A woman who killed her husband in a hammer attack has begun a “landmark” appeal to have her murder conviction overturned in a case set to test new laws on domestic abuse and coercive control.



Georgina Challen, known as Sally, killed her car-dealer husband, Richard Challen, 61, in August 2010 after 40 years of being controlled and humiliated by him, it is claimed.



The appeal to get her murder conviction substituted with manslaughter follows a high-profile campaign by her two sons, David, 31 and James, 35, and supported by Justice for Women.



The appeal is the first time the defence of coercive and controlling behaviour will be used in a murder trial. Coercive control was only recognised in law as a form of domestic abuse in 2015.



The court of appeal was told that “fresh evidence” on the nature of coercive control not available at Challen’s 2011 trial would enable a jury to come to a different verdict.



Clare Wade QC, for Challen, 65, told three appeal court judges: “It has never been argued that this legislative change of itself affords a ground of appeal. Rather it is our growing understanding of domestic abuse and in particular the mechanism and impact of coercive and controlling behaviour which is significant.”



The court was filled to overflowing, with the public gallery packed and many more unable to get in, forcing the case to be moved mid-hearing to a larger court.

Georgina Challen’s son David outside the court in London. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

More than 20 supporters waving “Free Sally” placards gathered outside the court. Challen appeared via video link from Bronzefield prison in Surrey.

At her 2011 trial at Guildford crown court, Challen, who met her husband when she was 15, admitted killing him at their Claygate home in Surrey, but denied murder, claiming diminished responsibility.

Challen had hit her husband 20 times with a hammer, and left a note on his body saying: “I love you, Sally.” She then went to Beachy Head, where she was talked out of a suicide by suicide counsellors.

The prosecution case was that it was the actions of a jealous wife who suspected infidelity. Challen was jailed for life, with a minimum term of 22 years, later reduced to 18 years.

Prof Evan Stark, an American academic expert on the theory of coercive control, told the court of appeal that “coercive control” was designed to subjugate and dominate, not merely to hurt.

“It achieves compliance by making victims afraid, depriving them of their rights, resources, and liberties without which they cannot defend themselves, escape, refuse demands or resist.”

“It produces a hostage-like condition of entrapment,” he added, saying it was “not widely understood”.

Major elements could include physical violence, sexual coercion, intimidation and isolation – cutting victims off from family, friends, co-workers, “so the only sense of reality you get comes from the person who is abusing you”, he said.



Gaslighting – when the abusers “play little tricks to make the person they are living with think they are going crazy” – was also an element. It included such things as hiding car keys, turning the gas on when they thought it was off, little things that disappear and reappear in strange places, “so that over time a person comes to believe they are losing their mind and sense of reality”, he said.

Richard Challen. Photograph: Surrey Police/PA

Coercive control also involved financial control, he said, “using money as a weapon”.

Events taken together “form such an insidious course of conduct the likes of which we are only just now beginning to appreciate” and which had “absolutely devastating” effects.



The outcome for the abused partner “was subjugation and loss of autonomy and a mounting sense of being trapped and with no way out”. Some victims “adapt defensively” forming a “traumatic bond” with their abuser, Stark said.



He added that “coercive control only replaced domestic violence as a primary form of abuse when women gained some sort of equality in the home”.



Questioned by Caroline Carberry, QC, for the crown, Stark agreed he had never met Challen or interviewed her, and was not medically qualified.



Consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Tim Exworthy, who gave evidence at Challen’s 2011 trial, said he had assessed her when she was in custody pre-trial.



He said she had described the marriage as “generally good” but she had spoken about her husband’s infidelity. Of their sex life, she said “he dictated when sexual activity would take place and it was always on his terms”. She described him using anal rape as a “punishment” and she thought it would “keep him happy “and that he would “love her more”.



Exworthy said he concluded that Challen had a “depressive disorder”. He told the court that at the time of her trial he was not aware of the concept of coercive control, though agreed that he did elicit responses from Challen that related to control.

The appeal, before Lady Justice Hallett, Mr Justice Sweeney and Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, is expected to last two days.

If Challen, who has served eight years in prison, is successful, she wants her murder conviction quashed and substituted with one of voluntary manslaughter. The crown would argue for a retrial.

Consultant forensic psychiatrist Paul Gilluley, who assessed Challen in 2010 and gave evidence at her trial, told the appeal court that it was his opinion “at the relevant time she was not suffering from any mental disorder” or personality disorder.

Consultant forensic psychiatrist, Prof Gwen Adshead, who assessed Challen post-conviction in 2015, concluded she suffered borderline personality disorder, and at the time of the killing suffered a severe mood disorder. This could have been masked because of the effect of coercive control, the judges were told.



Carberry, for the crown, said: “There is nothing in the fresh evidence which would render the jury’s verdict unsafe.” The hammer attack was set against the background of “weeks of stalking him online, listening to his phone messages and having the neighbour spy on him,” she said, adding that Challen had been monitoring her husband’s mobile records over eight or nine years.

In police interviews, Challen, who worked for the Police Federation in Surrey, said she had “just snapped” because her husband was “lying to me ... still gonna see his woman”, and because he had asked her to sign a post-nuptial agreement.



“The whole thing was a game, let’s get one over on Sally again,” she said in one police interview. “Signing a post-nuptial that was just a way of him having a control that he could carry on doing what he wanted ... I leave him I wouldn’t get very much. It was just his way of controlling me.”



The case continues on Thursday when counsel will make final legal submissions.





