🔗 Share this article

Every suicide where the victim had experienced abuse at home should be considered a potential homicide, as per calls from advocates who seek to hold abusers accountable for the catastrophic consequences of their actions.

This step is necessary because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to bring perpetrators to justice in cases of suicide following domestic abuse.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the criminal justice system, to scrutinise these deaths with the seriousness they deserve,” stated a leader of a advocacy organization at a landmark meeting in Westminster earlier this week.

The assembly, arranged by a group leading a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to advocate for change in the legal framework, united relatives who had lost loved ones to suicide after family violence.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

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

Following her passing, the individual was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct and jailed for over three years. He was subsequently sentenced for an additional term after a another victim stepped up 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 hold offenders to justice; however she then discovered that laws were already in place, they just were rarely applied to secure prosecutions.

“I decided it wasn’t a fresh legislation I needed as current statutes were in place, and after learning how much my child had been failed before her taking her life by the police and numerous services, they needed to fulfill their duties, and things needed to change,” she said.

“Over 47 families have contacted me and only four of us have had a conviction,” she continued. “I was astonished to see such a large number who have been fighting the authorities and prosecution service for a long time and receiving no resolution for their child or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it affected inquiries that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

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

“She was energetic, she was loving,” she stated. “She was full of promise, and she was an amazing, really loving mum to her two children, and she took her own life after 24 months in a partnership where she was systematically destroyed by her partner,” she explained.

“She was physically beaten, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and dismantled gradually until she could not see a path ahead. The man who did this to her went unpunished, because we call it self-inflicted death, we conclude the case and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she said, “and I have not managed to move on. Honestly, Hannah didn’t just die by suicide. She was murdered. 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 no action that they could do.

“No inquiry was conducted into her passing. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to fight for, took five years and had no impact. A lengthy coroner’s hearing found death by suicide, notwithstanding substantial proof over a extremely distressing four day period of family violence and shortcomings by multiple services.”

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

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

“We need to apply the laws we already possess properly and it is not occurring at the present, and we need to hold abusers accountable for driving their victims to death.

“The statutes exist. We need the will, we need law enforcement to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the prosecution authority to prosecute. We need the judiciary to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill just as much as hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a follow-up gathering in the House of Commons, chaired by a opposition politician, and attended by the government official, the bereaved relatives again shared their experiences.

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

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she said. “Particularly around homicide or manslaughter, it is fragmented. It lacks statutory basis regardless, it has been developed with common law practices for generations, and it is no longer fit for purpose, honestly, it’s the world we inhabit today.

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

Legal Authority Comment

A spokesperson for the legal body commented: “Domestic abuse is a terrible offense and our legal officers are regularly instructed to consider homicide allegations in suicide cases where there is a known context of domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

“We have previously charged a several individuals for causing the death of a partner they abused, including in cases which are currently active.

“We are collaborating with police and other stakeholders to guarantee these types of crimes are clearly recognized – so that we can hold offenders to justice for the complete scope of their wrongdoings.”