The Case of Sally Challen (2019 TV Movie) User Reviews

Biased documentary

[paul-allaer · 5/10 · 30 January 2021]

"The Case of Sally Challen" (2019 release from the UK; 89 min.) takes a closer look at what happened to Sally Challen, who in 2010 killed her esrtanged husband (because he was seeing other women). She was convicted of murder the next year. Then in 2014, the UK passed the"coersive control" legislation, and based on that new law, Sally's legal team files an appeal to squash the 2011 conviction, At that point, the movie examines whether her husband in fact did exercise such "coersive control"...

Couple of comments: this is a British documentary that purports to take an objective look at what happened to Sally Challen. It doesn't take long for the documentary to reveal that it is anything but that. The documentary is here to servce as a mouthpiece of Sarah Challen's legal team, pure and simple. The outcome never seems in doubt. Whether Sally Challen was or wan't under "coersive control" I will leave uo to you to decide. But as a FILM< this documentary falls short because (i) it never feels as if it seeks to bring both sides of the arguments, and (ii)" on top of that, the documentary feels stragely distant, and in the end I never cared about any of the people that appear in the film, and for that the blame must swurely fall on the 2 British dorectors. Bottom line: I did stick it out to the very end, but I woudn't blame anyone if they didn't want to finish wataching this in its entirety.

"The Case of Sally Challen" premiered on British TV in 2019, and is now available on various streaming platforms here in the US> If you are a fan of "tru crime" documentaries, I'd suggest you check this out, with limited expectations, and then draw your own conclusion.

Excellent Documentary - Some hits & misses

[stacyallen-25512 · 6/10 · 9 February 2021]

The background music is so loud it is difficult to hear the speakers, narrators, and news clip. The pounding music increasing is distracting and annoying. Other than that it is very well done. But the loud music takes away from the show.

The Case Of Sally Challen

[a_baron · 3/10 · 11 March 2020]

In August 2010, Sally Challen murdered her estranged husband Richard, bashing his head in with twenty blows from a hammer. Then she carried out a theatrical failed suicide attempt at Beachy Head. Tried for murder she was rightly convicted. In this documentary we see a stark transformation from perpetrator to victim, a pantomime masterminded by Harriet Wistrich. Lawyer Wistrich and her journalist lover Julie Bindel are old hands at this game. Their star catch was Emma Humphreys who murdered her lover Trevor Armitage in dissimilar circumstances twenty-five years earlier. Humpreys was a juvenile delinquent turned teenage prostitute and serial false rape accuser, yet two decades and more after her death from a possibly accidental drug overdose, she is hailed as an heroic figure, a tragic victim of male violence.

If someone as odious as Humphreys can be so transformed, it should be so much easier to transform a bland, middle class housewife and mother of two into something similar. This documentary is the story of how an ever smiling Harriet Wistrich achieved that transformation.

When she first met Challen, Wistrich said she wasn't very hopeful, but we'll see what we can do. Read we'll see what we can invent. Herein, Challen reads the witness statement prepared for her second appeal. She invents a marital rape while she and the victim were on holiday in America. An anal rape. This was said to be an act of punishment for another man kissing her. Other anal rapes are said to have followed. And a lot more.

When someone is convicted of murder or any other crime on indictment, there must be proper grounds for an appeal, simply disagreeing with the verdict is not good enough. And before an appeal is heard, leave must be granted. Normally, fresh evidence will not be allowed, but subject to two broad criteria, it can be admitted. Wistrich is quite open about what she calls getting around the fresh evidence point. She claims Challen was suffering from a previously unrecognised mental impairment called dependent personality disorder. And she was also a victim of a new type of crime: coercive control. Coercive control is real enough although it has not been recognised in law for long, but who was trying to control whom here? As the Court Of Appeal made clear in November 2011, Sally Challen hacked into Richard's e-mails and voicemails, monitored his social media accounts, and asked a neighbour to spy on him. And don't forget he is the one who is dead, yet she is the victim?

A half-attempt is made to present the other side of the story, and it succeeds. There are plenty of photographs and home videos in this documentary, enough to convince any jurist of reason that the system is being played. Expect more of these spurious appeals in the future, in fact Harriet Wistrich already has at least two more in preparation.

Even more disgusting than this charade were the placard waving supporters outside the Court. Sadly, this was nothing new either.