Sara Thornton

In February 1989, Sara Thornton was jailed for life for killing her violent, alcoholic husband. 18 months later, her appeal was turned down. In the same week, Joseph McGrail walked free from court, having murdered his alcoholic wife, a woman who, in the words of the judge "would have tried the patience of a saint". This prompted Sara to go on hunger strike and for women's groups everywhere to campaign for her release. Now a cause celebre, her case focuses attention on battered and abused women whose cries for help have for so long been ignored. This is her story: of her privileged but emotionally deprived childhood and her marriage to Malcolm Thornton, an ex-policeman, whose accelerating spiral of drunken brutality, and his threats to kill both Sara and her daughter, provoked her to one last desperate act.