Control

David Challen

"On a Saturday morning in August 2010 my mother, Sally Challen, killed my father, Richard, at the family home with twenty blows of a hammer to the head. She was sentenced to life behind bars after suffering 40 years of abuse." David Challen grew up in a household that was accustomed to his father's abuse and coercive behaviour - his criticisms, humiliations, manipulations and mind games. As David grew older, he realised there was something deeply wrong with the way his father treated their mother, Sally. Though she eventually left him, it was only weeks later that she murdered her husband of 31 years, leaving David with the most unimaginable moral dilemma: defending his mother. CONTROL tells the story of the abuse Challen unknowingly witnessed throughout his childhood, the coercive control that led to his mother, Sally Challen, killing his father, and the subsequent "trial that changed everything for women".