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Each self-inflicted death in which the victim had experienced abuse at home must be considered a potential homicide, according to calls from campaigners who seek to make perpetrators accountable for the catastrophic impact of their actions.

This step is essential because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to hold offenders accountable in cases of suicide following family violence.

“In case after case, there is systemic and structural failure, particularly within the criminal justice system, to scrutinise these deaths with the gravity they deserve,” stated a co-director of a advocacy organization during a significant meeting in Westminster earlier this week.

The meeting, arranged by a group leading a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” initiative to fight for change in the legal framework, united families who had suffered bereavement to suicide following domestic abuse.

Personal Stories of Loss

Sharon Holland lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Before her death, the young woman had reported her former partner to police, submitting a two-hour video interview as evidence about his conduct.

After her death, the individual was convicted of coercive and controlling behavior and jailed for 41 months. He was subsequently jailed 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 legal change to hold offenders accountable; however she then discovered that regulations were already in place, they just were rarely applied to secure prosecutions.

“I concluded it wasn’t a new law I needed as current statutes were already there, and after finding out how much my daughter had been failed previous to her taking her life by the authorities and many other agencies, they had to fulfill their duties, and practices required reform,” she said.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she continued. “I was astonished to see so many families who have been battling the police and CPS for years and receiving no resolution for their offspring or brother or sister and could not speak out in case it impacted inquiries that were not progressing.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s daughter her 30-year-old daughter died in May 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“Hannah was vibrant, she was loving,” she stated. “She had great potential, and she was an amazing, deeply devoted mum to her two children, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a relationship where she was systematically destroyed by her partner,” she said.

“She endured physical assaults, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and dismantled gradually until she was unable to envision a path ahead. The individual who did this to her walked free, because we label it self-inflicted death, we conclude the case and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to move on. In truth, Hannah did not merely take her own life. She was killed. She was killed slowly and intentionally over a 24-month span, 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 could do.

“No inquiry was conducted into her death. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to struggle to obtain, took five years and had no impact. A lengthy coroner’s hearing found self-inflicted death, notwithstanding substantial proof over a very traumatic multi-day session of family violence and shortcomings by various agencies.”

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

She said the self-inflicted death is murder movement was vital “because when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve endured family violence, we have to investigate it for what it truly represents, which is homicide.

“We need to apply the laws we currently have properly 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 prosecution authority to take legal action. We need the judiciary to understand that words and control can kill equally to physical force and arms.”

Government Reaction

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, chaired by a Labour MP, and including the government official, the grieving families again shared their experiences.

A parliamentary under-secretary informed the assembly: “Such fatalities are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, reality, these were the result of actually, another person’s abuse, and these aren’t isolated stories.”

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she stated. “Especially around murder or unlawful killing, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been shaped with traditional legal customs for centuries, and it is no longer fit for purpose, honestly, it’s the world 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 consider the matter of murder, but we recognize that it needs to be looked at.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A spokesperson for the legal body commented: “Domestic abuse is a terrible crime and our legal officers are regularly instructed to consider murder and manslaughter charges in self-inflicted death instances where there is a known context of family violence or other manipulative conduct.

“We have in the past prosecuted a number of defendants for leading to the fatality of a partner they abused, encompassing in cases which are ongoing.

“We are also working with law enforcement and other stakeholders to guarantee these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can hold offenders to justice for the full extent of their wrongdoings.”