Bill would have caged my monster of a dad

DAVID Challen believes the Domestic Abuse Bill could have spared him a lifetime of hell.

David, 33, whose mother Sally was freed after nine years in jail for killing her 61-year-old husband Richard, wants post-separation abuse made an offence.

Released in 2019, Sally suffered decades of coercive control – a form of domestic abuse that strips victims of their liberty and freedom.

David, from north-west London, said: “I wouldn’t have lived with the trauma today if there had been a Domestic Abuse Bill. My dad would have been in prison.

“As a society it’s taken us too long to get to this point. We need to do justice for the victims who are no longer here or are victims now.

“I sat in the original court case [Sally’s] and I thought it was the

Dark Ages.

“The reason

I have spoken out is so that no other family has to go through what I went through. We have a duty that the Bill is done correctly and we get all the amendments in there.

“My mother was the moral pillar of my life and to have to go through the abuse and the horror...”

David, pictured below with Sally, added: “It’s going to be a landmark Bill but there are still gaping holes with postseparation abuse in coercive control. After a relationship ends it’s a dangerous time – it befell my mother.

“There are migrant women who are not covered at all, it’s really quite shocking.”

The Daily Express End This Injustice campaign has led to the Government pledging to overhaul the Family Court.

This newspaper has also fought to make non-fatal strangulation a stand-alone

crime.