Sally Challen was subjected to a lifetime of abuse before snapping and clubbing her husband Richard with a hammer some 20 times – now her son has spoken about about what led to the killing
The harrowing story of a mum who killed her husband after years of bullying, coercive control and domestic violence – much of it sexual – has been told in full for the first time in a new book written by the woman’s son.
Sally Challen struck her 61-year-old husband Richard over the head with a hammer around 20 times on the morning of August 14, 2010. She then covered her dead husband’s body with a pair of old curtains and left a note saying “I love you” before leaving her family home in Claygate, Surrey for the last time.
She had set off for Beachy Head, East Sussex, intending to end her life by jumping from the 530-foot cliffs. In a dramatic three-hour confrontation, a chaplain who had been escorted to the scene by police managed to persuade Sally to give herself up.
Sally was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 22 years, reduced to 18 at appeal. Throughout her trial, she refused to reveal the full scale of the shocking treatment that she had been subjected to.
Coercive control did not become a criminal offence until 2015 and after an appeal in 2019, prosecutors reduced Sally’s murder conviction to the lesser charge of manslaughter. The new conviction carried a sentence of nine years and four months in jail, time she had already served, and she walked free.
Speaking to the I newspaper, Sally’s son David admitted that he was “relieved” that his father was dead. He explains how his father’s abuse of his mother had started long before he was born, but it was only as an adult that he grasped the full scale of the secret cruelty going on in his family home.
Even as a small child, David knew something was wrong: “I had that pit in my stomach as a child at the age of four or five,” he says. “It’s an atmosphere, and it latches on to you.”
In his book The Unthinkable: A Story of Control, Violence and My Mother, David details countless acts of abuse both large and small, from mundane humiliations and name-calling to a violent sexual assault.
He says that apart from the violence and abuse within the home, his father Richard heaped further humiliation on Sally by conducting countless extramarital affairs and visiting brothels.
Bizarrely, David recalled, one Christmas Richard sent out Christmas cards to family and friends that featured a picture of him posing on the bonnet of his Ferrari with two naked models.
But Richard was also pathologically jealous. While on a holiday to Los Angeles in 1998, a family friend had given Sally a friendly hug. Richard’s response was volcanic. Sally, in a later statement, said: “Richard pushed me into the bedroom and forced sex on me. He was brutal and said nothing.”
Even the couple’s children were aware something terrible had happened on that day. David, aged 11 at the time of that incident, said: “It was never talked about but it was always clear you never crossed my father.”
At one point Sally left Richard, unable to endure his daily mistreatment. However, having met him when she was 15, and he was five years older – she had been comprehensively groomed and gaslighted for decades and found life on her own a struggle.
She begged him to take her back – at which point he forced her to sight a “post nuptial agreement” with clauses that denied her any share of their money, prevented her from speaking to strangers or even interrupting while he was speaking.
However, in May 2020, Judge Paul Matthews, sitting in the High Court in Bristol, ruled that Sally could inherit the estate of her deceased car dealer husband, which was valued at £1million.
David said it was only when he visited his mother in prison that he understood what was behind the tense, toxic atmosphere in their posh Surrey home. As Sally listed the cruel acts of his father, David said, it suddenly came into focus for him: “I didn’t know that was abuse. I thought it was normal.”
If you have been affected by issues of domestic violence or coercive control you can call Refuge’s 24-Hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline for free. The number is 0808 2000 247
