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Every suicide in which the deceased had endured abuse at home should be treated as a potential homicide, as per calls from campaigners who seek to hold abusers responsible for the catastrophic consequences of their behavior.

This step is essential because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to bring perpetrators to justice in instances of suicide following domestic abuse.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the legal system, to examine these deaths with the gravity they deserve,” remarked a leader of a campaign group at a significant gathering in Westminster earlier this week.

The assembly, organized by a group running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” initiative to fight for change in the criminal justice system, brought together families who had suffered bereavement to suicide following domestic abuse.

Personal Stories of Loss

Sharon Holland lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in March 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had reported her former partner to police, submitting a two-hour video interview as evidence about his conduct.

After her death, the individual was convicted of manipulative and domineering conduct and jailed for over three years. He was later sentenced for three years and seven months after a second woman stepped up to disclose that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

After Chloe’s death, the mother chose to advocate for a legal change to hold offenders accountable; however she then discovered that regulations were existing, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I concluded it was not a fresh legislation I needed as existing laws were in place, and after finding out how much my child had been failed before her death by the authorities and numerous services, they had to do their job properly, and things required reform,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have contacted me and only four of us have had a conviction,” she continued. “I was astonished to see so many families who have been fighting the police and CPS for years and getting no justice for their offspring or sibling and didn’t have a voice in case it impacted investigations that were not progressing.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s daughter her 30-year-old daughter passed away in May 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“Hannah was vibrant, she was loving,” she said. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, deeply devoted mum to her kids, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a partnership where she was systematically destroyed by her companion,” she explained.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was controlled and broken down gradually until she could not see a way forward. The man who did this to her went unpunished, because we label it self-inflicted death, we conclude the case and we proceed.

“But I could not move on,” she remarked, “and I haven’t been able to let go. Honestly, she did not merely take her own life. She was murdered. She was killed slowly and intentionally over a 24-month span, and when I approached the authorities, when I begged them to look into what he had inflicted upon her, I was told that there was nothing that they could do.

“There was no investigation into her passing. The domestic homicide review, which I had to fight for, took five years and had no impact. A lengthy coroner’s hearing determined self-inflicted death, despite huge evidence over a very traumatic multi-day session of family violence and failings by multiple services.”

The parent told the meeting that for a decade she has “been fighting a establishment that refuses to see what is right in front of it”.

She said the suicide is homicide movement was critical “because when someone takes their own life after they’ve endured family violence, we have to examine it for what it really is, which is homicide.

“We need to use the legislation we already possess properly and it is not occurring at the moment, and we need to hold abusers accountable for driving their victims to death.

“We have the laws. We need the will, we need law enforcement to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to take legal action. We need judges to understand that words and control can cause death equally to hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, chaired by a Labour MP, and including the government official, the grieving families again shared their experiences.

A parliamentary under-secretary informed the assembly: “Such fatalities are often dismissed as if they were their own choice, they chose to do this, when, reality, these were the culmination of in fact, somebody else’s violence, and these are not rare incidents.”

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she stated. “Particularly around homicide or manslaughter, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute regardless, it has been shaped with traditional legal customs for centuries, and it is outdated, honestly, it’s the world we currently live in.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be easy to fix. It is incredibly complex and difficult, particularly when you look at the issue of murder, but we recognize that it requires examination.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A representative for the legal body said: “Domestic abuse is a heinous crime and our legal officers are actively advised to evaluate murder and manslaughter charges in self-inflicted death instances where there is a known context of family violence or other manipulative conduct.

“We have in the past prosecuted a number of defendants for leading to the fatality of a companion they abused, encompassing in proceedings which are ongoing.

“We are collaborating with police and other stakeholders to guarantee these kinds of offences are well-understood – so that we can bring perpetrators accountable for the full extent of their wrongdoings.”