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Every suicide in which the victim had experienced domestic violence should be considered a potential homicide, as per demands from campaigners who seek to make perpetrators responsible for the devastating impact of their behavior.

This step is essential because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to bring perpetrators accountable in cases of suicide after family violence.

“In case after case, there is systemic and structural failure, particularly within the legal system, to examine these fatalities with the seriousness they deserve,” stated a leader of a advocacy organization during a landmark gathering in Westminster earlier this week.

The meeting, arranged by a organization running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” initiative to advocate for reform in the criminal justice system, united families who had suffered bereavement to self-inflicted death following domestic abuse.

Personal Stories of Loss

One mother lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Before her death, the young woman had informed her former partner to police, submitting a two-hour video interview as evidence against him.

Following her passing, the perpetrator was found guilty of coercive and controlling behavior and jailed for 41 months. He was later jailed for an additional term after a another victim 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 new law 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 existing laws were already there, and after finding out how much my daughter had been let down before her death by the authorities and many other agencies, they had to do their job properly, and things required reform,” she said.

“More than four dozen relatives have contacted me and just a handful of us have had a conviction,” she added. “I was so shocked to see such a large number who have been fighting the authorities and prosecution service for years and receiving no resolution for their child or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it impacted inquiries that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s daughter Hannah died in spring 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“She was energetic, she was loving,” she stated. “She was full of promise, 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 companion,” she explained.

“She endured physical assaults, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and dismantled piece by piece until she could not see a way forward. The individual who did this to her walked free, because we label it suicide, we conclude the case and we proceed.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I haven’t been able to let go. Honestly, she didn’t just die by suicide. She was murdered. She was killed slowly and intentionally over a two year period, and when I went to the police, when I pleaded with them to look into what he had done to her, I was told that there was no action that they were able to take.

“No inquiry was conducted 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 determined self-inflicted death, despite huge evidence over a extremely distressing four day period of domestic abuse and failings by multiple services.”

The parent told the meeting that for a decade she has “been fighting a system that refuses to see what is obvious”.

She said the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was vital “since when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve suffered domestic abuse, we have to investigate it for what it really is, which is murder.

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

“We have the laws. We require determination, we need police to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the prosecution authority to prosecute. We need the judiciary to understand that words and control can kill equally to hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, led 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 written off as if they were their own choice, they opted for this, when, in truth, these were the culmination of actually, somebody else’s violence, and these are not isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she said. “Particularly around homicide or unlawful killing, it is fragmented. It lacks statutory basis regardless, it has been shaped with traditional legal customs for generations, and it is no longer fit for purpose, quite frankly, given the society we inhabit today.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be easy to fix. It is extremely complicated and difficult, particularly when you look at the issue of homicide, but we acknowledge that it requires examination.”

Legal Authority Comment

A representative for the legal body commented: “Domestic abuse is a terrible crime and our legal officers are regularly instructed to consider homicide allegations in self-inflicted death instances where there is a known context of domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

“We have previously charged a number of defendants for causing the death of a partner they abused, encompassing in cases which are currently active.

“We are also working with law enforcement and other stakeholders to guarantee these types of crimes are well-understood – so that we can hold offenders to justice for the full extent of their crimes.”