Nothing...!

It’s five years since the TV presenter killed herself after being charged with assaulting her partner. Her mother Christine wants the world to know what the police, crown prosecution service and media got wrong.

So says the blurb of a subheading to this article by her mother. Prompting my response. 

Caroline Flack was one of Britain’s most successful presenters – and also one of the most talked about – when she was arrested in December 2019 and charged with assaulting her partner, Lewis Burton.

She lost her job as the host of Love Island ....

 She was sacked? 

-....– she stepped down in order to not detract attention from the show.

 Oh.

She lost her home ...

What? Who evicted her, and how?

....– it was so besieged by the press that she never went back there after her arrest.

  Oh.

She felt she lost the public, too, especially with the drip-drip of damning (crucially, incorrect) detail in tabloids and across social media.

Ah, I see where we are going with this. It was social media that dunnit, folks!  The TwitterBeasts killed Beauty! 

When she took her life nine weeks later, in February 2020, the narrative shifted. Now there were tributes to her talent as well as stories of her struggle with mental illness. The criminal case was awkwardly glossed over and grouped in with this, as sad evidence of her troubled mind. The correctness of her prosecution, though, was barely questioned.

Even Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), appeared on breakfast TV to stress that “We as a country have said we need to take domestic abuse seriously”. The CPS, he insisted, could only “follow the evidence”.

We'll gloss over quoting establishment-stooge Afzal, a DEI hire busted flush if ever there was one. But wasn't he quite right? Domestic violence is domestic violence. 

In Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth, Christine Flack attempts to do just this, to follow the evidence. For years, she has been haunted by the possibility that Caroline did, in fact, receive “special treatment” and was prosecuted only because the police and CPS feared the scrutiny that came with a celebrity like Caroline. They couldn’t be seen to do nothing.

Thay can't win, can they? If they do or if they don't... 

The previous night, Caroline and Burton had been out separately, returning late to Caroline’s flat in north London. They had both been drinking, and went to bed. Burton was sleeping when a woman messaged him. Caroline read it. She was drunk, angry and upset when she went to wake him. The inquest heard that she later told police: “I had his phone in one hand and mine in the other. I whacked him round the head. There was no excuse for it. I was just upset. I admit I did it. He was cheating on me.”

As blatent a confession as any copper has probably ever heard. 

The inquest heard that a huge row ensued where Caroline became hysterical. When Burton threatened to call the police, Caroline begged him not to. (“If you call the police, I’m done.”) When he did, she harmed herself and by the time police arrived, she was seriously injured, frenzied and half-naked.

No different to many a domestic violence scene cops have to roll up to, no doubt. 

“While Jody (her sister) was outside the police station, a police officer went out and told her: ‘It’s all right – the CPS has thrown it out. Just wait here for her,’” says Christine. That initial CPS document judged that prosecuting wasn’t in the public interest because there was no history of domestic violence and Caroline was 40 with no previous convictions. It noted that Caroline had repeatedly admitted the assault and that the injured party, Burton, did not support a prosecution.

And there it would have ended and she'd have got away with it, if not for one honest copper. 

Shortly after, though, a detective inspector came on duty and intervened. She had a shooting to deal with that night, as well as a vulnerable missing person and, according to the documentary, this DI had no history of challenging CPS decisions. But she chose to appeal against this one, arguing that there had been no clear admission of guilt (the coroner found that Caroline had admitted to hitting Burton) and that “she has caused significant injury” to Burton. As a result, Caroline was charged with assault by beating.

As she should have been. 

She knows she is treading a very fine line here. Christine is adamant that she doesn’t want to minimise the harms caused by domestic abuse.

No, just the ones caused by her daughter.