🔗 Share this article

Every suicide where the deceased had experienced abuse at home must be treated as a potential murder case, as per demands from advocates who aim to hold abusers accountable for the catastrophic impact of their behavior.

This move is necessary because law enforcement are failing to hold offenders to justice in cases of self-inflicted death following family violence.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the criminal justice system, to examine these fatalities with the gravity they warrant,” remarked a leader of a advocacy organization during a significant meeting in Westminster recently.

The meeting, arranged by a organization leading a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to advocate for change in the legal framework, brought together relatives who had lost loved ones to suicide after domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

One mother experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in March 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had reported her former partner to authorities, submitting a lengthy recorded statement as proof about his conduct.

After her death, the perpetrator was found guilty of coercive and controlling behavior and jailed for over three years. He was later sentenced for an additional term after a another victim stepped up to report that she had been in a violent and abusive relationship with him.

After Chloe’s death, the parent chose to advocate for a legal change to bring perpetrators to justice; however she then realized that laws were already in place, they just were rarely applied to secure prosecutions.

“I concluded it wasn’t a fresh legislation I required as current statutes were already there, and after finding out how much my daughter had been let down previous to her death by the authorities and numerous services, they needed to fulfill their duties, and practices required reform,” she said.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and only four of us have had a conviction,” she added. “I was astonished to see so many families who have been battling the police and CPS for years and getting no justice for their offspring or sibling and didn’t have a voice in case it affected investigations that were not progressing.”

Another Tragic Case

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

“She was energetic, she was caring,” she stated. “She was full of promise, and she was an amazing, deeply devoted mother to her two children, and she died by suicide after two years 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 gradually until she could not see a way forward. The man who did this to her walked free, because we label it suicide, we conclude the case and we move on.

“But I could not move on,” she said, “and I haven’t been able to move on. 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 inflicted upon 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, required five years and changed nothing. A lengthy coroner’s hearing determined self-inflicted death, notwithstanding substantial proof over a very traumatic four day period of domestic abuse and failings by various agencies.”

The mother informed the gathering that for eight years she has “struggled against a establishment that ignores what is right in front of it”.

She said the self-inflicted death is murder movement was vital “because when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve suffered family violence, we have to examine it for what it really is, which is homicide.

“We must apply the laws we currently have properly and it really isn’t happening at the present, and we need to make perpetrators responsible for driving their victims to death.

“We have the laws. We require determination, we need police to investigate properly. We need the prosecution authority to prosecute. We need judges to understand that verbal abuse and manipulation can cause death just as much as physical force and arms.”

Government Reaction

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, chaired by a Labour MP, and attended by the safeguarding minister, the bereaved relatives again told their stories.

A junior minister told the meeting: “These deaths are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, in truth, these were the culmination of actually, somebody else’s violence, and these aren’t rare incidents.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she said. “Particularly around murder or manslaughter, it is piecemeal. It lacks statutory basis anyway, it has been developed with common law practices for generations, and it is outdated, honestly, it’s the world we currently live in.

“I will not claim that it’s going to be simple to resolve. It is extremely complicated and difficult, particularly when you look at the matter of murder, but we acknowledge that it requires examination.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A representative for the legal body said: “Family violence is a terrible crime and our prosecutors are actively advised to evaluate homicide allegations 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 several individuals for leading to the fatality of a companion they mistreated, including in proceedings which are currently active.

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