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Every suicide where the deceased had experienced abuse at home should be considered a potential murder case, according to demands from campaigners who aim to hold abusers responsible for the devastating consequences of their actions.

This step is essential because law enforcement are failing to hold offenders accountable in cases of suicide after domestic abuse.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, particularly within the legal system, to scrutinise these deaths with the gravity they warrant,” stated a leader of a campaign group at a significant gathering in London recently.

The assembly, arranged by a group running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to advocate for change in the legal framework, brought together relatives who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death after domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

Sharon Holland lost her daughter Chloe Holland in March 2023. Before her death, the young woman had informed her former partner to authorities, providing a two-hour video interview as proof about his conduct.

Following her passing, the perpetrator was convicted of coercive and controlling behavior and jailed for 41 months. He was subsequently jailed for an additional term after a another victim stepped up to report that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

After Chloe’s death, the parent chose to advocate for a new law to hold offenders to justice; yet 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 existing laws were already there, and after learning how much my child had been failed previous to her death by the authorities and many other agencies, they needed to do their job properly, and practices required reform,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have contacted me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she added. “I was so shocked to see so many families who have been battling the authorities and CPS for years and receiving no resolution for their offspring or sibling and didn’t have a voice in case it impacted inquiries that were not progressing.”

Another Tragic Case

Saskia Lightburn Richie’s daughter Hannah passed away in spring 2017, in what she called “the ultimate abusive action” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“She was energetic, she was loving,” she stated. “She had great potential, and she was an amazing, deeply devoted mum to her kids, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a relationship where she was methodically broken down by her partner,” she explained.

“She endured physical assaults, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and dismantled gradually until she could not see a path ahead. The individual who did this to her went unpunished, because we label it suicide, we close the file and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she said, “and I haven’t been able to let go. In truth, she did not merely take her own life. She was murdered. She was killed slowly and deliberately over a 24-month span, and when I approached the authorities, when I begged 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 passing. The domestic homicide review, which I had to struggle to obtain, required five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest determined self-inflicted death, notwithstanding substantial proof over a extremely distressing four day period of domestic abuse and shortcomings by various agencies.”

The mother informed the gathering that for a decade she has “been fighting a system that ignores what is right in front of it”.

She said the suicide is homicide campaign was vital “because when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve endured family violence, we have to examine it for what it really is, which is homicide.

“We need to apply the laws we already possess effectively and it is not occurring 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 take legal action. We need judges to understand that verbal abuse and manipulation can cause death just as much as hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, led by a Labour MP, and including 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 opted for this, when, reality, these were the culmination of in fact, somebody else’s violence, and these aren’t rare incidents.”

“The legal system is flawed, we are aware,” she said. “Particularly around murder or unlawful killing, it is piecemeal. It lacks statutory basis anyway, it has been developed with common law practices for centuries, and it is outdated, quite frankly, given the society we currently live in.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be easy to resolve. It is incredibly complex and difficult, particularly when you look at the issue of homicide, but we recognize that it requires examination.”

Legal Authority Comment

A representative for the legal body commented: “Domestic abuse is a heinous offense and our legal officers are regularly instructed to evaluate murder and manslaughter charges in self-inflicted death instances where there is a established background of domestic abuse or other controlling or coercive behavior.

“We have previously charged a several individuals for leading to the fatality of a companion they mistreated, encompassing in cases which are currently active.

“We are also working with police and other stakeholders to ensure these types of crimes are well-understood – so that we can bring perpetrators accountable for the full extent of their crimes.”