‘My mother killed my father – but I understand why’
As Sally Challen is granted an appeal for her murder conviction, her son David tells Cara Mcgoogan why she should be free
David Challen sobbed quietly yesterday in Court 7 at the Royal Courts of Justice, as Lady Justice Rafferty granted his mother leave to challenge her conviction for murdering his father. The family members and friends who packed the gallery cheered and wiped tears from their eyes.
Though it is his dad, Richard, who is dead, it is his mum Sally who is the victim, maintains David, 30 – who hopes that after serving eight years of a life sentence at HM Prison Send, her conviction will be reduced to manslaughter, in light of fresh evidence of mental abuse.
Sally’s legal team will argue that she was a victim of coercive control – a concept only criminalised in 2015, which recognises that domestic violence does not always result in black eyes and broken limbs, but can also include emotional, psychological, sexual and financial abuse.
They will submit fresh evidence they claim shows that during their 31-year marriage, Richard, 61, socially isolated Sally, now 63, lied to her about his affairs with other women, controlled her finances and raped her on a family holiday – a catalogue of abuse that culminated one Sunday lunchtime in August 2010 with her killing him with more than 20 hammer blows to the head at the family home in Claygate, Surrey – before clearing the dishes, placing a curtain over his body and leaving a note that said, “I love you – Sally”.
David, then 23, was called in at work the next morning to be told his father was dead and his mother was on the edge of a cliff at Beachy Head. “I waited for about an hour to see if my mum would jump and for my brother and I to be parentless in the blink of a morning,” he says. “To kill is a heinous thing; but she was such a moral woman and it was so clear that she had been manipulated.”
Sally was persuaded not to jump and tried for murder at Guildford Crown Court, where the prosecution painted a picture of a jealous woman who made a calculated decision to take vengeance on her husband, for his string of affairs. Her defence of diminished responsibility was rejected by the jury and she was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 22 years, later reduced to 18.
“If you put this down to jealousy, you’re playing to the stereotype of some Shakespearean vengeful murder,” says David, a film distributor. “There are so many hallmarks of coercive control, you can’t ignore it. To write this off as a vengeful killing, it’s naive, wrong and socially irresponsible.”
Sally had lost her own father when she was five, and was just 15 when she first met 22-year-old Richard, a car dealer, giving birth to their elder son, James, when she was 29. “The only man she ever really knew was my father,” says David. When he first heard the term coercive control, he finally had a name for the behaviour he had witnessed growing up.
There was the control of her social life: Richard drove away anyone who took a shine to Sally. Among mutual friends, Richard would embarrass, fat-shame and undermine her, her team claims. At least once, when they had people over for dinner, he threw the entire meal she had prepared, along with crockery, into the bin. When Sally secured herself her first job as an assistant at the Police Federation, Richard cut her off from the joint bank account. On a family holiday to Los Angeles, he raped her after finding her kissing a mutual friend on the cheek. “She said he forced her into sex as a punishment and I believe she didn’t stop it because she saw it as [one].”
What hurt Sally most, though, was the constant lying. “He cheated a lot, even when my mother was pregnant with me,” says David. “When she confronted him, he would convince her to question her sanity.”
Even when she caught him visiting a brothel around the corner from her work, “he tried to convince her she was going mad”. In an attempt to outwit her husband, Sally tracked his phone conversations, went through bills and called numbers back. But still he “gas-lighted” her, making her question her convictions. “She confided in me and my brother that she had all of this evidence, but really thought she was going crazy.”
Tall, with crew-cut hair and thick black glasses, David carefully rubs his hands together as we talk a week before the appeal hearing. Every now and then he taps his cracked phone to illuminate the notes he has written for himself about his parents’ abusive marriage.
When he was 17, his mother discovered he was gay and agreed to keep it secret from his father, who often made homophobic jokes. Four years later, as his parents’ relationship was on the brink of collapse, Richard discovered David’s sexuality.
“He was outrageous. He blamed it on my mother because, genetically, he thought it was on her side of the family, as my uncle is gay. He was ruthless.”
The tense atmosphere deeply affected David, who was diagnosed with clinical depression in his late teens. Although he often stood up to his father on his mother’s behalf, he understands why she stayed with him for so long: “Mum was like a child in terms of their relationship,” he says.
It took Sally until 2009 to leave Richard for the first time, moving into a nearby house with her sons, and filing for divorce. But like many victims, she didn’t leave for long. Richard agreed to rekindle their relationship under strict rules laid out in an email: “When we go out together, it means together. This constant talking to strangers is rude and inconsiderate.” She also had to sign their £1 million house into his name, give up smoking and stop interrupting Richard when he spoke.
“She was losing touch with reality. So it makes sense to me that what she did was the act of a cornered human being,” says David. “The oxygen that was my father was taken away and she was clawing it back because she couldn’t function without him.”
For all this, Richard was still unfaithful – the day he died, Sally had discovered he had planned a day trip with a woman from a dating agency.
Harriet Wistrich, Sally’s lawyer, will argue that the years of mental abuse meant the act was provoked and she had diminished responsibility. “Sally has no criminal convictions, she’s never had a violent moment in her life and, although what happened was extreme and brutal, it shocked everybody and wasn’t pre-planned,” says Wistrich. “Everybody who knew Sally and Richard is supporting Sally, including her sons and family, because they could see what was happening.”
Struggling with depression, David has contemplated suicide. “If [Mum] had jumped, would I still be here? Probably not. She didn’t jump; so I haven’t jumped.” His overwhelming fear is that he could follow in his father’s footsteps. “There have been times when I’ve mimicked what my father did, which I’ve found odd and creepy,” he says. “It’s like the ghost of my dad.”
His abiding wish is that he will get his mother back: “I have never had the chance to treat her to lunch or dinner, to show her what my job is – she still doesn’t understand it – or to introduce her to my partner.”
Sally, who wasn’t in court for the hearing, is feeling positive “for the first time in a long time”. David hopes she may yet “know what it is to be a free, independent woman who can do whatever she wants and live a fulfilled life not under anyone else’s control”.
‘It makes sense to me that what she did was the act of a cornered human being’