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Every suicide in which the deceased had experienced abuse at home must be considered a potential murder case, as per demands from advocates who seek to hold abusers responsible for the catastrophic consequences of their behavior.

This move is necessary because police and prosecutors are failing to bring perpetrators to justice in cases of suicide following family violence.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the legal system, to scrutinise these fatalities with the gravity they deserve,” remarked a leader of a campaign group at a landmark meeting in Westminster recently.

The assembly, organized by a group leading a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to fight for reform in the criminal justice system, united relatives who had lost loved ones to suicide after domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Loss

Sharon Holland lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had reported her ex-boyfriend to authorities, providing a two-hour video interview as evidence about his conduct.

Following her passing, the perpetrator was found guilty of coercive and controlling behavior and jailed for 41 months. He was subsequently jailed for three years and seven months after a second woman came forward 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 to justice; yet she then realized that laws were already in place, they just weren’t often being used to secure prosecutions.

“I concluded it wasn’t a new law I needed as existing laws were already there, and after finding out how much my child had been let down before her taking her life by the police and numerous services, they had to fulfill their duties, and things required reform,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and just a handful of us have had a guilty verdict,” she added. “I was so shocked to see so many families who have been battling the police and prosecution service for a long time and getting no justice for their child or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it affected inquiries that were not progressing.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s daughter Hannah passed away in spring 2017, in what she called “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“She was energetic, she was loving,” she stated. “She had great potential, and she was an amazing, deeply devoted mother to her two children, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a relationship where she was methodically broken down by her companion,” she explained.

“She endured physical assaults, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and dismantled gradually until she was unable to envision a path ahead. The man who did this to her went unpunished, because we label it suicide, we conclude the case and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she said, “and I haven’t been able to let go. In truth, she didn’t just die by suicide. She was killed. Her death was gradual and deliberately over a two year period, and when I approached the authorities, when I begged them to look into what he had done to her, I was informed that there was no action that they could do.

“No inquiry was conducted into her death. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to fight for, required five years and changed nothing. A lengthy coroner’s hearing found self-inflicted death, despite substantial proof over a extremely distressing four day period of domestic abuse and shortcomings by various agencies.”

The mother informed the gathering that for a decade she has “been fighting a system that ignores what is right in front of it”.

She emphasized the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was vital “since when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve suffered family violence, we have to examine it for what it really is, which is homicide.

“We must use the legislation we currently have effectively 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 police to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the prosecution authority to take legal action. We need the judiciary to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill just as much as hands and weapons.”

Government Reaction

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

A parliamentary under-secretary told the meeting: “Such fatalities are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, reality, these were the culmination of in fact, somebody else’s violence, and these aren’t rare incidents.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she said. “Particularly around murder or manslaughter, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute regardless, it has been shaped with traditional legal customs for centuries, and it is no longer fit for purpose, quite frankly, it’s the world we inhabit today.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be simple to resolve. It is incredibly complex and difficult, especially when you look at the matter of homicide, but we acknowledge that it requires examination.”

Legal Authority Comment

A spokesperson for the prosecution service said: “Family violence is a terrible offense and our legal officers are regularly instructed to consider homicide allegations in suicide cases where there is a established background 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, including in proceedings which are currently active.

“We are collaborating with law enforcement and other parties to ensure these kinds of offences are well-understood – so that we can hold offenders to justice for the full extent of their crimes.”