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Every suicide in which the victim had experienced abuse at home must be treated as a potential homicide, as per calls from advocates who aim to hold abusers responsible for the devastating impact of their behavior.

This move is necessary because law enforcement are failing to bring perpetrators to justice in cases of self-inflicted death after family violence.

“Time and again, there is widespread breakdown, especially within the legal system, to scrutinise these fatalities with the seriousness they warrant,” stated a co-director of a campaign group during a landmark meeting in Westminster earlier this week.

The meeting, organized by a organization leading a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to fight for change in the legal framework, brought together families who had suffered bereavement to self-inflicted death following family violence.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

Sharon Holland lost her daughter Chloe Holland in March 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had informed her ex-boyfriend to police, submitting a lengthy recorded statement as evidence against him.

Following her passing, the perpetrator was found guilty of coercive and controlling behavior and imprisoned for 41 months. He was later sentenced for three years and seven months after a second woman came forward to disclose that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

After Chloe’s death, the parent decided to campaign for a new law to bring perpetrators accountable; yet she then discovered that laws were existing, they just weren’t often being used to achieve convictions.

“I decided it wasn’t a new law I needed as current statutes were already there, and after learning how much my daughter had been let down previous to her death by the police and numerous services, they needed to do their job properly, and practices needed to change,” she said.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and just a handful of us have had a conviction,” she continued. “I was astonished to see so many families who have been fighting the authorities and CPS for a long time and receiving no resolution for their child or brother or sister and could not speak out in case it affected inquiries that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s daughter her 30-year-old daughter passed away in May 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“Hannah was vibrant, she was loving,” she stated. “She had great potential, and she was an exceptional, really loving mum to her kids, and she died by suicide after two years in a partnership where she was methodically broken down by her partner,” she explained.

“She endured physical assaults, she was psychologically tortured, she was controlled and dismantled gradually until she could not see a way forward. The man who did this to her walked free, because we call it suicide, we close the file and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to move on. In truth, she did not merely take her own life. She was killed. Her death was gradual and deliberately over a two year period, and when I approached the authorities, when I pleaded with them to look into what he had done to her, I was told that there was nothing that they could do.

“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to struggle to obtain, took five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest determined death by suicide, notwithstanding substantial proof over a extremely distressing four day period of family violence and shortcomings by various agencies.”

The parent told the meeting that for eight years she has “struggled against a establishment that refuses to see what is right in front of it”.

She emphasized the self-inflicted death is murder movement was vital “since when an individual takes their own life after they’ve suffered family violence, we have to examine it for what it really is, which is murder.

“We need to use the legislation we currently have properly and it is not occurring at the moment, and we need to hold abusers accountable for driving their victims to death.

“The statutes exist. We need the will, we need law enforcement to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the prosecution authority to prosecute. We need the judiciary to recognize that words and control can cause death just as much as physical force and arms.”

Government Reaction

At a follow-up gathering in the House of Commons, chaired by a Labour MP, and including the safeguarding minister, the bereaved relatives again shared their experiences.

A junior minister informed the assembly: “Such fatalities are often written off as if they were their own choice, they chose to do this, when, in truth, these were the culmination of actually, somebody else’s violence, and these aren’t isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she said. “Particularly around homicide or manslaughter, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been developed with common law practices for centuries, and it is no longer fit for purpose, quite frankly, it’s the world we currently live in.

“I will not claim that it’s going to be easy to resolve. It is incredibly complex and challenging, especially when you look at the issue of homicide, but we acknowledge that it requires examination.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A representative for the prosecution service said: “Domestic abuse is a terrible crime and our legal officers are actively advised to consider murder and manslaughter charges in suicide cases where there is a established background of family violence or other controlling or coercive behavior.

“We have previously charged a number of defendants for causing the death of a partner they abused, encompassing in proceedings 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 to justice for the complete scope of their crimes.”