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Each self-inflicted death where the victim had experienced domestic violence should be considered a potential murder case, according to calls from advocates who seek to hold abusers responsible for the catastrophic impact of their actions.

This move is necessary because law enforcement are failing to hold offenders to justice in cases of self-inflicted death after domestic abuse.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, particularly within the legal system, to scrutinise these fatalities with the gravity they warrant,” remarked a leader of a campaign group at a landmark gathering in London recently.

The assembly, arranged by a organization leading a “Suicide is Homicide” initiative to fight for reform in the criminal justice system, brought together families who had suffered bereavement to suicide after family violence.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

One mother experienced the death of her child her 23-year-old daughter in March 2023. Prior to her passing, Chloe had informed her former partner to police, submitting a two-hour video interview as proof against him.

After her death, the individual 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 report 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 realized that regulations were existing, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I decided it was not a new law I required as existing laws were already there, and after finding out how much my daughter had been failed previous to her death by the police and numerous services, they needed to do their job properly, and practices needed to change,” she said.

“Over 47 families have contacted me and just a handful of us have had a guilty verdict,” she added. “I was so shocked to see so many families who have been battling the police and prosecution service for years and receiving no resolution for their offspring or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it impacted investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Another Tragic Case

One mother’s daughter Hannah passed away in spring 2017, in what she called “the ultimate abusive action” in a campaign of abuse.

“Hannah was energetic, she was loving,” she stated. “She had great potential, and she was an amazing, really loving mother to her two children, and she took her own life after 24 months in a partnership where she was methodically broken down by her partner,” she said.

“She endured physical assaults, she was psychologically tortured, she was controlled and dismantled piece by piece until she was unable to envision a way forward. The individual who did this to her went unpunished, because we label it self-inflicted death, we conclude the case and we move on.

“But I could not move on,” she said, “and I have not managed to let go. Honestly, she did not merely take her own life. She was killed. Her death was gradual 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 inflicted upon her, I was told that there was no action 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 had no impact. A lengthy coroner’s hearing determined death by suicide, despite huge evidence over a extremely distressing four day period of family violence and failings by multiple services.”

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

She said the suicide is homicide campaign was vital “because when an individual takes their own life after they’ve suffered family violence, we have to investigate it for what it truly represents, which is murder.

“We need to use the legislation we currently have properly and it is not occurring at the present, and we need to make perpetrators responsible for pushing their targets to suicide.

“The statutes exist. We require determination, we need police to conduct thorough inquiries. 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.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the Parliament, chaired by a Labour MP, and including the government official, the bereaved relatives again told their stories.

A junior minister told the meeting: “These deaths are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, in truth, these were the result of actually, somebody else’s violence, and these aren’t isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she said. “Especially around homicide or manslaughter, it is piecemeal. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been shaped with common law practices for generations, and it is outdated, honestly, given the society we currently live in.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be simple to resolve. It is incredibly complex and challenging, especially when you look at the matter of homicide, but we recognize that it requires examination.”

Legal Authority Comment

A spokesperson for the prosecution service commented: “Domestic abuse is a terrible crime and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to consider homicide allegations in self-inflicted death instances where there is a known context of family violence or other manipulative conduct.

“We have previously charged a several individuals for causing the death of a companion they abused, including in cases which are ongoing.

“We are also working with law enforcement and other stakeholders to ensure these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can bring perpetrators to justice for the full extent of their crimes.”