The Unthinkable

“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.