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Each self-inflicted death where the victim had experienced abuse at home should be considered a possible homicide, according to calls from advocates who aim to make perpetrators accountable for the devastating impact of their actions.

This move is essential because law enforcement are failing to hold offenders to justice in instances of suicide after family violence.

“In case after case, there is widespread breakdown, particularly within the legal system, to examine these fatalities with the seriousness they deserve,” remarked a leader of a campaign group at a significant gathering in Westminster earlier this week.

The meeting, arranged by a group running a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign to fight for reform in the legal framework, brought together families who had lost loved ones to suicide following domestic abuse.

Personal Stories of Loss

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in March 2023. Before her death, Chloe had reported her ex-boyfriend to authorities, providing a two-hour video interview as proof about his conduct.

After her death, the individual was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct and imprisoned for over three years. He was subsequently jailed for three years and seven months after a second woman stepped up to report that she had been in a violent and abusive relationship with him.

In the wake of her loss, the mother decided to campaign for a new law to bring perpetrators accountable; however she then realized that regulations were existing, they just were rarely applied to secure prosecutions.

“I decided it was not a new law I needed as existing laws 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 needed to do their job properly, and things needed to change,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and just a handful of us have had a conviction,” she added. “I was so shocked to see so many families who have been fighting the police and CPS for a long time and getting no justice for their offspring or sibling and could not speak out in case it affected investigations that were not progressing.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s child Hannah died in May 2017, in what she called “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“Hannah was vibrant, she was loving,” she said. “She was full of promise, and she was an amazing, 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 companion,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and broken down gradually until she could not see a path ahead. The man who caused this walked free, because we call it self-inflicted death, we conclude the case and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I haven’t been able to move on. Honestly, Hannah did not merely take her own life. She was murdered. She was killed slowly and deliberately over a 24-month span, and when I went to the police, when I begged them to look into 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 violence fatality analysis, which I had to struggle to obtain, required five years and had no impact. A lengthy coroner’s hearing found death by suicide, despite substantial proof over a very traumatic multi-day session of family violence and shortcomings by various agencies.”

The parent informed the gathering that for a decade she has “struggled against a establishment that refuses to see what is right in front of it”.

She said the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was critical “because when someone dies by suicide after they’ve endured domestic abuse, we have to investigate it for what it really is, which is murder.

“We need to apply the laws we already possess effectively and it really isn’t happening at the present, and we need to hold abusers accountable for driving their victims to death.

“We have the laws. We need the will, we need police to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the prosecution authority to prosecute. We need judges to understand that verbal abuse and manipulation can cause death equally to physical force and arms.”

Government Reaction

At a second meeting in the Parliament, chaired by a opposition politician, and including the government official, the grieving families again told their stories.

A junior minister told the meeting: “These deaths are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, reality, these were the culmination of actually, another person’s abuse, and these aren’t isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she said. “Particularly around murder or unlawful killing, 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, honestly, it’s the world we currently live in.

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

Legal Authority Comment

A spokesperson for the prosecution service said: “Domestic abuse is a terrible offense and our prosecutors 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 causing the death of a companion they abused, encompassing in cases which are ongoing.

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