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Every suicide in which the deceased had endured abuse at home should be treated as a possible murder case, as per demands from advocates who seek to hold abusers accountable for the devastating consequences of their behavior.

This move is necessary because police and prosecutors are failing to hold offenders accountable in cases of self-inflicted death after family violence.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the criminal justice system, to examine these fatalities with the gravity they deserve,” remarked a co-director of a advocacy organization during a landmark gathering in Westminster earlier this week.

The meeting, organized by a organization running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to advocate for reform in the criminal justice system, brought together families who had suffered bereavement to self-inflicted death following domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Loss

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Before her death, Chloe had reported her former partner to authorities, providing a two-hour video interview as proof about his conduct.

After her death, the individual was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct and imprisoned for over three years. He was later jailed for an additional term after a second woman came forward to report that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

After Chloe’s death, the parent decided to campaign for a new law to bring perpetrators to justice; however she then realized that laws were existing, they just weren’t often being used to secure prosecutions.

“I concluded it wasn’t a fresh legislation I required as existing laws were in place, and after finding out how much my daughter had been failed previous to her death by the police and numerous services, they had to do their job properly, and things needed to change,” she said.

“More than four dozen relatives have found 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 receiving no resolution for their child or brother or sister and could not speak out in case it impacted inquiries that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Another Tragic Case

One mother’s child her 30-year-old daughter died in May 2017, in what she called “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“She was vibrant, she was loving,” she stated. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, deeply devoted mother to her kids, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a partnership where she was methodically broken down by her companion,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and broken down piece by piece until she could not see a path ahead. The individual who caused this walked free, because we call it suicide, we close the file and we proceed.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I haven’t been able to let go. In truth, she didn’t just die by suicide. She was murdered. She was killed slowly and intentionally over a 24-month span, and when I went to the police, when I begged them to look into what he had done to her, I was told that there was nothing that they were able to take.

“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to fight for, required five years and had no impact. A four day inquest found self-inflicted death, despite huge evidence over a extremely distressing multi-day session of family violence and failings by multiple services.”

The parent informed the gathering that for eight years she has “struggled against a system that refuses to see what is right in front of it”.

She said the suicide is homicide campaign was vital “because when an individual takes their own life after they’ve suffered family violence, we have to examine 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 make perpetrators responsible for driving their victims to death.

“The statutes exist. We require determination, we need law enforcement to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to take legal action. We need judges to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can cause death equally to hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the Parliament, led by a opposition politician, and including the safeguarding minister, the grieving families again shared their experiences.

A junior minister informed the assembly: “Such fatalities are often dismissed as if they were their own choice, they chose to do this, when, reality, these were the result of in fact, another person’s abuse, and these aren’t rare incidents.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she stated. “Particularly around murder or unlawful killing, it is piecemeal. It lacks statutory basis anyway, it has been shaped with traditional legal customs for generations, and it is outdated, honestly, it’s the world we inhabit today.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be simple to fix. It is incredibly complex and challenging, particularly when you consider the matter of murder, but we acknowledge that it requires examination.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A representative for the prosecution service said: “Family violence is a terrible crime and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to consider homicide allegations in self-inflicted death instances where there is a known context 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 abused, including in cases which are currently active.

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