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Every suicide where the victim had endured abuse at home should be considered a possible homicide, according to demands from advocates who seek to make perpetrators responsible for the catastrophic consequences of their actions.

This move is necessary because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to hold offenders to justice in cases of self-inflicted death after domestic abuse.

“Time and again, there is widespread breakdown, especially within the criminal justice system, to examine these deaths with the gravity they warrant,” remarked a co-director of a campaign group at a landmark gathering in London earlier this week.

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

Personal Stories of Tragedy

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in spring 2023. Before her death, the young woman had informed her ex-boyfriend to police, providing a lengthy recorded statement as evidence about his conduct.

After her death, the perpetrator was convicted of coercive and controlling behavior and imprisoned for 41 months. He was subsequently sentenced for an additional term after a second woman came forward to disclose that she had been in a violent and abusive relationship with him.

After Chloe’s death, the mother chose to advocate for a new law to hold offenders to justice; yet she then discovered that laws were existing, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I concluded it was not a fresh legislation I required as current statutes were in place, and after learning how much my daughter had been let down previous to her taking her life by the authorities and numerous services, they needed to do their job properly, and practices needed to change,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have contacted me and only four of us have had a conviction,” she added. “I was astonished to see such a large number who have been fighting the police and CPS for a long time and getting no justice for their child or sibling and didn’t have a voice in case it affected investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s child her 30-year-old daughter died 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 exceptional, deeply devoted mum to her two children, and she took her own life after 24 months in a partnership where she was systematically destroyed by her partner,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and broken down piece by piece until she could not see a path ahead. The individual who did this to her went unpunished, because we call it suicide, we conclude the case and we proceed.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to move on. Honestly, 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 inflicted upon her, I was told that there was nothing that they could do.

“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to struggle to obtain, took five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest determined death by suicide, despite huge evidence over a very traumatic four day period of domestic abuse and failings by various agencies.”

The parent told the meeting that for a decade she has “been fighting a system that refuses to see what is right in front of it”.

She said the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was critical “since when an individual takes their own life after they’ve endured family violence, we have to examine it for what it truly represents, which is murder.

“We must use the legislation we currently have effectively and it really isn’t happening at the moment, and we need to hold abusers accountable for pushing their targets to suicide.

“We have the laws. We need the will, we need police to investigate properly. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to take legal action. We need judges to understand that words and control can kill equally to hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the House of Commons, chaired by a Labour MP, and including the government official, the grieving families again told their stories.

A junior minister told the meeting: “Such fatalities are often dismissed as if they were their own choice, they opted for this, when, reality, these were the result of in fact, somebody else’s violence, and these are not rare incidents.”

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she stated. “Especially around murder or unlawful killing, it is piecemeal. It’s not written in statute regardless, it has been developed with common law practices for centuries, and it is outdated, honestly, given the society we currently live in.

“I will not claim that it’s going to be easy to resolve. It is incredibly complex and difficult, especially when you look at the issue of homicide, but we recognize that it needs to be looked at.”

Legal Authority Comment

A spokesperson for the legal body said: “Domestic abuse is a terrible offense and our legal officers are actively advised to consider homicide allegations in suicide cases where there is a established background of domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

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

“We are collaborating with police and other stakeholders to guarantee these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can hold offenders accountable for the complete scope of their wrongdoings.”