The Unthinkable

THE UNTHINKABLE is 2025's answer to A THREAD OF VIOLENCE with the plot twists of GONE GIRL

David Challen grew up in the perfect household. In the perfect house. With the model family of 2.5 children. David Challen also grew up in a household that was dominated and ruled by his father's humiliations, manipulations and mind games.

On a Saturday morning in August 2010, his quiet, fearful mother struck twenty blows to the back of his father's head with their family hammer. After killing him, she turned back to the stove she had been cooking his lunch on and turned off the gas, washed the pans and dishes and left the house. In those few minutes, she changed the legal system and lives of countless women forever.

THE UNTHINKABLE is the first time the story of the coercive control that led his mother to kill his father has been told.

David Challen is a domestic abuse campaigner and keynote speaker. He successfully campaigned to free his mother Sally Challen in a landmark appeal recognising the lifetime of coercive control she suffered in February 2019.

David continues to speak out against violence against women, coercive control and recognising women's experiences in the criminal justice system.

David is a Prison Advice and Care Trust Ambassador (PACT) and a Supporter of the National Centre For Domestic Violence.

"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".

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