Rest In Peace Caroline Flack

Opting to take her own life is truly tragic, Caroline’s life had recently taken a turn as reported in the media. Interesting yesterday was that from the first minute the story broke the line of reporting was focussed mainly on the ‘Love Island suicides’ angle. It then incorporated social media and the on-line abuse angle…and it pretty much stayed in that tone as far as the reporting goes.

This seemed like the wrong avenue to explore when she had been in court and was due to return for a trial in the next couple of weeks. I feel certain this is where the investigative reporting should have been focussed on…this is the reason for her suicide.

The catalyst for this is the alleged assault of her boyfriend and the 999 call made at the time and what he said during it. It meant the police came, she was arrested, photos and statements were taken and the initial hearing took place.

It was clear long before the hearing that her boyfriend did not want to press charges, still wanted to remain a couple and would be supporting her. He was certainly doing his best to wind in the hysteria once the initial night in question was over. The tabloids went to town with the story regardless, after all she was a big name, a press favourite and her life had been quite comprehensively been reported on for many years.

So with zero appetite from the alleged victim of Caroline having to go to trail, one has to assume there was some keenness from either the police, the media or the prosecution to get this to court regardless. I see this morning the CPS are under fire from Caroline’s legal team saying she was ‘vulnerable’….but that should not be good enough reason to get away with assaulting someone should it?

That said, it seems that the news that the CPS were going ahead with a trial was the very news that ended her life.

Clearly she knew this was going to be a horrendous couple of days, the media would be making a huge story out of it. No doubt the bloodied photos would get reprinted, the salacious nature of the night in question would be reported in minute detail and potentially some ex-boyfriends would get dragged out the woodwork as character witnesses to tell of their experiences with her. All this will in turn have lit up social media. Caroline got a taste of it the other night when David Williams cracked a nasty joke or cruel jibe on ITV about an ITV colleague. He was rightly booed for it rather than applauded, but still it was a glimpse of how the future might have been for her.

The trial might have been interesting if we had heard her side and also the full story from the boyfriend, I imagine she would have been cleared and gone back to ITV but now we’ll never know. Sad.