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Every suicide where the deceased had endured abuse at home should be treated as a possible homicide, according to demands from advocates who seek to make perpetrators accountable for the devastating impact of their behavior.

This step is essential because police and prosecutors are failing to bring perpetrators accountable in instances of self-inflicted death following domestic abuse.

“In case after case, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the criminal justice system, to scrutinise these fatalities with the gravity they warrant,” remarked a co-director of a campaign group during a landmark gathering in London earlier this week.

The meeting, arranged by a group leading a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to fight for reform in the criminal justice system, united relatives who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death following family violence.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

One mother lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in March 2023. Before her death, Chloe had reported her former partner to police, submitting a lengthy recorded statement as proof about his conduct.

After her death, the individual was found guilty of coercive and controlling behavior and imprisoned for 41 months. He was subsequently jailed for an additional term after a another victim 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 legal change to bring perpetrators accountable; however she then discovered that regulations were existing, they just weren’t often being used to secure prosecutions.

“I concluded it was not a fresh legislation I needed as current statutes were in place, and after learning how much my daughter had been failed previous to her death by the authorities and many other agencies, they had to fulfill their duties, and practices needed to change,” she explained.

“Over 47 families have found me and just a handful of us have had a guilty verdict,” she added. “I was so shocked to see such a large number who have been battling the authorities and CPS for years and getting no justice for their offspring or sibling and didn’t have a voice in case it impacted investigations that were not progressing.”

Another Tragic Case

One mother’s daughter her 30-year-old daughter died in May 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“Hannah was vibrant, she was caring,” she said. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, really loving mum to her kids, and she took her own life after 24 months in a partnership where she was systematically destroyed by her companion,” she explained.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and dismantled gradually until she was unable to envision a way forward. The individual who did this to her went unpunished, because we label it suicide, we close the file and we move on.

“But I could not move on,” she said, “and I haven’t been able to let go. Honestly, she didn’t just die by suicide. She was killed. Her death was gradual and deliberately over a 24-month span, and when I went to the police, when I pleaded with them to look into what he had done to her, I was informed that there was nothing that they were able to take.

“There was no investigation into her passing. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to fight for, required five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest found self-inflicted death, despite huge evidence over a extremely distressing multi-day session of family violence and failings by various agencies.”

The parent informed the gathering that for eight years she has “struggled against a system that refuses to see what is obvious”.

She said the suicide is homicide campaign was critical “because when an individual takes their own life after they’ve suffered domestic abuse, we have to investigate it for what it truly represents, which is murder.

“We need to apply the laws we already possess properly and it really isn’t happening at the moment, and we need to make perpetrators responsible for pushing their targets to suicide.

“We have the laws. We need the will, we need law enforcement to investigate properly. We need the prosecution authority to prosecute. We need the judiciary to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill equally to hands and weapons.”

Government Reaction

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, led by a opposition politician, and including the safeguarding minister, 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, reality, these were the result of actually, somebody else’s violence, and these aren’t isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she said. “Especially around murder or manslaughter, it is fragmented. It lacks statutory basis anyway, it has been developed with traditional legal customs for generations, and it is no longer fit for purpose, honestly, given the society we inhabit today.

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

Prosecution Service Statement

A spokesperson for the prosecution service said: “Family violence is a heinous crime and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to consider murder and manslaughter charges in self-inflicted death instances where there is a known context of family violence or other controlling or coercive behavior.

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

“We are also working with law enforcement and other stakeholders to guarantee these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can bring perpetrators accountable for the full extent of their crimes.”