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Every suicide in which the victim had endured abuse at home should be treated as a potential murder case, as per calls from advocates who aim to hold abusers accountable for the catastrophic impact of their actions.

This move is essential because law enforcement are failing to bring perpetrators to justice in cases of self-inflicted death after family violence.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the criminal justice system, to scrutinise these fatalities with the gravity they deserve,” stated a co-director of a campaign group at a significant gathering in Westminster recently.

The meeting, arranged by a group leading a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign to fight for reform in the legal framework, brought together relatives who had suffered bereavement to self-inflicted death following family violence.

Individual Accounts of Loss

One mother experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in spring 2023. Before her death, Chloe had reported her former partner to police, providing a two-hour video interview as proof about his conduct.

After her death, the individual was found guilty of coercive and controlling behavior and imprisoned for 41 months. He was subsequently jailed for an additional term after a second woman stepped up to disclose that she had been in a violent and abusive relationship with him.

In the wake of her loss, the mother chose to advocate for a new law to hold offenders to justice; however she then discovered that laws were already in place, they just were rarely applied to secure prosecutions.

“I decided it wasn’t a new law I required as current statutes were already there, and after learning how much my child had been failed previous to her death by the police and many other agencies, they had to do their job properly, and things required reform,” she explained.

“Over 47 families have found me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she added. “I was so shocked to see such a large number who have been battling the police and prosecution service for a long time and receiving no resolution for their offspring or brother or sister and could not speak out in case it affected investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

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

“Hannah was energetic, she was loving,” she said. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, really loving mother to her two children, and she took her own life after 24 months in a partnership where she was systematically destroyed by her partner,” she said.

“She endured physical assaults, she was psychologically tortured, she was controlled and broken down gradually until she was unable to envision a way forward. The man who did this to her went unpunished, because we call it suicide, we conclude the case and we proceed.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she said, “and I haven’t been able to move on. Honestly, she didn’t just die by suicide. She was killed. Her death was gradual and deliberately 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 informed that there was no action that they could do.

“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to struggle to obtain, required five years and changed nothing. A lengthy coroner’s hearing determined self-inflicted death, notwithstanding substantial proof over a extremely distressing multi-day session of domestic abuse and failings by multiple services.”

The mother told the meeting that for eight years she has “struggled against a system that ignores what is obvious”.

She said the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was critical “because when someone takes their own life after they’ve endured domestic abuse, we have to examine it for what it really is, which is homicide.

“We must apply the laws we already possess effectively and it really isn’t happening at the present, and we need to hold abusers accountable for pushing their targets to suicide.

“The statutes exist. We need the will, we need law enforcement to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the prosecution authority to prosecute. We need the judiciary to understand that verbal abuse and manipulation can cause death just as much as hands and weapons.”

Government Reaction

At a second meeting in the Parliament, led by a opposition politician, and attended by the safeguarding minister, the grieving families again shared their experiences.

A junior minister told the meeting: “Such fatalities are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they opted for this, when, in truth, these were the result of in fact, somebody else’s violence, and these are not rare incidents.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she said. “Particularly around murder or unlawful killing, it is piecemeal. It’s not written in statute regardless, it has been shaped with common law practices for centuries, and it is no longer fit for purpose, honestly, given the society we inhabit today.

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

Prosecution Service Statement

A spokesperson for the legal body commented: “Family violence is a terrible offense and our legal officers are regularly instructed to consider murder and manslaughter charges in self-inflicted death instances where there is a known context of domestic abuse or other controlling or coercive behavior.

“We have previously charged a number of defendants for leading to the fatality of a partner they mistreated, including in cases which are ongoing.

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