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Caroline Flack was 'tried by The Sun newspaper and found guilty' contributing to her mental health decline and suicide, as revealed in a new Disney+ docuseries led by her mother.

In Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth, the late Love Island host's inner circle challenge assumptions about a December 2019 incident involving the TV presenter and her boyfriend Lewis Burton - showing how a tabloid feeding frenzy turned a private crisis into a public spectacle.

The film follows her mother, Christine Flack, as she tries to understand how a daughter who was once reality TV's golden girl ended up dead at 40.

At the time of her death, Caroline was facing trial on one count of assault by beating, accused of smashing a lamp over Burton's head during an argument at her London flat. The documentary sets out how this version of events was dangerously misleading.

Photographs later splashed across the tabloids depicted a 'bloodbath' scene - but the blood was her own, from self-inflicted wounds that required 12 hours of treatment; while Burton's injuries were minor.

Christine's questions cut to the heart of the case. "What I'd like to understand is, was Caroline treated the same as everybody else - or was she treated differently?" she asks.

Caroline's agent, Louise Booth, describes how the presenter was commodified by the very newspapers that had once celebrated her: "We knew what the truth was but the newspapers, you can tell them until you are blue in the face. At this point, Caroline was worth more to them in print to be the villain than the hero that she was six months ago and she was hosting Love Island."

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Christine told the documentary that she feels "sad" and "mad" to think that "something as awful as this" was going on in Caroline's life and "she becomes not a person to the press, she's expendable".

Showbiz reporter and editor Paul Martin, who worked with Caroline for a number of years, describes the brutal mindset deployed by the tabloids: "Every time you put Caroline Flack in the newspapers they sold and, on the front page, a lot more."

The turning point, Christine believes, came with The Sun's New Year's Day splash in 2020 - 20 days after Caroline's arrest - under the editorship of Tony Gallagher.

"Over that Christmas Carrie seemed to be coping, and then on January the 1st this was the headline: FLACK'S BEDROOM BLOODBATH'," her mother recalls.

"And it was complete and utter shock. The way this story reads is that Caroline had hit her boyfriend with a lamp and that was his blood. And that is so far from the truth. That was Caroline's blood where she'd cut her wrists."

Friend Mollie Grosberg, who spent time with Caroline in her final weeks, is blunt about The Sun's decision to publish those images: "Every single person that was there, that let that go to print, should be ashamed of themselves, because as far as I'm concerned, that is one of the main reasons why she isn't here today."

In the film, Christine pushes Paul Martin to explain how such a graphic image could ever have been cleared for publication. He replies that it would have gone through layers of senior scrutiny.

"From experience, that would have gone through three lawyers, the editor, the news editor conference where you have plenty of very intelligent journalists who are very able to speak for themselves, in all newspapers, debating whether or not they should use it," he says.

When Christine asks whether anyone considered what effect this mig...