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Every suicide where the victim had experienced domestic violence must be considered a possible homicide, according to demands from campaigners who seek to hold abusers accountable for the catastrophic impact of their behavior.

This move is essential because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to hold offenders to justice in cases of self-inflicted death following domestic abuse.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, particularly within the legal system, to examine these fatalities with the gravity they warrant,” remarked a co-director of a advocacy organization during a landmark meeting in London recently.

The assembly, arranged by a group running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” initiative to fight for reform in the criminal justice system, united relatives who had suffered bereavement to suicide following family violence.

Personal Stories of Tragedy

One mother lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in March 2023. Prior to her passing, Chloe had reported her former partner to authorities, providing a lengthy recorded statement as proof about his conduct.

After her death, the perpetrator was convicted of manipulative and domineering conduct and jailed for 41 months. He was later jailed for three years and seven months 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 parent decided to campaign for a new law to bring perpetrators to justice; however she then realized that regulations were existing, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I decided it wasn’t a new law I required as current statutes were in place, and after finding out how much my child had been let down before her death by the authorities and many other agencies, they needed to fulfill their duties, and things needed to change,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have contacted me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she continued. “I was so shocked to see so many families who have been battling the police and CPS for a long time and getting no justice for their child or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it affected investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s daughter Hannah passed away in May 2017, in what she called “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“Hannah was energetic, she was loving,” she said. “She had great potential, and she was an exceptional, really loving mum to her kids, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a partnership where she was systematically destroyed by her companion,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and dismantled piece by piece until she was unable to envision a way forward. The man who caused this went unpunished, because we call it suicide, we close the file and we move on.

“But I could not move on,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to let go. Honestly, Hannah did not merely take her own life. She was killed. She was killed slowly and deliberately over a two year period, and when I went to the police, when I begged them to look into what he had inflicted upon her, I was informed that there was no action that they were able to take.

“There was no investigation 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 self-inflicted death, notwithstanding huge evidence over a extremely distressing multi-day session of domestic abuse and failings by multiple services.”

The parent told the meeting that for eight years she has “struggled against a system that refuses to see what is right in front of it”.

She emphasized the suicide is homicide movement was vital “since when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve endured family violence, we have to examine it for what it truly represents, which is murder.

“We must use the legislation we currently have effectively and it is not occurring at the moment, and we need to hold abusers accountable for driving their victims to death.

“We have the laws. We need the will, we need law enforcement to investigate properly. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to take legal action. We need the judiciary to understand that words and control can kill just as much as hands and weapons.”

Government Reaction

At a second meeting in the House of Commons, led by a Labour MP, and attended by the government official, the bereaved relatives again shared their experiences.

A parliamentary under-secretary told the meeting: “These deaths are often dismissed as if they were their own choice, they opted for this, when, reality, these were the culmination of actually, somebody else’s violence, and these aren’t isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she said. “Particularly around homicide or manslaughter, it is fragmented. It lacks statutory basis regardless, it has been developed with common law practices for centuries, and it is outdated, quite frankly, it’s the world we inhabit today.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be easy to fix. It is extremely complicated and challenging, especially when you consider the issue of murder, but we recognize that it requires examination.”

Legal Authority Comment

A representative for the legal body said: “Family violence is a terrible offense and our legal officers are regularly instructed to consider murder and manslaughter charges in self-inflicted death instances where there is a established background of domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

“We have previously charged a several individuals for causing the death of a partner they mistreated, encompassing in cases which are ongoing.

“We are also working with law enforcement and other stakeholders to guarantee these types of crimes are well-understood – so that we can bring perpetrators accountable for the complete scope of their wrongdoings.”