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Every suicide where the deceased had endured domestic violence should be treated as a potential murder case, according to calls from campaigners who aim to hold abusers responsible for the catastrophic impact of their actions.

This step is necessary because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to bring perpetrators to justice in cases of self-inflicted death following domestic abuse.

“In case after case, there is widespread breakdown, particularly within the legal system, to scrutinise these deaths with the gravity they deserve,” remarked a co-director of a campaign group at a landmark meeting in Westminster recently.

The assembly, organized by a group running a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign to fight for reform in the legal framework, united families who had suffered bereavement to self-inflicted death after domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Loss

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in March 2023. Prior to her passing, Chloe had informed her ex-boyfriend to police, providing a lengthy recorded statement as evidence about his conduct.

After her death, the perpetrator was convicted of manipulative and domineering conduct and imprisoned for over three years. He was subsequently jailed for three years and seven months after a another victim came forward to report that she had been in a violent and abusive relationship with him.

In the wake of her loss, the mother decided to campaign for a new law to bring perpetrators accountable; yet she then discovered that laws were existing, they just weren’t often being used to achieve convictions.

“I concluded it wasn’t a fresh legislation I needed as existing laws were already there, and after learning how much my daughter had been failed before her death by the authorities and many other agencies, they had to fulfill their duties, and practices needed to change,” she said.

“Over 47 families have contacted me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she added. “I was so shocked to see so many families who have been battling the authorities and CPS for years and receiving no resolution for their offspring or brother or sister and could not speak out in case it affected inquiries that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s daughter Hannah passed away in spring 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“She was vibrant, she was loving,” she said. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, deeply devoted mother to her kids, and she died by suicide after two years in a partnership where she was methodically broken down by her partner,” she explained.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was controlled and broken down piece by piece until she was unable to envision a way forward. The man who caused this went unpunished, because we call it self-inflicted death, we close the file and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to move on. Honestly, Hannah didn’t just die by suicide. She was murdered. Her death was gradual and intentionally over a 24-month span, and when I went to the police, when I pleaded with them to investigate what he had inflicted upon her, I was told that there was no action that they could do.

“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to fight for, required five years and had no impact. A four day inquest determined death by suicide, despite huge evidence over a extremely distressing multi-day session of domestic abuse and failings by multiple services.”

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

She emphasized the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was critical “because when an individual takes their own life after they’ve suffered domestic abuse, we have to investigate it for what it truly represents, which is murder.

“We need to use the legislation we currently have properly and it is not occurring at the present, and we need to make perpetrators responsible 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 the judiciary to understand that words and control can kill equally to hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the Parliament, led by a Labour MP, and attended by the safeguarding minister, the grieving families again told their stories.

A parliamentary under-secretary informed the assembly: “Such fatalities are often written off as if they were their decision, they opted for 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 are aware,” she said. “Especially around murder or manslaughter, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute regardless, it has been developed with traditional legal customs for centuries, and it is no longer fit for purpose, quite frankly, given the society we currently live in.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be easy to resolve. It is incredibly complex and difficult, especially when you look at the issue of murder, but we acknowledge that it needs to be looked at.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A representative for the legal body commented: “Domestic abuse is a heinous offense and our legal officers are regularly instructed to consider murder and manslaughter charges in suicide cases where there is a established background of domestic abuse or other controlling or coercive behavior.

“We have in the past prosecuted a number of defendants for causing the death of a partner they abused, including in cases which are currently active.

“We are collaborating with law enforcement and other parties to guarantee these kinds of offences are well-understood – so that we can bring perpetrators accountable for the complete scope of their crimes.”