Caroline Flack’s mother rejects Met apology over handling of case

The mother of Caroline Flack has rejected an apology from the Metropolitan police over the way her daughter’s case was handled.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had recommended the former Love Island presenter receive a caution after an incident with her boyfriend, Lewis Burton. However, this was overturned after an appeal from the Met, who instead charged her with assault by beating.

Flack was found dead in February 2020 aged 40 and a coroner later ruled she killed herself after learning prosecutors were going to proceed with an assault charge.

The Met were ordered to apologise to Flack’s family after a review by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which found there was not a “record of rationale” to appeal against the CPS decision.

Flack’s mother, Christine Flack, told the BBC she rejected that apology, while the force said her arrest had been handled appropriately.

Speaking to Victoria Derbyshire for BBC Newsnight, she said: “It just seems wrong. They haven’t said why there were no notes taken, why nothing was recorded. I don’t know whether they are covering something.”

When asked if she thought her daughter would still be alive if the caution had remained and Caroline had not been charged, Christine Flack told Newsnight: “I do, I really do.”

She added: “Once all the pictures came out in the newspapers and things were written about her on social media – they just picked up the bad. There was a lot of good but Caroline wasn’t reading the good – she was only reading the bad.

“She lost her job straight away, without even being found guilty or going to court. She had another series axed.”

Caroline Flack presented many of UK television’s biggest reality TV shows and their spin-offs, from The X Factor to I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here Now!, and won the BBC show Strictly Come Dancing in 2014.

Tabloids such as the Sun, which broke the news of her death, moved swiftly to delete negative coverage about Caroline Flack.