Volume 5 · Chapter 7
Coercive Control
Sally Challen
Victim: Richard Challen
Case at a glance
- When
- August 14, 2010
- Where
- Claygate, Surrey, England
- Perpetrator
- Sally Challen
- Victim
- Richard Challen
- Outcome
- Murder conviction quashed in 2019; pleaded guilty to manslaughter by diminished responsibility and sentenced to nine years and four months, already served
The case
Sally Challen was 15 when she met Richard Challen, who was 22. They married in 1979, settled in Claygate, Surrey, and raised two sons, David and James. Richard, a car dealer, belittled his wife, controlled the money and saw other women.
On August 14, 2010, in the kitchen of the family home, Sally struck Richard, then 61, about 20 times with a hammer and left a note saying she loved him. The next day she went to Beachy Head, the chalk cliffs on the Sussex coast, intending to end her life, and a chaplain there persuaded her to step back. In June 2011 a jury at Guildford Crown Court convicted her of murder. She received a life sentence with a minimum term of 22 years, later reduced to 18.
In February 2019 the Court of Appeal quashed the murder conviction because of fresh psychiatric evidence and ordered a retrial. Her lawyers also argued that coercive control, made a criminal offence in England and Wales in 2015, helped explain her state of mind. In April 2019 she pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and was released on bail. Prosecutors accepted that plea, and on June 7, 2019, she was sentenced to nine years and four months, time she had already served.
Read the full story
This case is told in full in True Crime Case Histories, Volume 5 by Jason Neal.
Get Volume 5 on AmazonCase photographs
1 photo
Where it happened
Why this case
“Sally’s story is usually filed under coercive control, yet that offense did not exist until five years after Richard died. Her appeal turned on psychiatric evidence. I tried to keep that distinction clear, because the harder lesson is how a marriage can look ordinary to neighbors while one partner is slowly worn down inside it.”
— Jason Neal, author of True Crime Case Histories
