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Every suicide in which the victim had endured abuse at home should be considered a possible murder case, as per demands from advocates who aim to hold abusers accountable for the catastrophic consequences of their actions.

This step is necessary because law enforcement are failing to hold offenders accountable in cases of suicide following family violence.

“In case after case, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the criminal justice system, to scrutinise these fatalities with the seriousness they warrant,” remarked a leader of a advocacy organization during a significant gathering in Westminster recently.

The assembly, arranged by a organization leading a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign to advocate for reform in the criminal justice system, brought together families who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death following family violence.

Individual Accounts of Loss

One mother experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in March 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had reported her ex-boyfriend to authorities, submitting a lengthy recorded statement as evidence about his conduct.

Following her passing, the individual was found guilty of coercive and controlling behavior and jailed for 41 months. He was later sentenced for three years and seven months after a second woman stepped up to report that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

After Chloe’s death, the parent decided to campaign for a legal change to hold offenders to justice; however she then discovered that laws were already in place, they just weren’t often being used to secure prosecutions.

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

“Over 47 families have contacted me and only four of us have had a conviction,” she continued. “I was so shocked to see such a large number who have been fighting the police and CPS for years and receiving no resolution for their offspring or sibling and didn’t have a voice in case it affected investigations that were not progressing.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

Saskia Lightburn Richie’s child her 30-year-old daughter passed away in May 2017, in what she described as “the ultimate abusive action” in a campaign of abuse.

“Hannah was energetic, she was loving,” she stated. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, really loving mum to her two children, and she took her own life after two years in a partnership where she was methodically broken down by her partner,” she said.

“She endured physical assaults, she was mentally tormented, she was controlled and broken down gradually until she could not see a path ahead. The individual who did this to her walked free, because we call it suicide, we close the file and we proceed.

“But I could not move on,” she said, “and I have not managed 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 approached the authorities, when I begged them to look into what he had done to her, I was told that there was no action that they were able to take.

“No inquiry was conducted into her passing. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to struggle to obtain, took five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest determined self-inflicted death, notwithstanding substantial proof over a extremely distressing multi-day session of domestic abuse and failings by various agencies.”

The mother told the meeting that for a decade she has “struggled against a system that ignores what is right in front of it”.

She said the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was critical “because when an individual takes their own life after they’ve endured family violence, we have to investigate it for what it really is, which is homicide.

“We must apply the laws we already possess properly and it really isn’t happening at the moment, and we need to make perpetrators responsible for driving their victims to death.

“The statutes exist. We require determination, we need law enforcement to investigate properly. We need the prosecution authority to prosecute. We need judges to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill just as much as physical force and arms.”

Political Response

At a follow-up gathering in the House of Commons, chaired by a Labour MP, and attended by the safeguarding minister, the bereaved relatives again told their stories.

A junior minister informed the assembly: “These deaths are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, in truth, these were the result of actually, another person’s abuse, and these are not isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she said. “Especially around murder or unlawful killing, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been developed with common law practices for generations, and it is outdated, quite frankly, it’s the world we currently live in.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be easy to fix. It is extremely complicated and difficult, especially when you look at the matter of homicide, but we acknowledge that it requires examination.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A representative for the prosecution service said: “Domestic abuse is a heinous offense and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to consider homicide allegations in self-inflicted death instances where there is a established background of family violence or other manipulative conduct.

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

“We are collaborating with law enforcement and other stakeholders to guarantee these types of crimes are clearly recognized – so that we can bring perpetrators accountable for the complete scope of their crimes.”