David Challen
Author · Campaigner · Advisor · Speaker
I spent nearly a decade fighting to free my mother. Today I help organisations understand coercive control, the impact of domestic abuse on children, and men’s responsibility to challenge misogyny and violence against women.
Long before the unthinkable, coercive control had shaped my family for decades.
In August 2010, after more than forty years of coercive control, my mother Sally killed my father. The following morning, while his body remained undiscovered in our home, she drove me to work, told me she loved me and then drove to Beachy Head, where she tried to end her life.
Her trial reduced an entire family history to one terrible act. My brother James and I began speaking about the fear and control we had witnessed inside our home, and the harm it had caused.
Together, we led the campaign to make visible what the first trial had failed to see. In 2019, the Court of Appeal quashed her murder conviction. The fight also forced me to return to my own childhood and recognise what children absorb before they have words to name it.
01 / The story
The fight to free my mother began with my brother James and me unearthing the life she had lived before the killing: the control, fear and silences we had witnessed growing up, and which the first trial had failed to see.
Following her story back into the home where we grew up meant confronting my own childhood, and recognising what children absorb long before they have words for abuse.
Before
From the outside, ours looked like an ordinary family. Inside, the home was organised around my father’s moods, entitlement and control. As a child I felt the atmosphere long before I could explain it.
Watch / BBC
This BBC film follows our family through the appeal and into the history the first trial failed to see. It places the public campaign inside the private experience of being a son.
What the appeal changed
My mother was 15 when she met my father, who was 21. By the time of the killing, he had controlled her for more than four decades. Yet at her 2011 trial, the case looked largely at only the final six years of their marriage. Her state of mind was explained primarily through depression, while the much longer pattern of isolation, humiliation, sexual violence and control remained without its proper context.
The appeal did not excuse the killing. It made visible what the first trial had failed to examine. Fresh psychiatric evidence, understood against a lifetime of coercive control, undermined the safety of the murder conviction. To understand the final act, the court had to look again at the life that came before it.
Read David’s account in The Guardian★★★★★“Inside the trial that changed everything for women.”
The Guardian
“This documentary takes us to the heart of one of the most talked-about British legal cases of recent years.”
The Telegraph
“The Case of Sally Challen on BBC2 shows justice is not gender-blind.”
Financial Times
02 / Coercive control
Coercive control is a repeated pattern that strips away another person’s freedom and sense of self. Any single act can look trivial from outside. Its meaning lies in the repetition, the context and the fear of what follows.
Contact, movement, money and everyday decisions are steadily restricted. A person’s world becomes smaller while the controlling person’s authority expands.
Ordinary choices become things to explain, justify or seek permission for. The pattern reaches into time, messages, clothing, work, friendships and family life.
Humiliation, silence, intimidation, deprivation, threats or violence teach everyone what resistance may cost. The response may change, but the purpose is control.
People learn to monitor moods, calculate risk and change their behaviour before anything is said. Control begins to organise the home without needing to be spoken.
These tactics do not follow a fixed sequence. They overlap, adapt and intensify. What matters is their cumulative effect: one person taking away another’s freedom, autonomy and capacity to act.
Inside the home
Coercion changes where people can speak, rest, connect, spend, leave or feel safe. Ordinary spaces begin to carry the meaning of the control exercised within them.
Children are tuning forks in the home. They feel the tension, silence and fear long before they can name it. They are not outside the abuse; they live inside its atmosphere.
Cooking, cleaning, caring and keeping family life moving are treated as obligations. Effort is expected, criticised or taken for granted rather than freely chosen.
Shared time, conversation, the telephone and television all reflect who is allowed comfort, attention and a voice.
Friends and family are met with suspicion. Invitations become difficult. Isolation grows without anyone ever having to announce that contact is forbidden.
Story-led talks for workplaces, conferences and professional audiences, connecting one family’s experience to the choices institutions make now, including how colleagues and employers can recognise and respond to signs of abuse.
Lived-experience insight for government, public bodies and specialist organisations. This has included work with the Ministry of Justice, the Law Commission and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s Advisory Board.
Interviews, panels and commentary on domestic abuse, male violence against women, misogyny, justice and responsible reporting.
Core speaking themes
What audiences take away
“The conference was incredibly well received, and we had overwhelmingly positive feedback.Everyone is still talking about your amazing, touching and thought-provoking presentation.”
Conference organiser · Redbridge Council x Reach Out Domestic Abuse Service
“I found your talk profoundly moving and it is often something I think back to.”
Metropolitan Police sergeant
“Those reflections were like a window for us as social workers.Anything that develops our insight into the world of children experiencing domestic abuse is invaluable.”
Hub Service Manager · Cafcass
“Thank you for an amazing night. We had so much positive feedback. You touched a lot of people and struck chords with so many, especially in regard to children.”
VAWDASV Manager · Bridgend County Borough Council
“A brilliant keynote presentation. We had so much positive feedback about everything you shared with us.”
European Regional Manager · Safe & Together Institute
Selected media
Across broadcast, print and international media, I use one family’s story to make the wider patterns of coercive control, justice and children’s experiences visible.
Published commentary
Commentary grounded in lived experience and campaigning, examining how abuse is understood, where responsibility sits, and the institutions and cultures that allow it to continue.
The bestselling memoir
I thought I was writing the story of how I fought to free my mother. I was also confronting the home that had shaped me.
A memoir with the pace and emotional force of a novel, The Unthinkable follows a son back through his family’s past to understand the act that shattered it, and the coercive control that had shaped their home long before.
The Unthinkable / In their words
“David is one of the most courageous men I know… everyone should read this to understand coercive control and what it is like for a child growing up with domestic abuse.”
Melanie Brown MBE
“Unthinkable stares down horror and heartbreak. A story told with unflinching courage and a compelling drive for the truth.”
Laura Kuenssberg
“Beautifully written and deeply moving… a powerful call to action as much as a very personal memoir.”
Samira Ahmed
Speaking · Advisory · Media
For speaking engagements, advisory work, panels and media enquiries, get in touch directly.
Email DavidI am grateful for every message, but I cannot offer personal advice or crisis support. If you need help, please use a specialist service.
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