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Every suicide in which the deceased had experienced abuse at home must be considered a possible murder case, according to calls from campaigners who seek to make perpetrators responsible for the devastating impact of their actions.

This step is essential because law enforcement are failing to bring perpetrators accountable in instances of self-inflicted death after family violence.

“Time and again, there is widespread breakdown, especially within the legal system, to scrutinise these fatalities with the gravity they warrant,” stated a co-director of a advocacy organization at a significant meeting in London earlier this week.

The meeting, organized by a organization leading a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to fight for reform in the criminal justice system, united families who had lost loved ones to suicide following family violence.

Individual Accounts of Loss

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, Chloe had reported her former partner to police, providing a two-hour video interview as evidence about his conduct.

Following her passing, the individual was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct and imprisoned for 41 months. He was later sentenced for an additional term after a second woman 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 discovered that regulations were existing, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I decided it was not a new law I needed as existing laws were already there, and after learning how much my child had been let down previous to her taking her life by the police and many other agencies, they needed to do their job properly, and things required reform,” she explained.

“Over 47 families have found me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she continued. “I was astonished to see such a large number who have been fighting the authorities and prosecution service for years and getting no justice for their child or sibling and could not speak out in case it affected 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 said. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, deeply devoted mum to her two children, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a relationship where she was systematically destroyed by her partner,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was controlled and dismantled gradually until she could not see a path ahead. The individual who caused this walked free, because we call it self-inflicted death, we conclude the case and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I haven’t been able to move on. Honestly, Hannah didn’t just die by suicide. She was killed. She was killed slowly and deliberately over a 24-month span, 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 nothing that they could do.

“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to fight for, took five years and changed nothing. A lengthy coroner’s hearing determined death by suicide, notwithstanding substantial proof over a very traumatic four day period of domestic abuse and failings by various agencies.”

The mother told the meeting that for a decade she has “been fighting a establishment that ignores what is right in front of it”.

She emphasized the suicide is homicide campaign was critical “since when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve endured domestic abuse, we have to examine it for what it really is, which is homicide.

“We must use the legislation 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 require determination, we need police to investigate properly. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. We need judges to understand that words and control can kill equally to hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the House of Commons, chaired by a Labour MP, and attended by the government official, the bereaved relatives again told their stories.

A junior minister informed the assembly: “These deaths are often written off as if they were their own choice, they opted for this, when, reality, these were the result of actually, another person’s abuse, and these are not rare incidents.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she said. “Especially around homicide or manslaughter, it is piecemeal. It’s not written in statute regardless, it has been developed with traditional legal customs 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 difficult, particularly when you look at the issue of murder, but we acknowledge that it requires examination.”

Legal Authority Comment

A spokesperson for the prosecution service said: “Domestic abuse is a terrible offense and our prosecutors are actively advised to consider murder and manslaughter charges 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 cases which are ongoing.

“We are also working with police and other parties to ensure these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can bring perpetrators to justice for the complete scope of their crimes.”