‘I still love the abusive husband I battered to death’
Sally Challen walks free after court accepts plea of manslaughter based on years of coercive control
A MOTHER who bludgeoned her abusive husband to death in a hammer attack has revealed that she “still loves him” after walking free from court.
Georgina Challen, known as Sally, 65, said she killed 61-year-old Richard Challen in the kitchen of their Surrey home in August 2010 after decades of being coerced and humiliated by him. She was in prison for almost a decade.
However, following a string of unprecedented legal wranglings, she walked out of the Old Bailey as a free woman after Mr Justice Edis sentenced her to nine years and four months in jail – time she has already served.
Her murder conviction was quashed in February following a psychiatric report that concluded she was suffering from an “adjustment disorder” at the time of the killing, but yesterday the lesser charge of manslaughter was accepted by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on the grounds of diminished responsibility, meaning she did not have to face a retrial for murder.
“I still love Richard and I wish that none of this had happened,” she said in an emotional press conference, flanked by her family, legal team and the Justice for Women campaign group.
She said that her family had “served my sentence with me”, adding: “Many other women who are victims of abuse and violence are in prison today serving life sentences, and I know this because I have met them. They have suffered abuse and other miscarriages of justice and should be serving sentences for manslaughter, not murder.”
A tearful Mrs Challen, who still wears her wedding ring, told The Daily Telegraph: “I loved the ideal of Richard if that makes sense. I suppose it doesn’t make sense. I’ve had therapy to try and explain it. Five years of therapy.
“Richard was a salesman and he could charm birds out of trees. He’d done sales all his life. I met Richard when I was 15 and he was 21.”
Mrs Challen – who described herself to police as being made to feel like “a meek little mouse” – and her husband were married for 31 years when she “flipped”, pulled a hammer from her handbag and hit him over the head 20 times in the kitchen of their £1 million Surrey home on Aug 14 2010. He had been unfaithful for years while manipulating and controlling her. She had an abortion aged just 17, after he cheated on her, and took an overdose.
She had to buy her own wedding ring, and her husband posed on a Ferrari next to topless models for a Christmas card he sent to their friends. He also made “humiliating comments” about her weight and criticised her “at all turns”.
After approaching her husband from behind while he ate lunch, she battered him with a hammer before driving to Beachy Head, a notorious suicide spot in East Sussex, where she told a chaplain: “I killed him with a hammer. I hit him lots of times. If I can’t have him, no one can.” She had appeared in the dock at the Old Bailey yesterday, overlooked by sons David, 31, and James Challen, 35. Mrs Challen was able to appeal her murder conviction after a change in the law in 2015 recognised psychological manipulation, or coercive control, as a form of domestic abuse and a crime.
Judges ruled that new evidence from a psychiatrist that she was suffering from two mental disorders at the time of the killing undermined the safety of her conviction.
Mrs Challen has always denied murdering her car dealer husband, but was convicted following a trial and sentenced to 22 years behind bars. Her sentence was later reduced by four years on appeal.
‘Many other women who are victims of abuse and violence are in prison today serving life sentences, and I have met them’