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Every suicide where the deceased had endured abuse at home should be considered a possible homicide, as per demands from campaigners who seek to hold abusers accountable for the catastrophic impact of their behavior.

This step is essential because law enforcement are failing to bring perpetrators accountable in cases of self-inflicted death after domestic abuse.

“In case after case, there is widespread breakdown, especially within the legal system, to scrutinise these deaths with the seriousness they warrant,” stated a co-director of a campaign group at a landmark gathering in Westminster earlier this week.

The assembly, arranged by a organization leading a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign to advocate for change in the legal framework, united relatives who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death following family violence.

Individual Accounts of Loss

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in March 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had reported her ex-boyfriend to police, providing a lengthy recorded statement as evidence against him.

After her death, the individual was found guilty of coercive and controlling behavior and jailed for 41 months. He was later sentenced for an additional term after a another victim came forward to disclose that she had been in a violent and abusive relationship with him.

After Chloe’s death, the mother decided to campaign for a legal change to bring perpetrators to justice; yet she then discovered that laws were already in place, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I decided it wasn’t a fresh legislation I needed as current statutes were already there, and after finding out how much my child had been failed before her death by the police and many other agencies, they had to do their job properly, and practices needed to change,” she said.

“More than four dozen relatives have contacted me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she added. “I was astonished to see such a large number who have been fighting the police and CPS for years and getting no justice for their offspring or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it affected investigations that were not progressing.”

Another Tragic Case

One mother’s daughter her 30-year-old daughter died in May 2017, in what she described as “the ultimate abusive action” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“Hannah was energetic, she was caring,” she stated. “She had great potential, and she was an exceptional, deeply devoted mum to her kids, and she took her own life after two years in a relationship where she was methodically broken down by her partner,” she explained.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was controlled and broken down gradually until she could not see a way forward. The man who caused this walked free, because we label it suicide, we conclude the case and we move on.

“But I could not move on,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to move on. In truth, she did not merely take her own life. She was killed. She was killed slowly and intentionally over a two year period, and when I approached the authorities, when I begged them to investigate what he had done to her, I was informed that there was nothing that they could do.

“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to fight for, took five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest determined self-inflicted death, notwithstanding huge evidence over a extremely distressing multi-day session of family violence and failings by various agencies.”

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

She emphasized the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was critical “since when someone takes their own life after they’ve endured family violence, we have to investigate it for what it really is, which is homicide.

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

“The statutes exist. We require determination, we need law enforcement to investigate properly. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. We need the judiciary to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill equally to hands and weapons.”

Government Reaction

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, chaired by a opposition politician, and attended by the safeguarding minister, the grieving families again shared their experiences.

A parliamentary under-secretary informed the assembly: “These deaths 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 are not isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she said. “Especially around murder or unlawful killing, it is piecemeal. It lacks statutory basis anyway, it has been shaped with common law practices for generations, and it is outdated, quite frankly, given the society we inhabit today.

“I will not claim that it’s going to be easy to fix. It is incredibly complex and difficult, particularly when you consider the issue of murder, but we recognize 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 evaluate homicide allegations in suicide cases where there is a known context 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 cases which are ongoing.

“We are collaborating with police and other stakeholders to ensure these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can hold offenders to justice for the full extent of their crimes.”