Caroline Flack: CPS defends move to drop Nicky Butt assault charge but not TV star's case

The Crown Prosecution Service has defended its decision to pursue an assault charge against Caroline Flack, despite dropping a similar case against ex-Manchester United footballer Nicky Butt.

A CPS spokesman said on Wednesday it was "not appropriate" to draw comparisons between "unconnected cases" and that a decision on whether it is in the public interest to pursue an investigation is down to "individual circumstances".

He also maintained the two cases were different but gave no further details, citing privacy reasons.

The service has been criticised recently for pursuing a case against the 40-year-old former Love Island presenter, who took her own life at the weekend.

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She had been waiting to face trial for allegedly attacking her boyfriend Lewis Burton, 27, with a lamp in December last year, despite him saying he did not support the prosecution.

In the Butt case, the former Man Utd midfielder was accused last April of beating his estranged wife Shelley Barlow, but she later said she did not want to give evidence.

The 45-year-old football star was due to face trial next week, but the case was discontinued on Tuesday after no evidence was provided from the prosecution.

Former chief crown prosecutor for the North West, Nazir Afzal, suggested a difference may lie in that the alleged assault in Flack's case was said to be deliberate, while Butt maintained his charge was an accident.

His defence says he accidentally damaged Ms Barlow's mobile phone, and did not know that she had cut her hand in the process.

Mr Afzal said: "Without the complainant giving evidence, it's virtually impossible to rebut a defence of accident."

But on Wednesday, Flack's family released the details of an unpublished Instagram post written by the TV star days before her death in which she said her case was also "an accident".

She wrote: "I've been having some sort of emotional breakdown for a very long time.

"But I am NOT a domestic abuser. We had an argument and an accident happened. An accident.

"The blood that someone SOLD to a newspaper was MY blood and that was something very sad and very personal."

An inquest into Flack's death was opened and adjourned on Wednesday morning, where the court heard her body was found at her flat in Stoke Newington, east London, by residents.

Funeral arrangements for the star are yet to be made.