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Every suicide in which the deceased had endured domestic violence should be considered a potential murder case, according to calls from advocates who aim to make perpetrators responsible for the devastating consequences of their actions.

This step is necessary because law enforcement are not doing enough to bring perpetrators accountable in instances of self-inflicted death following domestic abuse.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, particularly within the criminal justice system, to examine these fatalities with the seriousness they warrant,” stated a co-director of a campaign group during a landmark gathering in Westminster recently.

The meeting, arranged by a group running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” initiative to fight for change in the criminal justice system, brought together families who had suffered bereavement to suicide after family violence.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

One mother experienced the death of her child her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Before her death, the young woman had informed her former partner to authorities, providing a two-hour video interview as proof about his conduct.

Following her passing, the perpetrator was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct and jailed 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.

In the wake of her loss, the mother chose to advocate for a new law to bring perpetrators to justice; however she then realized that laws were already in place, they just weren’t often being used to achieve convictions.

“I concluded it wasn’t a new law I needed as existing laws were in place, and after learning how much my child had been let down previous to her death by the authorities and numerous services, they had to fulfill their duties, and practices needed to change,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and just a handful of us have had a conviction,” she added. “I was astonished to see so many families who have been fighting the police and CPS for a long time and getting no justice for their offspring or brother or sister and could not speak out in case it affected inquiries that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Another Tragic Case

One mother’s child her 30-year-old daughter died in spring 2017, in what she called “the ultimate abusive action” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“Hannah was vibrant, she was caring,” she said. “She was full of promise, and she was an amazing, deeply devoted mother to her two children, and she took her own life after two years in a relationship where she was methodically broken down by her partner,” she explained.

“She was physically beaten, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and broken down piece by piece until she was unable to envision a way forward. The individual who caused this went unpunished, because we label 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 intentionally over a 24-month span, and when I approached the authorities, when I pleaded with them to investigate what he had inflicted upon her, I was informed that there was nothing that they could do.

“No inquiry was conducted into her passing. The domestic homicide review, which I had to fight for, required five years and had no impact. A lengthy coroner’s hearing determined self-inflicted death, despite huge evidence over a extremely distressing four day period of domestic abuse and failings by various agencies.”

The mother told the meeting that for a decade she has “struggled against a system that refuses to see what is obvious”.

She emphasized the suicide is homicide movement was critical “because when someone takes their own life after they’ve suffered domestic abuse, we have to examine it for what it really is, which is murder.

“We must use the legislation we currently have properly and it is not occurring at the moment, and we need to make perpetrators responsible 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 the judiciary to recognize that words and control can cause death equally to physical force and arms.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the Parliament, chaired by a Labour MP, and including the safeguarding minister, the bereaved relatives again told their stories.

A junior minister told the meeting: “These deaths are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, reality, these were the culmination of actually, somebody else’s violence, and these are not isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she stated. “Particularly around homicide or unlawful killing, it is piecemeal. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been developed with traditional legal customs for generations, and it is no longer fit for purpose, quite frankly, given the society we currently live in.

“I will not claim 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 commented: “Domestic abuse is a heinous offense and our prosecutors are actively advised to consider murder and manslaughter charges in suicide cases where there is a established background of family violence or other manipulative conduct.

“We have in the past prosecuted a number of defendants for leading to the fatality of a companion they mistreated, including in cases which are currently active.

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