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Every suicide where the deceased had endured domestic violence should be treated as a potential murder case, as per calls from campaigners who aim to hold abusers accountable for the devastating consequences of their behavior.

This move is necessary because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to bring perpetrators to justice in instances of suicide after family violence.

“In case after case, there is widespread breakdown, especially within the legal system, to scrutinise these deaths with the gravity they deserve,” remarked a leader of a advocacy organization during a significant gathering in Westminster recently.

The meeting, arranged by a organization running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” initiative to advocate for reform in the criminal justice system, brought together relatives who had lost loved ones to suicide after domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, Chloe had informed her former partner to police, submitting a lengthy recorded statement as proof against him.

After her death, the perpetrator was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct and imprisoned for 41 months. He was subsequently jailed for an additional term after a second woman came forward to report that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

After Chloe’s death, the mother decided to campaign for a legal change to hold offenders to justice; however she then realized that laws were already in place, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

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

“More than four dozen relatives have found 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 fighting the police and CPS for a long time and receiving no resolution for their offspring or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it impacted investigations that were not progressing.”

Another Tragic Case

Saskia Lightburn Richie’s daughter Hannah passed away in spring 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“Hannah was energetic, she was caring,” she stated. “She had great potential, and she was an exceptional, deeply devoted mum to her two children, and she died by suicide after two years in a relationship where she was systematically destroyed by her partner,” she said.

“She endured physical assaults, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and broken down gradually until she was unable to envision a path ahead. The individual who caused this walked free, because we call it suicide, we conclude the case and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to move on. Honestly, she 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 were able to take.

“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to fight for, required five years and had no impact. A four day inquest found self-inflicted death, notwithstanding huge evidence over a very traumatic four day period of domestic abuse and failings by multiple services.”

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

She said the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was critical “since when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve endured family violence, we have to examine it for what it really is, which is murder.

“We must use the legislation we already possess properly and it is not occurring at the moment, and we need to hold abusers accountable for pushing their targets to suicide.

“The statutes exist. 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 cause death equally to physical force and arms.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the House of Commons, chaired by a Labour MP, and attended by the government official, the grieving families again shared their experiences.

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

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she said. “Particularly around homicide or unlawful killing, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been shaped with common law practices for centuries, and it is no longer fit for purpose, quite frankly, it’s the world we inhabit today.

“I will not claim that it’s going to be simple to resolve. It is incredibly complex and challenging, particularly when you consider the issue of murder, but we recognize that it needs to be looked at.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A spokesperson for the legal body said: “Domestic abuse is a heinous crime and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to consider murder and manslaughter charges in suicide cases where there is a known context of family violence or other manipulative conduct.

“We have in the past prosecuted a several individuals for causing the death of a partner they abused, encompassing in cases which are currently active.

“We are collaborating with police and other parties to guarantee these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can bring perpetrators accountable for the full extent of their wrongdoings.”