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Every suicide where the victim had experienced domestic violence must be treated as a potential homicide, as per calls from campaigners who seek to hold abusers responsible for the devastating consequences of their actions.

This step is essential because law enforcement are not doing enough to bring perpetrators to justice in instances of self-inflicted death after domestic abuse.

“Time and again, there is widespread breakdown, especially within the legal system, to scrutinise these deaths with the gravity they deserve,” stated a leader of a advocacy organization during a significant meeting in Westminster earlier this week.

The meeting, arranged by a organization leading a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” initiative to fight for reform in the legal framework, brought together families who had suffered bereavement to suicide after domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

One mother lost her daughter Chloe Holland in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, Chloe had reported her former partner to authorities, submitting a two-hour video interview as proof against him.

Following her passing, the perpetrator was convicted of coercive and controlling behavior and imprisoned for over three years. He was later jailed for three years and seven months after a another victim 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 realized that regulations were existing, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I concluded it wasn’t a fresh legislation I needed as current statutes were in place, and after finding out how much my daughter had been failed before her death by the police and numerous services, they had to do their job properly, and things needed to change,” she explained.

“Over 47 families have found me and only four of us have had a conviction,” she added. “I was so shocked to see so many families who have been fighting the police and prosecution service for years and receiving no resolution for their child or sibling and could not speak out in case it affected investigations that were not progressing.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s child Hannah died in spring 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“Hannah was energetic, she was caring,” she said. “She was full of promise, and she was an amazing, deeply devoted mother to her kids, and she took her own life after two years in a relationship where she was methodically broken down by her partner,” she explained.

“She endured physical assaults, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and broken down gradually until she could not see a path ahead. The individual who caused this walked free, because we label it suicide, we close the file and we proceed.

“But I could not move on,” she remarked, “and I haven’t been able to move on. Honestly, Hannah didn’t just die by suicide. She was murdered. Her death was gradual and deliberately over a two year period, and when I approached the authorities, when I pleaded with them to look into 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, required five years and had no impact. A four day inquest determined death by suicide, despite substantial proof over a extremely distressing multi-day session of domestic abuse and shortcomings by various agencies.”

The mother informed the gathering that for a decade she has “been fighting a system that refuses to see what is obvious”.

She emphasized the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was critical “because when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve endured family violence, we have to investigate it for what it really is, which is murder.

“We must apply the laws we currently have properly and it really isn’t happening at the present, and we need to hold abusers accountable for pushing their targets to suicide.

“The statutes exist. We need the will, we need law enforcement to investigate properly. We need the prosecution authority to take legal action. We need judges to understand that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill just as much as hands and weapons.”

Political Response

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

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

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she stated. “Particularly around murder or manslaughter, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute regardless, it has been developed with common law practices for generations, and it is outdated, honestly, it’s the world we currently live in.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be simple to resolve. It is extremely complicated and challenging, particularly when you consider the issue of murder, but we acknowledge that it needs to be looked at.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A spokesperson for the prosecution service said: “Family violence is a terrible offense and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to evaluate 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 causing the death of a partner they abused, including in proceedings which are ongoing.

“We are collaborating with law enforcement and other parties to ensure these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can bring perpetrators accountable for the complete scope of their wrongdoings.”