Caroline Flack #2

[TwooTwooTwitTwitTwoo]

Why ring the police? He was hit once. He woke up. And could have just been like wtf. Could have calmed her down and spoken to her and sorted out the situation. This wasn't a frenzied attack....where his life was in danger? Not that we know of. Fair enough if he really thought she was going to kill him but I doubt it. We know he lied about the lamp. The blood wasn't even his. So why ring the police, she wasn't holding a knife to his throat that we know of. He was caught out cheating and turned it around on her, in my opinion. He even supposedly had said he was gonna ruin her. Then for social media he played the loving and doting boyfriend. Yes she shouldn't have hit him but I imagine she was so upset that he was cheating on her and she had a moment of madness where she's clipped him with her phone on his head and obviously because he's been asleep, it's probably a huge shock and makes it seem worse than it is?

The thing which gets me is the photo...imagine your partner has slit their wrists and you're alone in your partners house. You take a photo of your partners blood and send it to a mate/ex. That isn't normal behaviour either and if that photo hadn't got out, maybe it wouldn't have seemed half as bad for Caroline. Just my opinion and I know others will disagree

Are you serious?

 

[Boogs]

But he still had an injury. Which she inflicted on him. Caroline’s mum saying her injuries were worse is not comparable- she assaulted him, and then injured herself (badly by the sounds of it ) afterward.

Imagine if a man punched a woman, which might not result in any visible injury, and then self harmed to the same extent. It doesn’t absolve him of assault.

Exactly. All of the injuries on both of them were caused by Caroline. Trying to absolve her of any responsibility and place the blame on the victim of her assault because she harmed herself more is wrong.

 

[Yel]

Heartbreaking.

The daily mail do not need to make this their headline story considering he didn't have a media profile.

The same daily mail that is part of the tabloids who encouraged photographers to slash her tyres to get a good picture.

Not explicitly blaming the DM for that but they're part of the culture that leads to it. Then they have the audacity to blame tattle to absorb themselves of responsibility.

 

[truffletrot]

It must have been such a scary incident for Lewis.

Imagine, you’re fast asleep and someone hits you over the head! In your most vulnerable state. And then that persons mother implies in a documentary that you were malicious by saying “you’re fucked” and then calling the police.

I’ve been with my husband 10 years. He’s the most gentle man and is not aggressive. But if he woke me up in my sleep by doing what Charoline did, I’d be phoning the police and divorcing. It’s major.

 

[whyhellothere83]

A genuine question - do you believe someone’s life has to be at risk before they report violence to the police?
for example if someone punched me in the street I should not report it if they did not try to kill me explicitly?

ETA: I ask this because in DV cases it rarely begins with an outright murder attempt. It begins with a kick there or a slap there or a black eye explained away as “nothing” before ultimately things escalate. We have made strides in telling people to speak up and report what isn’t right in their relationships before it becomes a tragic statistic and comments like that set that work back years in my opinion.

I understand you are commenting on a specific set of people whose lives are public and the nuances of their specific situation, but saying things like “its not like she was holding a knife to his throat” is really quite a damaging opinion to hold (in my opinion).

As someone who got out of a DA relationship this year, I couldn’t agree more with this. It shows that some people are lucky enough not to have been through things. Even a slap on the bum can be see as physical abuse if it’s unwanted and you’ve told them and they still continue to do it. I highly recommend looking into the types of abuse and what people get away with. I’m terrified to report mine and comments on here remind me why I haven’t bothered to yet, 10 months after leaving.
Sorry to change the subject slightly but I can’t believe some people are saying that he could have ignored it and got on with his life - why should he? And that’s coming from someone who loved CF!

 

[Sophiadee]

Just finished the doc and it to me it shows where the problem lies - her mum is a massive enabler and helped brush Caroline’s mental health issues under the rug. It’s clear from the other documentary that she most likely has undiagnosed BPD. Her mum is now deflecting and blaming the police/ her friends when she could’ve done so much more herself like physically be present when Caroline was in “hiding” after the DV incident. The whole documentary was her just downplaying her daughter’s violence and trying to pretend it wasn’t as bad as it was apparently a phone rather than a lamp. I know one of the officers who attended and they gave them BOTH first aid. His injury was bad enough to require it too which Caroline’s mum tried arguing wasn’t the case. I was told about this incident and her suicide before it hit the news. This officer also said she was fully off her face on coke which they also love to leave out

 

[thegirlwho2020]

Ive just finished the doc. I was a bit surprised to learn one it wasnt a lamp, and two, the blood was actually hers. I dont remember ever seeing any article stating it wasnt Lewis' - maybe I missed it. Whilst what she did was terrible, if she wasnt who she was, lets be honest, the case wouldve been dropped. We've seen it a million times over, women who are victims of DV, are not heard - most of the time, until they've been killed. And it all comes out then that they were failed by the police

Caroline was clearly fragile, clearly hanging on by a thread even before that happened I truly believe. As soon as the tide turned in the press, she'd never have coped

I don't really understand Lewis' post though. Nothing in the doc was a lie - he did get a text from another woman, she reacted, he called the police after she said her life would be over if he did (rightly so that he did btw) He said he didnt want her to be charged, but yet he sent the bloodbath photo to his friend who then sold it. Whats he got to clarify exactly? Thats the chain of events and even though its not his fault she killed herself, thats the truth and is why it led to her not wanting to be here anymore

 

[ForeverMakingJibesWicked]

Unfortunately the mother is not a reliable narrator. She is insistent on infantilising Caroline throughout and has airbrushed Lou Teasdale and her dad out of the whole narrative, so what else has been glossed over or airbrushed? When she started minimising throwing the phone saying she just tapped it off him to wake him up that was enough for me. She wasn’t there, how could she possibly know this? Lewis had a wound on his head and l’d imagine it would take some force from a phone to make that kind of impact. The downplaying of Caroline’s violence that night was uncomfortable to watch.

I actually feel very sorry for Lou. She and Caroline were firm friends, she was one of the last people to see Caroline alive as she was basically keeping watch.

CF’s mum has said some quite salty things about Lou and IIRC insinuated that had Lou not left (to pick up her kid I believe) that Caroline may not have died.

This will dredge up so many memories for her and possible misplaced guilt. If my best friend had died by suicide and her mum was on the warpath this publicly AND taking sly potshots at friends, it would hurt so much.

 

[ahtisyourself]

I listened to the mother on Spencer Matthew’s podcast and the way she says Caroline “brushed the phone off Lewis’ head” as he woke up is honestly just so unbelievable. Brushed it?!! There is absolutely zero point in even trying to rationalise anything else that comes out of her mouth if she fails at the first hurdle to acknowledge that Caroline threw a phone at her sleeping and defenceless partner and caused a wound.

 

[LadyWeatherwax]

This thread...

Imagine if the police came to a call of reported DV, found the female victim with a head wound she'd received in her sleep, a male assailant who had self-harmed and was kicking off, then asked the woman to do a voluntary drug test.

I can smell the outrage from here.

What an absolutely disgusting abuse of power, and flagrant disregard for oh, I dunno, the law.

Do you mind if we just do a quick drug test to check if you, uh, did anything drug related in your sleep that might have justified this person hitting you hard enough with an object to cause an open wound?

Imagine getting that one through the DToA process. Was the suspect arrested? Well...no. OK, were they displaying behaviour associated with use of Class A at the time they were...um...not arrested? Well... actually, they were asleep, that well known symptom of stimulant abuse.

If this happened, it's disgraceful. No wonder men don't come forward when they're being abused.

 

[boatofbubbles]

Personally after watching the documentary, I am disgusted. The excuses made are the same excuses made by abusers. After coming out of an horrendous relationship, I was put into a woman refuge. I dont know the truth, nobody ever will. I just dont think this documentary sits right.

 

[AlwightDallin]

Bloody tragic. How much can one family go through?

(Little not quite me rail, about 7 years ago I was at my uncles funeral who had passed of cancer. I knew at the time his son my cousin was in hospital with kidney disease. When my sister at the wake asked my aunty how our cousin was, she quietly told us he’d passed away that morning. As he’d been in a coma she’d had to choose whether to sit with him as he died or go to her husband of 60 years funeral. She looked absolutely broken as we all were but my word her face haunted me for months afterward. I genuinely hope the Flack family can find some peace eventually and heal together.)

 

[Phil Anne Throw Pee]

I’m grasping it just fine thanks! I didn’t say he shouldn’t have called the police, I said I thought that a caution in this instance should have sufficed! I’m surprised by people’s lack of compassion over someone who made a mistake and yes lashed out! She paid the ultimate price in the end! I think it could potentially happen to anyone if copious amounts of alcohol is involved and you react badly to cheating texts in that split second! She admitted she’d done it and wasn’t charged with anything like resisting arrest. Unfortunately this all snowballed and him sending pics of her blood to a friend who then sold them to the press is totally out of order! I don’t agree with her Mum sugar coating everything either though. She was ill advised by her legal team to plead not guilty. She herself wanted to plead guilty, but was advised not to! The outcome could have been very different!

It's a fine line in my opinion. Abuse of any kind is usually insidious and what might be a phone being thrown at the head one time, might (probably will) escalate to more severe abuse over a period of time. Any domestic abuse needs to be reported and charged appropriately, and a caution (IMO) would not have been enough.

With the greatest of respect to Caroline, she had serious mental health issues, which won't have been helped by mixing with booze and drugs. (I'm not moralising, I drink to self medicate and recognise I need to change). That said, I have never attacked anyone even when steaming drunk. I do not agree this could have 'happened to anyone'.

I think she will have died by suicide at some point though as she was mentally so unwell. I think it's possible to have compassion for her without excusing her behaviour and accepting that her behaviour was 100% wrong.

 

[NantucketBucket]

As someone who is close to Caroline’s family, please don’t lie. Caroline needed urgent medical attention - her wrists were cut to the muscle - more than just first aid. There was not much more than a half hour difference between her being pronounced dead and it hitting the news, so I’d be surprised if you knew before. And she was not ‘off her face on coke’, they were both drugs tested and she came back clear. They had both been drinking a lot.

What utter rubbish. She would almost certainly have had a swab test at the station after being arrested but unlikely to have been blood tested which is the only test that can be used evidentially. It makes no difference if youre off your tits when battering a sleeping victim, youre still guilty in the same way so what would have been the point in testing her blood?
The swab tests around that time were for 'information gathering purposes' to see exactly how many domestic abusers were off their cake to try and build a statistical picture across the spectrum. "They were both tested" is complete fantasy and shows a lack of both basic understanding of victims/perpetrators of crime and an absence of any critical thinking in what youve been fed from being 'close' to the family.

 

[ahtisyourself]

He sealed her fate by sending that pic. Bloody stupid thing to do!

Would you say that if the genders were reversed?

 

[The Devils Arse]

Yes. He could have called 101 to report abuse if he wished to do so didnt have to be 999 not that it will make a difference I guess butthere could have been anonymity. Reading the other thread he sounds like a nasty piece of work and DV isn't as always straight forward as one victim and one perpetrator. It's only my opinion and having an opinion isn't damaging at all. Let's hope all these people saying otherwise are perfect. Angels in life and will never make a mistake in their life.

Would you give this advice if you sister or friend had been assaulted by their partner? He was absolutely right to call 999, he was the victim of domestic abuse.

No one is perfect, but I can guarantee the majority of people don't go around and assault their partner.

 

[lolaruns]

Nobody is at fault when a loved one commits suïcide.I will have to say that Caroline was mentally ill since she was a young girl and her parents seem to have had a hands off approach when it came to their daughters well being.

 

[mindyaneb]

Watched it (insomnia) last night and her mum has a real issue with the truth.

Suicide is tragic. I lost two family members to it in the space of a month. But, whatever the reasons behind it, the only person responsible is the one who feels that is the only option.
I never really understood the love island thing, she was old enough to be their mother!

 

[forgotmyacc]

Yes. He could have called 101 to report abuse if he wished to do so didnt have to be 999 not that it will make a difference I guess butthere could have been anonymity. Reading the other thread he sounds like a nasty piece of work and DV isn't as always straight forward as one victim and one perpetrator. It's only my opinion and having an opinion isn't damaging at all. Let's hope all these people saying otherwise are perfect. Angels in life and will never make a mistake in their life.

What you are reading on the other thread is hearsay from a bunch of strangers on the Internet. What's being discussed here are facts from a police report.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

No one is ever to blame if someone takes their life. Not the media, not their friends, not their family. Blaming the media for Caroline is wrong - not least because it’s not true but mainly because any attempt to blame someone’s choice to do that isn’t ever the fault of another person, group or organisation.
if you like/feel sympathy to one person and blame any other party for their decision to end their life, you’re going down a very dark rabbit hole. Where do you draw the line? Their employer? Their girlfriend? Their ex girlfriend? The pub quiz which they didn’t win?