Holly Newton’s family issue abusive relationship warning

Fifteen-year-old Holly Newton was murdered by her boyfriend at the end of their abusive relationship. As her killer is jailed, her family and police say Holly’s story should act as a warning to other young people.

Holly did not see she was a victim of domestic abuse until days before her death, her mother Micala Trussler says.

“I don’t think she realised what he was doing,” she says. “Even just controlling is a form of abuse.”

Logan MacPhail was Holly’s “first and only boyfriend”, Micala says, the couple having met at army cadets and spending 18 months in a “typical teenage” relationship.

He spent weekends with her family; Micala has videos of them singing and dancing together in her living room.

But when Holly decided she wanted to break up, MacPhail deployed “emotional blackmail”, claiming he would harm himself and showing all the “classic” signs of domestic abuse.

“He was obsessed with Holly”, Micala says. “If he couldn’t have her, no-one could.”

MacPhail was 17 when he stabbed Holly to death in an alleyway in Hexham, Northumberland, in January 2023.

The attack was ferocious, with MacPhail inflicting 36 knife injuries during the minute-long frenzy.

He admitted during his murder trial the relationship could be abusive and toxic.

Micala says MacPhail wanted to control Holly and needed to “know where she was at all times”.

But Holly did not see the problem until it was too late.

Micala is keen for other young people to see the warning signs and wants domestic abuse between young people to be recognised legally.

“I think we need to realise now that young people are having relationships a lot younger,” she says.

Her call is echoed by Annie (not her real name), who was 15 when she found herself in an abusive relationship.

“He wouldn’t let me wear what I wanted to wear. I went and got my hair cut once and he wasn’t happy with it – he told me to put a bag over my head,” Annie, who is now in her 20s, says.

“Anything that he could pick at me with, my weight, so I became anorexic, the way my skin was because I suffer with eczema and he didn’t like it and he made fun of it.

“If I wore too much make-up, not enough make-up, the colour of my hair, anything.

“He would find ways to change me.”

Verbal abuse also became violent, with Annie’s partner breaking her arm when she was pregnant.

Her boyfriend hid the abuse from Annie’s family, with whom the young couple were living, and it took a long time for her to realise what was really happening.

“I had no idea it was wrong,” she says.

“I just thought that’s how everybody was, because he was my first real relationship, I’d never been with anybody else, so I wasn’t aware and I didn’t tell anybody.”

She is no longer with her partner and has received support from the Acorns Project in North Tyneside, which helps teenagers who experience domestic violence.

Like Micala, they think the law around domestic abuse, which currently only classifies people aged 16 and over as being victims of abusive partnerships, needs to be looked at.

“By not recognising it as domestic abuse within the legal definition, we may not be recognising the severity and the seriousness of the issue,” Kris Koth of Acorns says.

“Young people’s relationships are important to them, they are just as intense as adult relationships, but sometimes they don’t feel their relationships are taken seriously.”

Kris warns there is a risk the abuse in young people’s relationships is viewed as not as severe as that in adult relationships, “when we know that isn’t true”.

Det Sgt Darren Davies says messages MacPhail sent to Holly clearly showed coercive behaviour.

“He would talk about the break-up and how he’d harm himself if she didn’t speak to him,” he says. “It is a fairly common tactic of perpetrators to get people back on side as a sympathy element.

“For a 15-year-old girl to hear that can’t have been easy and Holly didn’t understand what that was.”

The prevalence of mobile phones and social media can make teenage relationships “more intense”, Det Sgt Davies adds.

“The big thing I have taken away from the case itself is the relationship those two had at the age they were,” he says.

“You realise just how much contact kids have with each other and those relationships are far more intense and involved than I think a lot of adults probably appreciate.”

Society has a responsibility to help children navigate the complicated world of relationships, he says, adding: “Just talk to them and promote healthy relationships and boundaries, show them what’s healthy and what’s not.”

A Home Office spokesperson said the government’s “thoughts remain with Holly Newton’s loved ones after her horrific murder”.

They said there was a “clear mission” to halve violence against women and girls within a decade.

“As part of this, we will be looking closely at how we can intervene at the earliest opportunity to protect girls when children present such harmful behaviours,” the spokesperson added.