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Each self-inflicted death where the victim had endured domestic violence should be treated as a possible homicide, as per calls from advocates who seek to make perpetrators responsible for the devastating impact of their behavior.

This step is essential because police and prosecutors are failing to hold offenders accountable in instances of suicide after domestic abuse.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the criminal justice system, to examine these deaths with the gravity they warrant,” remarked a co-director of a advocacy organization during a significant gathering in Westminster recently.

The assembly, organized by a group leading a “Suicide is Homicide” initiative to fight for reform in the criminal justice system, brought together relatives who had suffered bereavement to self-inflicted death following family violence.

Individual Accounts of Loss

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in spring 2023. Before her death, the young woman had informed her ex-boyfriend to police, submitting a lengthy recorded statement as evidence against him.

After her death, the individual was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct and imprisoned for over three years. He was later sentenced for an additional term after a second woman came forward to report that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

In the wake of her loss, the mother decided to campaign for a new law to hold offenders accountable; yet she then discovered that regulations were already in place, they just weren’t often being used to secure prosecutions.

“I decided it wasn’t a fresh legislation I required as existing laws were already there, and after learning how much my daughter had been let down before her death by the police and many other agencies, they needed to fulfill their duties, and practices required reform,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and just a handful of us have had a guilty verdict,” she continued. “I was astonished to see so many families who have been fighting the police and prosecution service for a long time and receiving no resolution for their child or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it affected inquiries that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

Saskia Lightburn Richie’s daughter her 30-year-old daughter passed away in May 2017, in what she called “the final act of violence” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“Hannah was vibrant, she was caring,” she said. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, really loving mum to her kids, and she took her own life after two years in a relationship where she was systematically destroyed by her companion,” she explained.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and dismantled gradually until she could not see a path ahead. The individual who did this to her walked free, because we label it suicide, we close the file and we move on.

“But I could not move on,” she said, “and I haven’t been able to move on. In truth, Hannah didn’t just die by suicide. She was murdered. She was killed slowly and intentionally over a 24-month span, and when I went to the police, when I pleaded with them to investigate what he had done to her, I was told that there was nothing that they could do.

“No inquiry was conducted into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to fight for, took five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest found death by suicide, notwithstanding huge evidence over a extremely distressing four day period of domestic abuse and failings by various agencies.”

The mother informed the gathering that for a decade she has “been fighting a establishment that refuses to see what is obvious”.

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

“We must use the legislation we already possess effectively and it is not occurring at the present, and we need to hold abusers accountable for pushing their targets to suicide.

“We have the laws. We need the will, we need law enforcement to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. We need judges to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can cause death equally to physical force and arms.”

Government Reaction

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, chaired by a Labour MP, and including the safeguarding minister, the bereaved relatives again told their stories.

A junior minister informed the assembly: “Such fatalities are often written off as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, in truth, these were the culmination of actually, another person’s abuse, and these aren’t rare incidents.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she stated. “Especially around murder or unlawful killing, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been shaped with traditional legal customs for generations, and it is outdated, honestly, given the society we currently live in.

“I will not claim that it’s going to be simple to fix. It is incredibly complex and difficult, particularly when you look at the matter of homicide, but we acknowledge that it needs to be looked at.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A spokesperson for the legal body commented: “Domestic abuse is a heinous crime and our prosecutors are actively advised to evaluate homicide allegations in self-inflicted death instances where there is a known context of family violence or other controlling or coercive behavior.

“We have previously charged a number of defendants for causing the death of a partner they abused, encompassing in cases which are currently active.

“We are collaborating with police and other stakeholders to guarantee these types of crimes are well-understood – so that we can hold offenders to justice for the full extent of their wrongdoings.”