Every suicide in which the deceased had experienced domestic violence should be considered a potential murder case, as per demands from campaigners who seek to make perpetrators accountable for the catastrophic consequences of their actions.
This move is necessary because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to hold offenders to justice in cases of suicide following family violence.
“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, particularly within the legal system, to scrutinise these deaths with the gravity they warrant,” remarked a leader of a advocacy organization during a significant gathering in London recently.
The meeting, arranged by a organization running a “Suicide is Homicide” initiative to advocate for change in the legal framework, brought together families who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death after family violence.
Personal Stories of Loss
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 lengthy recorded statement as evidence against him.
After her death, the individual was found guilty of coercive and controlling behavior and jailed for 41 months. He was subsequently sentenced for three years and seven months after a second woman stepped up to disclose that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.
In the wake of her loss, the parent decided to campaign for a legal change to bring perpetrators to justice; yet she then realized that regulations were already in place, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.
“I concluded it was not a fresh legislation I required as current statutes were already there, and after finding out how much my daughter had been failed previous to her death by the police and many other agencies, they had to do their job properly, and practices needed to change,” she said.
“Over 47 families have contacted me and only four of us have had a conviction,” she continued. “I was so shocked to see so many families who have been fighting the authorities and CPS for years and getting no justice for their offspring or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it affected investigations that were not progressing.”
Further Heartbreaking Account
One mother’s daughter her 30-year-old daughter passed away in spring 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.
“She was energetic, she was caring,” she said. “She had great potential, and she was an exceptional, really loving 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 said.
“She was physically beaten, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and broken down gradually until she was unable to envision a way forward. The man who did this to her walked free, because we call it self-inflicted death, we close the file and we proceed.
“But I could not move on,” she said, “and I have not managed to move on. In truth, Hannah didn’t just die by suicide. She was murdered. She was killed slowly 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 could do.
“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to fight for, required five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest determined death by suicide, despite huge evidence over a extremely distressing multi-day session of domestic abuse and failings by various agencies.”
The mother informed the gathering that for eight years she has “been fighting a establishment that refuses to see what is obvious”.
She said the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was vital “because when someone dies by suicide after they’ve suffered domestic abuse, we have to examine it for what it truly represents, which is homicide.
“We need to apply the laws we currently have effectively and it is not occurring at the moment, and we need to hold abusers accountable for driving their victims to death.
“We have the laws. We require determination, we need law enforcement to investigate properly. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. We need the judiciary to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill equally to hands and weapons.”
Political Response
At a follow-up gathering in the House of Commons, chaired by a opposition politician, and including the safeguarding minister, the grieving families again told their stories.
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 culmination of in fact, somebody else’s violence, and these are not isolated stories.”
“The legal system is flawed, we are aware,” she stated. “Especially around murder or manslaughter, it is piecemeal. It lacks statutory basis regardless, it has been shaped with common law practices for centuries, and it is no longer fit for purpose, honestly, given the society we currently live in.
“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be easy to resolve. It is extremely complicated and difficult, particularly when you look at the matter of homicide, but we recognize that it requires examination.”
Legal Authority Comment
A spokesperson for the legal body said: “Domestic abuse is a terrible crime and our legal officers are regularly instructed to evaluate homicide allegations in suicide cases where there is a established background of family violence or other controlling or coercive behavior.
“We have in the past prosecuted a number of defendants for causing the death of a partner they abused, encompassing in cases which are currently active.
“We are also working with police and other parties to ensure these types of crimes are clearly recognized – so that we can hold offenders accountable for the complete scope of their crimes.”
