love Island presenter Caroline Flack’s death last week, the coroner returned a verdict of suicide.
“I find the reason for her taking her life was she now knew she was being prosecuted for certainty, and she knew she would face the media, press, publicity — it would all come down upon her,” said coroner Mary Hassell. “To me that’s it in essence.”
The coroner referred to Flack’s “fluctuating mental health” and struggles in the past that weren’t helped by a life in the limelight. Friends and family referred to other suspected attempts to end her life in the period between the alleged assault on her boyfriend Lewis Burton, and Flack’s death.
The coroner found herself in no doubt that Flack had intended to die. It was all very sad and painted a picture of pure hopelessness that was heartbreaking.
Also heartbreaking was the pain of Flack’s loved ones, particularly her mother Christine, whose anger at the treatment of her daughter and what she perceived as a hard-headed mission to prosecute set the tone of the process.
After the verdict, Christine spoke about how those who pursued her daughter should feel “ashamed”, of how she took her life because of her fear of a “show trial”.
“I believe she was a celebrity who some felt needed to be made an example of,” Christine said. “As opposed to being treated as anyone else would have been, which is all Caroline wanted. I don’t believe Caroline was treated as anyone else would have been.”
She said that while she recognised that all domestic abuse had to be treated seriously, that this was not a case of domestic abuse, and it’s there that this all gets a bit tricky.
If Flack had been a man, there would — we hope — be appropriate sympathy for the suicide, but likely very little for the events that preceded it.
The charge of assault against Flack stemmed from an incident last December, when her partner Lewis Burton phoned emergency services and said she was trying to kill him. When emergency services arrived, he was bleeding from a head wound. Burton said he was asleep and woke when Flack began hitting him around the head with a heavy object.
At the scene, which was bloodied and has been reported as resembling something out of a horror film, Flack told police: “I hit him, he was cheating on me.”
During the inquest last week at Poplar Coroner’s Court, London, chief Crown prosecutor Lisa Ramsarran testified that the injury to Burton’s head was “significant”. The coroner replied that she “struggled” to regard it as such. The skin was broken, it was explained by the prosecutor, and Burton was bleeding profusely.
If it was a case of a man allegedly whacking his female partner in the head with a phone, would we be so amenable to dismissing it?
What this should cause us to question, however, is whether as a society we rate different degrees of abuse differently. Does abuse have to leave a physical mark or injury in order to be abuse? Is a once-off, or very occasional, assault
OK? Is a woman abuser less dangerous than a man?
Christine Flack might have had a point. Her daughter might have been treated more harshly because she was in the public eye, but if Caroline had been given a caution, could that have been perceived as light treatment, again because she was a celebrity?
The fact that Lewis Burton seemed still to care for Flack and said he did not want her to be prosecuted shouldn’t influence anything. Abuse victims regularly plea on behalf of their abusers, and if it was a woman saying ‘please don’t prosecute my male abuser’, we’d have a different take on all of this.
It continues to come more easily to us to cast women as the gentler sex, and, latterly, it’s the easy route to put an anti-woman spin on any harsh treatment of a woman. The Flack case is a case it point, but so is the current storm around Ellen DeGeneres, though it is admittedly far less tragic.
Since early this year, stories have been emerging of Ellen as a rather less kindly character than we might have believed.
A champion of equality, the star’s chat show is a juggernaut, beloved of her celebrity interviews, adored by audiences for her downto-earth handling of stars and ordinary folk alike.
Ellen had a self-deprecating ‘everyperson’ appeal, until cracks began to appear in that image.
Ellen was nasty to staff; Ellen was imperious, powermad, egomaniacal, they said. At the start of lockdown, some of her production crew claimed they were left in the dark as to their job security, while she filmed at home with a smaller team.
She drew criticism for moaning about her lockdown mansion seeming like a prison. Then the noise around her being a nightmare to work with grew. Other TV personalities chimed in with stories about being told not to make eye contact with her, about finding her frosty on set, about her basically being a media monster.
Ellen’s wife, Portia de Rossi, was obviously one of those who came out in her defence. Others focused on the idea that Ellen was being taken down purely because she’s a woman in a powerful position and that couldn’t be allowed.
What no one seems to have said, however, is that if all these allegations were made about a male TV presenter, he’d have been put out to at least temporary pasture months ago.
Allegations like this would be more likely believed if they were levelled against a man, while Ellen remains gainfully employed, with one NBC producer saying last week that “no one is going off air”.
We have a culture at the moment that is predisposed, in equal proportion, to making both villains and victims of people — sometimes even the same people, sometimes even at the same time.
In the case of Caroline Flack, what no one disputed last week was that she needed help and either didn’t get it or didn’t get enough of it.
But to say that is not to diminish the alleged seriousness of what occurred that night in December.
We can feel sympathy for Caroline Flack, while also acknowledging that she might have done something very wrong. But then we must, of course, extend that to a man in the same situation, and that’s where it gets tricky.
‘We can feel sympathy for Caroline Flack, while also acknowledging that she might have done something very wrong’