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Every suicide in which the deceased had endured domestic violence should be treated as a potential homicide, according to demands from advocates who aim to hold abusers responsible for the catastrophic consequences of their behavior.

This step is essential because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to hold offenders accountable in cases 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 seriousness they warrant,” remarked a co-director of a campaign group during a significant meeting in Westminster earlier this week.

The assembly, arranged by a group running a “Suicide is Homicide” initiative to fight for reform in the legal framework, brought together families who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death following family violence.

Personal Stories of Loss

One mother lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Before her death, the young woman had reported her former partner to police, submitting a lengthy recorded statement as evidence about his conduct.

After her death, 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 another victim came forward to report that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

In the wake of her loss, the parent decided to campaign for a new law to hold offenders to justice; yet she then realized that regulations 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 already there, and after finding out how much my child had been failed previous to her death by the police and many other agencies, they needed to fulfill their duties, and things required reform,” she said.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and just a handful of us have had a guilty verdict,” she added. “I was astonished to see such a large number who have been fighting the authorities and CPS for a long time and getting no justice for their offspring or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it affected inquiries that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s child Hannah died in May 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“She was vibrant, she was caring,” she stated. “She had great potential, and she was an amazing, really loving mum to her kids, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a partnership where she was methodically broken down by her partner,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and dismantled piece by piece until she could not see a path ahead. The man who did this to her went unpunished, because we label it self-inflicted death, we close the file and we proceed.

“But I could not move on,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to move on. Honestly, Hannah didn’t just die by suicide. She was killed. Her death was gradual and deliberately over a two year period, and when I approached the authorities, when I pleaded with them to look into what he had done to her, I was informed that there was no action that they were able to take.

“No inquiry was conducted into her death. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to fight for, took five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest determined self-inflicted death, notwithstanding substantial proof over a very traumatic multi-day session of domestic abuse and failings by multiple services.”

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

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

“We must apply the laws we already possess properly and it is not occurring at the present, and we need to make perpetrators responsible for driving their victims to death.

“We have the laws. We require determination, we need law enforcement to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. We need judges to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can cause death just as much as physical force and arms.”

Government Reaction

At a second meeting in the House of Commons, led by a Labour MP, and including the safeguarding minister, the grieving families again told their stories.

A parliamentary under-secretary told the meeting: “These deaths are often written off as if they were their own choice, they chose to do this, when, reality, these were the result of in fact, somebody else’s violence, and these aren’t isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she said. “Particularly around murder or manslaughter, it is piecemeal. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been developed with common law practices for generations, and it is no longer fit for purpose, quite frankly, given the society we inhabit today.

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

Legal Authority Comment

A spokesperson for the prosecution service commented: “Domestic abuse is a terrible offense and our prosecutors are actively advised to evaluate murder and manslaughter charges in suicide cases where there is a established background of domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

“We have previously charged a number of defendants for leading to the fatality of a companion they abused, encompassing in cases which are ongoing.

“We are collaborating with police and other parties to ensure these kinds of offences are well-understood – so that we can bring perpetrators to justice for the full extent of their crimes.”