forgive

CHARLIE Kirk’s grieving widow has said she forgives the man who allegedly assassinated her husband in a heart-wrenching speech.

A distraught Erika Kirk broke down in tears as she took to the stage at her husband Charlie Kirk’s memorial in Glendale, Arizona, on Sunday.

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Erika was visibly emotional as she addressed 100,000 people who packed the stadium – including President Donald Trump.

She stunned mourners during her emotional speech saying she forgave her late husband’s killer.

“I forgive him,” she told the crowd, breaking down in tears.

“I forgive him because it was what Christ did. And is what Charlie would do.

“The answer to hate is not hate, the answer we know from the gospel is love and always love.

“After Charlie’s assassination, we didn’t see violence, we didn’t see rioting, we didn’t see revolution.

“Instead, we saw what my husband always prayed he would see in this country. We saw revival [of Christian faith].”

Dressed in a white blazer and matching trousers, Erika thanked attendees for travelling from across the globe to celebrate her late husband.

She told mourners she was living through a “heartache I never knew existed” as she delivered her moving tribute.

Remembering the tragic day of her husband’s assassination, Erika said: “On the afternoon of September 10th, I arrived at a Utah hospital to do the unthinkable: To look directly at my husband’s murdered body.

“I saw the wound that ended his life.”

Erika added: “I will miss him so much.”

The heartbroken widow would end her emotional speech by speaking directly to her late husband in a touching moment.

She said: “I love you Charlie, baby. I will make you so proud.”

President Donald Trump, his Vice President JD Vance and billionaire Elon Musk were also at the huge memorial service at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona — home of the Arizona Cardinals American football team.

Musk told reporters: “Charlie was someone who believed in dialogue and open debate. He was a man of ideas. He spoke eloquently and basically never raised his voice. He was a man of peace and now he has been murdered in cold blood.

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“He was killed because his voice made a difference.

“He was showing people the Light and he was killed by the Dark.”

Vice President JD Vance described Kirk as having built a movement that has “changed the course of American history”.

He told Mr Kirk’s sea of supporters: “They tried to silence my friend Charlie Kirk but we are spreading his message loudly.”

Mr Vance, whose Catholicism has been central to his own political rise and mission, added: “We must remember that he is a hero to the United States of America — and he is a martyr for the Christian faith.”

He noted that the Trump administration was at the memorial not just because of their relationship with Kirk, but because “we wouldn’t be here without him”.

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Kirk was buried on Saturday at a private funeral in Arizona attended by friends and family.

Tearful fans queued up for 12 hours for the first-come, first-admitted service organised by Turning Point USA, the high school organisation set up by Kirk to help spread conservative politics on campuses.

Some wore black, others attended in flag-emblazoned T-shirts and Make America Great Again hats.

Sporting a Trump T-shirt, Aaron Knight, 28, from Houston, Texas, reckoned: “Charlie Kirk was a godly Christian man.

“He provided a sacrifice for this country and the fight for free speech. We are here in mourning but also celebration for the incredible man he was.”

Ashley January, 35, brought her seven-month-old baby Theodore from Kansas to “witness history”. She said she and husband Skylar “fell in love with Charlie after seeing him in Kansas.”

She added: “We want to raise our son to have the same morals as him. It’s going to be something Theo will read in his history books and he can say he was there.”

A man said he had camped out from 8pm the night before.
One woman even brought a buggy full of puppies with her.

The nearby Desert Diamond Arena served as overflow for an additional 19,000 people who watched the event on TV screens.

Kirk, 31, was shot dead while giving a speech at Utah Valley University earlier this month.

Tyler Robinson, 22, is charged with aggravated murder.
He is in custody and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Yesterday Mrs Kirk told the New York Times she could not say if he deserved to die as well.

She said: “I told our lawyer, I want the government to decide this. I do not want that man’s blood on my ledger.

“When I get to heaven, and Jesus is like, ‘Uh, eye for an eye? Is that how we do it?’.

“And that keeps me from being in heaven, from being with Charlie?”

Before the service started, photos of Kirk were projected on big screens accompanied by a playlist of praise and worship songs.

Among those paying respects and giving speeches were President Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr, right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson and homeland security adviser and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

Kirk founded Turning Point USA — whose headquarters are in Phoenix — in 2012, at the age of 18.

Mrs Kirk has been unanimously elected to succeed her late husband as CEO of the organisation.

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A MAN who fought to free his mum from jail after she murdered his dad has spoken out about how he forgave her for the brutal killing.

David Challen, 38, campaigned relentlessly to free his mum Sally from prison in 2019, nine years after she killed his dad Richard – her husband – by bludgeoning him with a hammer.

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Despite Sally having suffered decades of coercive control by her husband, David says Richard was “not a monster”, adding that he was “deeply complex”.

In August 2010, Sally, a 56-year-old housewife, brutally murdered Richard, her 61-year-old husband of 31 years, at their home in Claygate, Surrey.

Sally was eventually convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, before her murder conviction was quashed and she was released from jail in 2019.

Now, ahead of the release of a new book David has written on his family’s ordeal, the 38-year-old has recalled his battle to free his mum.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, David said reading about the decades-long abuse of Gisèle Pelicot by her husband and dozens of other men gave him flashbacks to the own suffering his mum experienced.

He explained: “It highlighted the normality of these men in our society.

“My dad was not a monster. He was deeply complex.

“If society labels them monsters, it’s washing its hands of how they are created.”

After Sally was jailed, David began to unearth chilling details about how his dad had subjected Sally to decades of domestic abuse – keeping it hidden from him and his brother James.

They discovered how their mum had been dragged down stairs, been raped by Richard on a family holiday to Los Angeles, and had attempted suicide at age 21.

Sally had been subject to coercive control – a pattern of abuse where someone is made to feel dependent, isolated, or scared.

She was even forced to hand over her salary throughout her painful ordeal.

These discoveries prompted David to begin years of ardent campaigning, eventually leading to an appeal which reduced her conviction to manslaughter.

Helped by a law passed in 2015 which recognised psychological manipulation as a form of domestic abuse, Sally walked free from HMP Send, Surrey, in 2019.

The landmark case saw Sally’s murder conviction quashed due to new psychiatric evidence, with her final sentencing acknowledging the impact that years of controlling abuse had on her.

As a result, roughly three thousands murder convictions are being reassessed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission to factor in examples of coercive control – with at least five cases having been reopened.

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In his new book, The Unthinkable: A Story of Control, Violence and My Mother, due to be released on Thursday, David showcases his struggle to come to terms with his father’s abuse, and how it’s affecting his life even now.

David also highlights how more needs to be done to protect victims of coercive control.

Speaking on the BBC show Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg about how his dad’s abuse had become “normalised” in their family home, David explained how he “couldn’t understand” at first how his mum had murdered Richard.

He said: “She’d done the worst act anyone possibly could do. [She] took away my father.”

Following the change in the law regarding coercive control, David, now a domestic abuse campaigner, said he finally had a way to describe the “insidious nature” of his dad.

David added that not having a name for the abuse had “robbed us of our right to have an ability to protect ourselves.”

He explained that he had to dig up his past in order to “find the child” he had left behind.

David continued: “But I knew I was born into this world with a gut feeling that [there was] something inherently bad about my father, and I never knew why.

“I normalised the coercion and control in my home, this life of servitude that my mother lived under… sexual violence was routine.”

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