🔗 Share this article

Every suicide in which the deceased had endured abuse at home must be treated as a potential homicide, as per calls from campaigners who aim to make perpetrators responsible for the catastrophic consequences of their behavior.

This step is essential because law enforcement are failing to hold offenders accountable in instances of self-inflicted death after domestic abuse.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the legal system, to scrutinise these deaths with the seriousness they warrant,” remarked a co-director of a campaign group at a landmark meeting in Westminster earlier this week.

The meeting, organized by a group running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to advocate for change in the legal framework, united relatives who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death following domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

One mother lost her daughter Chloe Holland in spring 2023. Before her death, Chloe had informed her ex-boyfriend to authorities, submitting a two-hour video interview as evidence against him.

After her death, the individual was convicted of manipulative and domineering conduct and jailed for 41 months. He was later jailed for an additional term after a second woman 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 legal change to bring perpetrators to justice; yet she then realized that regulations were already in place, they just weren’t often being used to secure prosecutions.

“I concluded it was not a new law I required as existing laws were in place, and after learning how much my daughter had been failed before her death by the authorities and numerous services, they needed to fulfill their duties, and practices required reform,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have contacted me and just a handful of us have had a conviction,” she added. “I was astonished to see so many families who have been fighting the authorities and prosecution service for years and getting no justice for their offspring or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it impacted inquiries that were not progressing.”

Another Tragic Case

One mother’s daughter Hannah passed away in spring 2017, in what she called “the final act of violence” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“She was energetic, she was loving,” she stated. “She was full of promise, and she was an amazing, really loving mother to her kids, and she took her own life after 24 months in a relationship where she was methodically broken down by her partner,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and dismantled piece by piece until she could not see a way forward. The individual who caused this walked free, because we label it self-inflicted death, we close the file and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I haven’t been able to let go. Honestly, Hannah didn’t just die by suicide. She was killed. Her death was gradual and intentionally over a two year period, and when I approached the authorities, when I pleaded with them to investigate what he had inflicted upon her, I was informed that there was no action that they were able to take.

“There was no investigation into her passing. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to struggle to obtain, required five years and had no impact. A lengthy coroner’s hearing found self-inflicted death, notwithstanding huge evidence over a very traumatic four day period of family violence and failings by multiple services.”

The parent informed the gathering that for a decade she has “been fighting a system that ignores what is obvious”.

She said the self-inflicted death is murder movement was critical “because when someone takes their own life after they’ve suffered family violence, we have to investigate it for what it truly represents, which is murder.

“We must use the legislation we already possess properly and it really isn’t happening at the moment, and we need to make perpetrators responsible for pushing their targets to suicide.

“The statutes exist. We need the will, we need police to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the prosecution authority to take legal action. We need judges to recognize that words and control can kill just as much as hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the Parliament, chaired by a opposition politician, and attended by the government official, the grieving families again shared their experiences.

A junior minister told the meeting: “Such fatalities are often written off as if they were their decision, they opted for this, when, in truth, these were the result of actually, somebody else’s violence, and these aren’t rare incidents.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she stated. “Particularly around homicide or unlawful killing, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been developed with traditional legal customs for centuries, and it is outdated, quite frankly, it’s the world we currently live in.

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

Prosecution Service Statement

A representative for the prosecution service said: “Family violence is a heinous offense and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to evaluate homicide allegations in self-inflicted death instances where there is a established background of family violence or other controlling or coercive behavior.

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

“We are collaborating with police and other stakeholders to guarantee these types of crimes are well-understood – so that we can hold offenders accountable for the complete scope of their wrongdoings.”