Caroline Flack found dead

Heat_Wave wrote:

Calling someone a cnut online is not an opinion, it’s abuse.

That depends on where you draw the line. Should I be able to say I hate leo varadkar or is that abuse too?

NIMAN wrote: »

I genuinely don't know who she is.

I'd never heard of her either but I wouldn't be one for watching the Love Island, Ex-Factor, Dancing Stars, type programs, not my kind of thing. Anyway, was reading about her in a couple of yesterday's newspapers and she appears to have been quite a volatile kind of character. The assault of the boyfriend and impending court case seems to have spelt the end of her celebrity career and ultimately tipped her over the edge so to speak.

Blanco100 wrote: »

The boyfriend needs to get the hell off social media whilst its all going on. Seriously, whinging about abuse, your gfriend just died instagram should be last of your worries.

I gotta be honest, Caroline Flack seemed to have a knack for attracting lads who fed off drama themselves -

Caroline Flack’s ex-fiance Andrew Brady called an ambulance to her home claiming she had threatened to kill herself

The pair of them (Andrew and Lewis) seem to be hamming it up on social media.

Roger_007 wrote: »

I was just wondering if the roles were reversed and it was the boyfriend who was about to be tried on a charge of assaulting her, what would the media reaction be in the event that he committed suicide.
I suspect there would be little sympathy?

I suspect you’d be absolutely correct.

You’re talking about a completely different scenario though.

GoneHome wrote: »

I'd never heard of her either but I wouldn't be one for watching the Love Island, Ex-Factor, Dancing Stars, type programs, not my kind of thing. Anyway, was reading about her in a couple of yesterday's newspapers and she appears to have been quite a volatile kind of character. The assault of the boyfriend and impending court case seems to have spelt the end of her celebrity career and ultimately tipped her over the edge so to speak.

Its bizarre to blame the media in this case.

kylith wrote: »

We have no idea whose blood it was because the trial will never take place.

She would hardly be the first abuser to use threats and acts of self harm as a manipulative tactic.

She also wouldn't be the first abuser/person to use those threats as a cry for help.

kylith wrote: »

We have no idea whose blood it was because the trial will never take place.

That's the point. It won't take place - ever - so to continue to call her an 'abuser' who tried to 'cave' in her boyfriend's skull is monumentally wrong. She would've gotten away with it because the only witness denied CPS' version of events. That also ruins your 'she knew she was going down so she killed herself' angle. You also compared her to a man who killed three children. Your take on this is reprehensible in my view. Way too much exaggeration, sensationalist language - like 'abuser' - and confirmation bias and not enough compassion or balance.

Hammer89 wrote: »

That's the point. It won't take place - ever - so to continue to call her an 'abuser' who tried to 'cave' in her boyfriend's skull is monumentally wrong. She would've gotten away with it because the only witness denied CPS' version of events. That also ruins your 'she knew she was going down so she killed herself' angle. You also compared her to a man who killed three children. Your take on this is reprehensible in my view. Way too much exaggeration, sensationalist language - like 'abuser' - and confirmation bias and not enough compassion or balance.

While I agree with most of what you say ,
I think your wrong in your assumption she would be found innocent ,
The police would not go ahead with the court appearance if they thought she would get off in fact they would not be allowed to have a court sitting without there being a strong chance of wining the case,

So its certainly not as clean cut and straight forward as you think

She is also is reported to have completely lost it when she was told it was going ahead, again she would have been advise on possible outcomes and her reaction would tell you she was not confident of being found innocent,

Her boyfriend rang the police the call would be recorded , and they attended a crime scene , they can't just pretend it never happened,

But I agree with the rest you said ,

tritium wrote: »

If a woman presented with a serious enough injury, caused apparently by her partner hitting her in a jealous rage, and then subsequently declared they weren’t a victim and there was nothing to see here would we all be happy to say domestic abuse of women is really all women’s fault for not pressing charges and women needed to take it seriously? Or would we, rightly in my view, ask what factors could lead to this contradiction: coercion in a controlling relationship? Fear of being disbelieved or ridiculed?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve already said it earlier that if someone doesn’t see themselves as a victim (whether it be domestic abuse/intimate partner violence, assault, sexual abuse/violence, etc), I’ve always respected that. What I would never do is try to tell someone they’re a victim, when they say they’re not. I’ve always seen that as an attempt by someone else to undermine a person’s perception of themselves to fit that person’s agenda. I might disagree with them, but who’s opinion is more important to them, theirs or mine? I’m not going to criticise someone who doesn’t see themselves as a victim.

We could still ask ourselves what factors could lead to this contradiction, and for me the answer is very simple - people don’t want their private lives being made public, it’s basic self-protection. It’s the reason a lot of crimes go unreported or are underreported. People don’t see themselves as victims or they don’t have the same idea of what constitutes abuse or exploitation as someone else. I don’t think it’s any different than some people thinking that Caroline Flack should have been charged with attempted murder or comparing her to Alan Hawe, and me thinking that’s just a tad dramatic.

“If someone doesn’t see themselves as a victim of domestic violence then I’ve always respected that”

Well that’s good for you. But the job of the police is to protect the public and they wouldn’t have been doing their job if it was as clear as day that an attack took place and then decided to ignore that because the victim changed their mind. And it wouldn’t be the first time that happened, be it down to intimidation, regret, embarrassment or what have you. Remember Lewis is a Male who was apparently attacked by his girlfriend, cases like this are underreported as it is due to the stigma of being bet up by a woman so it doesn’t really surprise me that he retracted it.

They obviously have enough footage (along with his initial phone call) to prove that she was a serious threat to him that night. Apparently he was heard screaming on the street “I was normal until I met her”, and they were both in absolute hysterics and Caroline had to be physically restrained. It sounds vicious. And that’s all we know. We’ll never know exactly what took place that night but the CPS typically don’t move forward with charges unless there is sufficient evidence that an attack took place. Reports now suggest she was absolutely terrified of this footage being made public and she couldn’t cope with the pressure of it. It would make you wonder what was actually on it. The no contact order was done because they believed Lewis was a victim of violence, and despite subsequently denying anything took place; sometimes victims need to be protected from themselves. Now whether she would have been actually convicted is a whole other conversation, and it’s something we will never ever know.

The UK has started to take cases like this extremely seriously in the last few years and there was a whole spectrum of new laws introduced in the last while. Once you make the initial phone call for help, if there’s enough evidence that an attack took place then it’s out of the victim’s hands. This is done in order to protect them from intimidation, threats or any pressure.

Having said all of that, the whole thing is a horrendous tragedy and one of the saddest things I’ve ever read about. But the CPS aren’t to blame here for trying to do their job. If they hadn’t pressed charges and god forbid Lewis died down the line, they would have had blood on their hands and a whole other social media storm would have been created.

I have no doubt that the media and social media were partly responsible for her fragile state of mind. They build these celebrities up and can tear them down. But as per the Oscar Wilde quote - There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about - there's not a chance that she or her management/PR would have told the media not to write about her, presenting careers can be gone in an instant and while she hadn't actually been found guilty of anything, it wasn't worth silencing the hand that feeds.

On the other hand, it was pretty clear she had some mental health issues. Her family knew it, her close friends knew it and she herself alluded to it in a previous social media post. She had been open about being on anti depressants and suffering depression after winning SCD. It's been claimed she had self harmed before and that the majority of blood on the bed was hers - by the boyfriend that was actually there at the time. I haven't heard the transcript of the 999 call but he said that she hit him on the head with a lamp while he slept - but has since said that didn't happen.

Now, as has been stated many times on this thread, victims of domestic violence often retract their statements and stay with their abuser. Sometimes because of the fear of being alone, more often for the fear of family and friends finding out (bit late in this case) or for financial dependency. There's an element to this that may ring true here - his tennis career hadn't amounted to much, but she had been steadily working on top TV shows for more than a decade. The cynic in me says this might be an explanation, if the charges against her were proven to be true. But it's still all speculation and conjecture by joe public and of course what the tabloids want you to think.

One thing that puzzles me about the bloody bed picture - why is it out for public consumption? Surely the photo of this is considered evidence and public images produced by tabloid gutter press are influencing potential jurors in the case? These images tend to come to light after the case has been heard and a verdict handed down. As stated by Lewis Burton, this wasn't his blood, so if this was one of the damning pieces of evidence, were the legal team aiming to strike it out if the case went ahead? Nobody will know. Tabloids know full well that the clickbait headlines of a bloody bed are the money shots. If it turns out that it's not exactly true, then a retraction doesn't need to be on the front page, just buried in a later edition. It's a lot of blood, but where was his head injury?

Millicently wrote: »

Look, this is what happens when someone dies, no matter what they did in life they are canonised in death. I've never watched Love Island I don't follow her or read tabloids very often but this woman killed herself hours after the Crown Prosecution Service told her that they were going ahead with the Court Case and the day before the show she'd been fired from was due to air.


Now it's all about glossing over the fact that the woman seriously assaulted a man while he slept and painting her as a victim in all of this. The reality is that men are the victims of domestic violence too but they don't really get much coverage. I'll get eaten alive for saying it but this just seems very selfish and manipulative timing. She isn't the victim here, the man she attacked and could have murdered in his sleep is the victim. Yes she's dead, yes it's sad but she's wasn't a saint so lets not pretend that she was.

I'm sick of hearing that 'she was vulnerable' and shouldn't have been prosecuted, what that means is she was an effing nut job with a short fuse and a violent temper. Manipulative to the last she waited until the point where she got the maximum attention she craved and did as much damage as she could to kill herself. She could have done it next week or next month but no, she went for the day before Love Island was due to air. I'm appalled at the amount of people who think that her being nuts means that she shouldn't have been charged let alone prosecuted and that it should all have been covered up.

This particular poster I've quoted really seems to think that Caroline Flack was nothing more than a violent, manipulative, selfish bully. It's almost a stereotype for the image that the tabloids have been presenting as fact. And one thing I would like to point out about their assumptions is that even though I've never watched Love Island, I'd flick through enough telly to know it is on EVERY bloody night when the series is running, not once a week, not a launch on a weekend - so she did not "time her suicide" for maximum impact on the show she used to present. I dunno, I think it's very sad that a woman who has mental health issues, who seems to have difficulty holding down a relationship (perhaps because she has trust issues and needs anger management) killed herself the day after Valentines day, an inconsequential hallmark day that treats single people like pariahs. While her boyfriend was standing by her, she couldn't speak to him so she was very much "alone". She had probably heard about the CPS case on Valentines day too, just for good measure.

One thing I do know is that a family has lost their sister and daughter, a woman who had obvious anger issues, but by her own account was told that she "was draining" when she reached out for help for her own mental health. I wonder how that person is feeling now.:(

If you look at people on twitter blaming the death on the media and trolls on how they reacted to the domestic abuse case of Caroline which she was charged to appear in court on ,

Theses are the same people who had absolute no issues going to town on a certain Conor McGregor for an allegedly sexual assault that he has never been charged off ,

Its funny how they like to follow whatever trend they think will make them look righteous and hypocrisy is forgotten about ,