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Every suicide in which the deceased had experienced domestic violence must be treated as a potential murder case, as per demands from campaigners who seek to make perpetrators accountable for the catastrophic consequences of their behavior.

This move is essential 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, especially within the criminal justice system, to examine these fatalities with the seriousness they deserve,” remarked a co-director of a campaign group at a significant gathering in Westminster earlier this week.

The assembly, arranged by a organization leading a “Suicide is Homicide” initiative to fight for change in the criminal justice system, united families who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death after family violence.

Personal Stories of Loss

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had informed her former partner to authorities, submitting a two-hour video interview as evidence about his conduct.

After her death, the individual was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct and jailed for 41 months. He was subsequently sentenced for three years and seven months after a second woman came forward to report 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 to justice; yet she then realized that regulations were existing, they just weren’t often being used to achieve convictions.

“I decided it was not a fresh legislation I needed as current statutes were in place, and after finding out how much my child had been failed before her death by the authorities and many other agencies, they needed to fulfill their duties, and things needed to change,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she added. “I was astonished to see so many families 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 didn’t have a voice in case it affected inquiries that were not progressing.”

Another Tragic Case

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

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

“She was physically beaten, she was mentally tormented, she was controlled and dismantled piece by piece until she could not see a path ahead. The individual who caused this walked free, because we label it suicide, we close the file and we proceed.

“But I could not move on,” she said, “and I have not managed to let go. In truth, she didn’t just die by suicide. She was murdered. She was killed slowly and intentionally over a two year period, and when I went to the police, when I pleaded with them to look into what he had done to her, I was told that there was no action that they could do.

“There was no investigation into her passing. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to struggle to obtain, required five years and had no impact. A four day inquest determined self-inflicted death, notwithstanding substantial proof over a extremely distressing four day period of family violence and failings by multiple services.”

The parent informed the gathering that for eight years she has “struggled against a system that refuses to see what is obvious”.

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

“We need to use the legislation we currently have properly and it really isn’t happening at the moment, and we need to make perpetrators responsible for pushing their targets to suicide.

“The statutes exist. We need the will, we need law enforcement to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. We need judges to understand that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill equally to hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the House of Commons, chaired by a opposition politician, and attended by the government official, the grieving families again shared their experiences.

A junior minister told the meeting: “These deaths are often dismissed as if they were their own choice, they opted for this, when, reality, these were the result of actually, another person’s abuse, and these are not isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she said. “Especially around murder or unlawful killing, it is piecemeal. It’s not written in statute regardless, it has been shaped with traditional legal customs for centuries, and it is outdated, quite frankly, it’s the world we inhabit today.

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

Legal Authority Comment

A representative for the prosecution service said: “Family violence is a heinous offense and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to evaluate homicide allegations in suicide cases where there is a known context of family violence or other manipulative conduct.

“We have in the past prosecuted a number of defendants for causing the death of a companion they mistreated, encompassing in cases which are currently active.

“We are also working with police and other parties to ensure these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can hold offenders accountable for the complete scope of their crimes.”