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Every suicide where the victim had experienced domestic violence must be considered a possible murder case, according to calls from campaigners who aim to hold abusers accountable for the catastrophic impact of their actions.

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

“Time and again, there is widespread breakdown, particularly within the legal system, to scrutinise these deaths with the seriousness they warrant,” stated a leader of a advocacy organization at a landmark gathering in London earlier this week.

The assembly, organized by a group running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” initiative to advocate for change in the criminal justice system, united relatives who had suffered bereavement to self-inflicted death following domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Loss

One mother lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had reported her ex-boyfriend to police, submitting a two-hour video interview as proof against him.

Following her passing, the individual was convicted of manipulative and domineering conduct and jailed for 41 months. He was subsequently sentenced for an additional term after a second woman stepped up to disclose that she had been in a violent and abusive relationship with him.

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

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

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and just a handful of us have had a guilty verdict,” she continued. “I was so shocked to see so many families who have been fighting the police and CPS for years and getting no justice for their child or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it impacted investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Another Tragic Case

One mother’s child her 30-year-old daughter passed away in spring 2017, in what she called “the ultimate abusive action” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“Hannah was vibrant, she was caring,” she said. “She had great potential, and she was an amazing, really loving mum to her two children, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a partnership where she was methodically broken down by her companion,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and dismantled gradually until she could not see a way forward. The individual who did this to her went unpunished, because we label it self-inflicted death, we conclude the case and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she said, “and I have not managed to let go. In truth, Hannah did not merely take her own life. She was killed. She was killed slowly and intentionally over a two year period, and when I went to the police, 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.

“There was no investigation into her passing. The domestic homicide review, which I had to struggle to obtain, took five years and had no impact. A lengthy coroner’s hearing found self-inflicted death, despite huge evidence over a very traumatic four day period of domestic abuse and failings by multiple services.”

The parent told the meeting that for eight years she has “been fighting a system that ignores what is right in front of it”.

She emphasized the suicide is homicide campaign was vital “because when someone takes their own life after they’ve suffered domestic abuse, we have to investigate it for what it truly represents, which is homicide.

“We need to use the legislation we already possess 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 require determination, we need police 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 physical force and arms.”

Government Reaction

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, led by a Labour MP, and including the government official, the grieving families again told their stories.

A parliamentary under-secretary told the meeting: “Such fatalities are often written off as if they were their decision, they opted for this, when, reality, these were the result of in fact, another person’s abuse, and these aren’t rare incidents.”

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she stated. “Particularly around murder or manslaughter, it is fragmented. It lacks statutory basis anyway, it has been developed with common law practices for generations, and it is no longer fit for purpose, honestly, 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, particularly when you look at the matter of murder, but we recognize that it needs to be looked at.”

Legal Authority Comment

A representative for the legal body commented: “Family violence is a heinous offense and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to evaluate 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 in the past prosecuted a number of defendants for leading to the fatality of a partner they mistreated, including in cases which are currently active.

“We are also working with police and other stakeholders to ensure these kinds of offences are well-understood – so that we can bring perpetrators accountable for the complete scope of their crimes.”