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Every suicide in which the victim had endured abuse at home should be considered a possible murder case, as per demands from campaigners who seek to hold abusers responsible for the catastrophic impact of their actions.

This step is necessary because law enforcement are failing to hold offenders to justice in instances of suicide following family violence.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, particularly within the legal system, to examine these deaths with the gravity they warrant,” remarked a co-director of a campaign group during a significant meeting in Westminster recently.

The assembly, arranged by a group running a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign to fight for reform in the legal framework, brought together relatives who had suffered bereavement to suicide after domestic abuse.

Personal Stories of Loss

Sharon Holland lost her daughter Chloe Holland in March 2023. Before her death, Chloe had informed her ex-boyfriend to police, providing a two-hour video interview as evidence about his conduct.

After her death, the individual was convicted of coercive and controlling behavior and imprisoned for over three years. He was subsequently sentenced for three years and seven months after a another victim came forward to disclose that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

After Chloe’s death, the mother decided to campaign for a legal change to hold offenders to justice; however she then discovered that regulations were existing, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I concluded it was not a new law I required as current statutes were already there, and after learning how much my daughter had been failed before her death by the police and many other agencies, they had to do their job properly, and things needed to change,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and only four of us have had a conviction,” she continued. “I was astonished to see such a large number who have been battling the police and prosecution service for a long time and getting no justice for their offspring or sibling and could not speak out in case it affected investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Another Tragic Case

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

“She 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 died by suicide after 24 months in a partnership where she was systematically destroyed by her companion,” she said.

“She endured physical assaults, she was mentally tormented, she was controlled and broken down gradually until she could not see a way forward. The man 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 said, “and I haven’t been able to move on. Honestly, she did not merely take her own life. She was killed. Her death was gradual and deliberately over a two year period, and when I went to the police, when I begged them to investigate what he had inflicted upon her, I was told that there was nothing that they were able to take.

“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to struggle to obtain, took 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 family violence and failings by multiple services.”

The mother 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 movement was critical “because when someone takes their own life after they’ve endured domestic abuse, we have to investigate it for what it really is, which is homicide.

“We must apply the laws we already possess effectively and it really isn’t happening 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 investigate properly. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. We need judges to recognize that words and control can cause death just as much as hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, chaired by a opposition politician, and attended by the government official, the grieving families again told their stories.

A junior minister told the meeting: “These deaths are often written off as if they were their decision, they opted for this, when, in truth, these were the culmination of actually, somebody else’s violence, and these are not isolated stories.”

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she said. “Especially around murder or manslaughter, it is piecemeal. It lacks statutory basis anyway, it has been shaped with common law practices for centuries, and it is outdated, quite frankly, it’s the world we inhabit today.

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

Prosecution Service Statement

A spokesperson for the legal body said: “Domestic abuse is a heinous offense 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 domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

“We have previously charged a number of defendants for leading to the fatality of a companion they abused, encompassing in cases which are currently active.

“We are collaborating with law enforcement and other parties to guarantee these types of crimes are clearly recognized – so that we can bring perpetrators to justice for the full extent of their crimes.”