The Unthinkable: A Story of Control, Violence and My Mother
By (Author) David Challen
Octopus Publishing Group
BRAZEN
9th September 2025
5th June 2025
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Domestic abuse
Memoirs
Relationships and families: advice and issues
362.8292092
Hardback
320
Width 138mm, Height 222mm
41g
"When [my mother] struck, it was with the cumulative rage of 30 years of hurt."
David Challen grew up in the perfect home with the model family.David Challen also grew up inside a house which concealed his father's manipulation and control.On a Saturday in 2010, his mother struck twenty blows to the back of her husband's head with a hammer after 35 years of abuse. She then turned off the stove she had been cooking his lunch on and washed the dirty dishes and left the house. In those few minutes, David's life was changed forever.Over the next decade, he led the fight to overturn her conviction; and in doing so he not only freed his mother and transformed the legal system but also became a voice for the countless victims of coercive control across the country.David Challen is a domestic abuse campaigner. He successfully campaigned to free his mother in a landmark appeal recognising the lifetime of coercive control she suffered. David continues to speak out against violence against women and is a Prison Advice and Care Trust Ambassador (PACT).