Every suicide in which the deceased had endured 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 systemic and structural failure, particularly within the legal system, to scrutinise these deaths with the gravity they deserve,” stated a co-director of a advocacy organization at a landmark meeting in Westminster recently.
The assembly, organized by a group running a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign to fight for change in the criminal justice system, brought together relatives who had suffered bereavement to self-inflicted death after family violence.
Sharon Holland lost her daughter Chloe Holland in spring 2023. Before her death, Chloe had reported her ex-boyfriend to police, submitting a lengthy recorded statement as evidence about his conduct.
After her death, the perpetrator was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct and imprisoned for over three years. He was later jailed for three years and seven months after a another victim came forward to report that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.
After Chloe’s death, the parent decided to campaign for a new law to hold offenders to justice; yet she then discovered that regulations were existing, they just weren’t often being used to achieve convictions.
“I decided it was not a fresh legislation I required as existing laws were in place, and after learning how much my daughter had been failed before her death by the authorities and many other agencies, they needed to fulfill their duties, and things required reform,” she explained.
“Over 47 families 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 fighting the authorities and CPS 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 investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”
One mother’s daughter her 30-year-old daughter died in spring 2017, in what she called “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.
“She was vibrant, she was loving,” she stated. “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 systematically destroyed by her partner,” she explained.
“She endured physical assaults, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and dismantled gradually until she could not see a path ahead. The individual who caused this walked free, because we call it self-inflicted death, 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 murdered. She was killed slowly and intentionally over a 24-month span, and when I approached the authorities, when I begged them to investigate what he had inflicted upon her, I was told that there was no action that they were able to take.
“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to fight for, took five years and changed nothing. A lengthy coroner’s hearing found self-inflicted death, notwithstanding substantial proof over a very traumatic four day period of family violence and shortcomings by multiple services.”
The parent informed the gathering that for eight years she has “been fighting a system that refuses to see what is obvious”.
She said the suicide is homicide movement was vital “because when someone takes their own life after they’ve suffered domestic abuse, we have to examine it for what it really is, which is murder.
“We must use the legislation we already possess effectively and it is not occurring at the moment, and we need to make perpetrators responsible for driving their victims to death.
“The statutes exist. We require determination, we need police to investigate properly. We need the prosecution authority to take legal action. We need the judiciary to understand that words and control can kill just as much as hands and weapons.”
At a follow-up gathering in the House of Commons, chaired by a opposition politician, and including the safeguarding minister, the grieving families again told their stories.
A junior minister informed the assembly: “Such fatalities are often written off as if they were their own choice, they opted for this, when, in truth, these were the result of in fact, somebody else’s violence, and these are not rare incidents.”
“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she said. “Especially around murder or manslaughter, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been shaped 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 simple to resolve. It is incredibly complex and challenging, especially when you consider the issue of murder, but we acknowledge that it needs to be looked at.”
A representative for the prosecution service commented: “Domestic abuse is a terrible crime and our legal officers are actively advised to evaluate murder and manslaughter charges in self-inflicted death instances where there is a known context 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, including in cases which are currently active.
“We are collaborating with police and other parties to guarantee these kinds of offences are well-understood – so that we can bring perpetrators to justice for the complete scope of their crimes.”
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