🔗 Share this article

Every suicide where the deceased had endured abuse at home must be considered a possible homicide, according to calls from advocates who seek to hold abusers responsible for the devastating impact of their actions.

This step is necessary because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to hold offenders to justice in instances of suicide after family violence.

“In case after case, there is systemic and structural failure, particularly within the criminal justice system, to examine these deaths with the gravity they deserve,” remarked a co-director of a campaign group at a landmark meeting in Westminster earlier this week.

The meeting, arranged by a organization running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to advocate for reform in the legal framework, brought together families who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death following family violence.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

Sharon Holland lost her daughter 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 about his conduct.

After her death, the perpetrator was convicted of manipulative and domineering conduct and jailed for 41 months. He was subsequently jailed for three years and seven months after a another victim stepped up to report that she had been in a violent and abusive relationship with him.

After Chloe’s death, the parent chose to advocate for a legal change to bring perpetrators accountable; yet she then realized that laws were existing, they just were rarely applied to secure prosecutions.

“I decided it wasn’t a fresh legislation I needed as current statutes were already there, and after finding out 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 practices needed to change,” she said.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she continued. “I was so shocked to see such a large number who have been battling the authorities 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 died in spring 2017, in what she described as “the ultimate abusive action” in a campaign of abuse.

“She was energetic, she was caring,” she said. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, deeply devoted mum to her two children, and she died by suicide after 24 months 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 could not see a path ahead. The man who caused this walked free, because we label it suicide, we conclude the case and we move on.

“But I could not move on,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to let go. In truth, she did not merely take her own life. She was killed. Her death was gradual and intentionally over a two year period, and when I approached the authorities, when I begged them to investigate what he had done to her, I was informed that there was nothing that they were able to take.

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

The mother told the meeting 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 movement was vital “since when someone takes their own life after they’ve endured domestic abuse, we have to investigate it for what it truly represents, which is murder.

“We must use the legislation we currently have properly and it really isn’t happening at the moment, and we need to hold abusers accountable for pushing their targets to suicide.

“We have the laws. We require determination, we need law enforcement to investigate properly. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to take legal action. We need the judiciary to understand that words and control can cause death equally to physical force and arms.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the Parliament, chaired by a Labour MP, and including the government official, the bereaved relatives again told their stories.

A parliamentary under-secretary informed the assembly: “Such fatalities are often dismissed as if they were their own choice, they opted for this, when, in truth, these were the culmination of in fact, another person’s abuse, and these are not rare incidents.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she said. “Particularly around murder or manslaughter, it is piecemeal. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been developed with traditional legal customs for centuries, and it is outdated, quite frankly, it’s the world we inhabit today.

“I will not claim that it’s going to be simple to fix. It is extremely complicated and difficult, particularly when you consider the issue of murder, but we acknowledge that it requires examination.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A spokesperson for the prosecution service said: “Family violence is a terrible offense and our legal officers are actively advised to evaluate murder and manslaughter charges in suicide cases where there is a known context of domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

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

“We are also working with police and other stakeholders to guarantee these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can hold offenders accountable for the full extent of their wrongdoings.”