This article references self-harm and suicide.
It’s been over five years since the TV presenter Caroline Flack took her own life on the day after Valentine’s Day 2020, but revisiting the events that led up to this tragic moment is still as shocking now as it was then. Caroline was best known for presenting The X Factor and Love Island. The new Disney+ two-part documentary, Caroline Flack, Search For The Truth, is helmed by her mother, Christine Flack. And while it clearly showcases the devastation of a mother’s loss, it also throws light on a growing number of inconsistencies surrounding the domestic abuse trial that Caroline was at the centre of. It explores the 40-year-old star’s fragile mental health. Featuring commentary from her lawyer, her agent, her best friend, her siblings and her impressive mother, Christine, the series demands answers around key decisions made by both the Crown Prosecution and The Met’s handling of the case against Caroline of assault by battery against her boyfriend, tennis player, Lewis Burton. Charges that Lewis himself did not press. Lewis does not appear in the documentary.
The series is made by the same team that created the 2021 documentary Caroline Flack: Her Life and Death, which focused more on Caroline’s emotional and mental health issues that had beset her since her youth. This documentary focuses squarely on the events leading up to her death and the painstaking evidence that Christine Flack has collated as she fights for justice for her daughter. Christine and those who were closest to her and witnessed the final weeks of her life firmly believe that Caroline’s case was treated differently by the justice system because she was famous. They believe that the tabloid press poured fuel on that fire, especially The Sun newspaper, which published images of her flat shortly after the couple’s row on 13th December 2019, revealing her blood all over the room. “It was like Carrie was betrayed at every part,” Christine says today. “Everything that happened like that, we couldn’t stop. And we couldn’t stop the effect that it was having on Carrie.”
Here are 7 main takeaways from the two-part documentary:
1. Caroline’s self-inflicted injuries were so bad that doctors said she would need plastic surgery on her arms.
The blood in the photographs of the flat, published by The Sun newspaper after being sold by one of Lewis’s friends, was Caroline’s and not Lewis’s. Caroline self-harmed with broken glass after Lewis called the police following their fight. Caroline was treated in hospital for self-inflicted cuts to her arms that were so bad that they had gone to the bone, and doctors said that she would need plastic surgery. After 12 hours in the hospital, she was then taken into police custody and locked in a cell.
2. The Crown Prosecution Service initially said that Caroline should only receive a caution.
Following Caroline and Lewis’s fight, which took place after the pair had been drinking, Caroline found text messages on his phone from another woman, leading her to wake him up and cause an injury to his head with the phone, which prompted Lewis to call the police. The initial CPS notes claim that Caroline should only be given a caution. This is in the notes shown on the documentary, and Caroline’s twin sister, Jody, was also told this by the CPS at the time.
3. It was a female detective who overruled the CPS’s ‘caution’ ruling and a female prosecutor who claimed Lewis had been hit with a lamp by Caroline.
It was a female detective on duty who analysed the case and said they wanted to appeal the CPS caution decision, leading to Caroline being charged with assault by beating, despite the fact that Lewis did not press charges and did not want to press charges. The CPS claimed they were doing so based on the bodycam footage from the police officers attending the scene. At the Magistrate's hearing on 23rd December 2019, Prosecutor Katie Weiss told the court that Lewis had said he was hit by a lamp. Lewis has denied that Caroline hit him with a lamp, and Caroline’s lawyer, Paul Morris, points out that no lamp was taken from the crime scene and analysed as evidence.
A spokesperson from the Metropolitan Police told the documentary makers: “It is understandable that those closest to Caroline have questions about everything that happened to her in the months before she died, including the police investigation. We have been open to those questions and have engaged with a number of independent reviews and an inquest. While there was organisational learning for us on points of process, no misconduct has been identified."
4. Caroline’s case was allegedly treated differently because she was famous
As part of her extensive evidence, Christine Flack has secured the incident report, and there are several references in the notes – shown on camera in the documentary – that state that Caroline is a well-known television presenter and media personality, so there is likely to be increased media interest in the case. Her lawyer states: “She was being prosecuted because she was Caroline Flack, not for what she'd done or what she'd not done.”
A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service told the documentary makers: “All decisions in this case were made on the basis of the medical opinion available to us at the time. A person’s celebrity status never influences whether a case is taken forward. We are satisfied that the prosecution was correctly brought.”
5.) Texts, voicenotes and video messages reveal Caroline’s mental state in her final weeks.
Harrowing voice notes and videos from Caroline are played on the documentary, clearly showing her distress at all that is going on, as well as bandages on her wrists and hands from self-harm. Text messages are reproduced where she repeatedly claims her career and her life are over due to the case. The night before she killed herself, Caroline had been drinking and sent messages to her best friend Mollie, which make no sense, and are even reproduced.
6) She was forced to move out of her flat at 3 am to escape paparazzi
Because paparazzi were camped outside her home, in the weeks leading up to the case, Caroline had to move out to a rented property in a gated community in north-east London. Christine points out that the only way she could move her belongings out was to hire a removal company that would work at 3 am to escape the paparazzi. When Caroline moved into her new home, where she would eventually take her life, she called her mother to say that she was scared because there was a graveyard across the road with a tombstone for a Caroline Flack who died in 1867.
7) Caroline had wanted to make a documentary about her whole ordeal.
In one more upbeat voicenote, Caroline states just weeks before her death that she has had an idea and wants to make a documentary about all that she has been through surrounding the domestic abuse trial. Her loved ones now claim that this is the documentary.
Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth is streaming on Disney+ now.
