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Every suicide in which the victim had endured abuse at home must be considered a potential homicide, according to demands from campaigners who seek to make perpetrators responsible for the catastrophic consequences of their behavior.

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

“In case after case, there is widespread breakdown, particularly within the criminal justice system, to examine these fatalities with the seriousness they deserve,” stated a co-director of a advocacy organization during a landmark meeting in Westminster recently.

The assembly, arranged by a group running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to fight for change in the criminal justice system, brought together families who had lost loved ones to suicide following domestic abuse.

Personal Stories of Tragedy

Sharon Holland lost her daughter Chloe Holland in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, Chloe had reported her former partner to police, providing a two-hour video interview as proof against him.

After her death, the perpetrator was found guilty of coercive and controlling behavior and imprisoned for 41 months. He was subsequently sentenced for three years and seven months after a second woman came forward to disclose that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

In the wake of her loss, the mother chose to advocate for a new law to hold offenders accountable; yet she then realized that regulations were already in place, they just were rarely applied to secure prosecutions.

“I concluded it wasn’t a fresh legislation I needed as current statutes were already there, and after learning how much my child had been failed previous to her death by the authorities and numerous services, they needed to do their job properly, and things needed to change,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have contacted 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 authorities and prosecution service for a long time and getting no justice for their offspring or brother or sister and could not speak out in case it impacted inquiries that were not progressing.”

Another Tragic Case

One mother’s daughter her 30-year-old daughter died in spring 2017, in what she described as “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 exceptional, deeply devoted mother to her kids, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a partnership where she was systematically destroyed by her companion,” she explained.

“She was physically beaten, she was mentally tormented, she was controlled and dismantled gradually until she was unable to envision a path ahead. The individual who did this to her walked free, because we call it self-inflicted death, we conclude the case and we proceed.

“But I could not move on,” she remarked, “and I haven’t been able to let go. In truth, Hannah did not merely take her own life. She was murdered. She was killed slowly and deliberately over a two year period, and when I approached the authorities, when I pleaded with them to investigate what he had done to her, I was told that there was no action that they could do.

“No inquiry was conducted 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 death by suicide, despite substantial proof over a extremely distressing multi-day session of domestic abuse and shortcomings by multiple services.”

The mother informed the gathering that for a decade she has “struggled against a establishment that refuses to see what is obvious”.

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

“We must apply the laws we currently have effectively and it is not occurring at the present, 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 prosecution authority to take legal action. We need judges to understand that words and control can cause death equally to hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the Parliament, led by a opposition politician, and attended by the government official, the bereaved relatives again shared their experiences.

A junior minister told the meeting: “Such fatalities are often dismissed as if they were their own choice, they chose to do this, when, reality, these were the result of actually, somebody else’s violence, and these are not isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she stated. “Especially around homicide or manslaughter, it is piecemeal. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been developed with traditional legal customs for generations, and it is outdated, honestly, it’s the world we inhabit today.

“I will not claim that it’s going to be easy to fix. It is extremely complicated and difficult, especially when you look at the matter of murder, but we acknowledge that it needs to be looked at.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A spokesperson for the legal body commented: “Family violence is a terrible crime and our legal officers are actively advised to evaluate homicide allegations in suicide cases 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, encompassing in proceedings which are ongoing.

“We are also working with police and other stakeholders to guarantee these types of crimes are clearly recognized – so that we can hold offenders accountable for the full extent of their crimes.”