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Each self-inflicted death where the victim had endured abuse at home should be considered a possible murder case, as per calls from campaigners who seek to hold abusers responsible for the catastrophic consequences of their behavior.

This move is necessary because law enforcement are not doing enough to bring perpetrators accountable in cases of suicide after family violence.

“In case after case, there is widespread breakdown, particularly within the legal system, to examine these deaths with the seriousness they warrant,” remarked a co-director of a campaign group during a landmark gathering in Westminster recently.

The meeting, organized by a group leading 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.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

One mother lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Before her death, the young woman had informed her ex-boyfriend to authorities, submitting a lengthy recorded statement as evidence against him.

Following her passing, the perpetrator was convicted of coercive and controlling behavior and jailed for over three years. He was subsequently sentenced for three years and seven months after a second woman came forward to disclose that she had been in a violent and abusive relationship with him.

After Chloe’s death, the parent chose to advocate for a legal change to hold offenders to justice; however she then realized that regulations were existing, they just weren’t often being used to achieve convictions.

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

“More than four dozen relatives have contacted me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she added. “I was astonished to see so many families who have been battling the authorities and CPS for a long time and getting no justice for their child or sibling and didn’t have a voice in case it impacted investigations that were not progressing.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s child her 30-year-old daughter passed away in May 2017, in what she called “the final act of violence” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“She was vibrant, she was caring,” she stated. “She was full of promise, and she was an amazing, really loving mum to her two children, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a relationship where she was systematically destroyed by her partner,” she explained.

“She endured physical assaults, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and dismantled gradually until she could not see a path ahead. The individual 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 haven’t been able to let go. Honestly, she didn’t just die by suicide. She was murdered. Her death was gradual 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 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, took five years and changed nothing. A lengthy coroner’s hearing found self-inflicted death, despite huge evidence over a very traumatic four day period of family violence and failings by various agencies.”

The mother informed the gathering that for eight years she has “been fighting a system that refuses to see what is obvious”.

She emphasized the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was vital “since when an individual 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 hold abusers accountable for pushing their targets to suicide.

“The statutes exist. We require determination, we need law enforcement to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. We need judges to understand that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill equally to hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the House of Commons, led by a Labour MP, and attended by the government official, the grieving families again told their stories.

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

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she said. “Particularly around murder or unlawful killing, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute regardless, it has been developed with common law practices for centuries, and it is outdated, honestly, given the society we inhabit today.

“I will not claim that it’s going to be easy to resolve. It is extremely complicated and difficult, particularly when you look at the issue of homicide, but we recognize that it needs to be looked at.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A representative for the legal body commented: “Family violence is a heinous offense and our legal officers are actively advised to consider murder and manslaughter charges in self-inflicted death instances where there is a known context of domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

“We have in the past prosecuted a several individuals for leading to the fatality of a companion they mistreated, encompassing in cases which are ongoing.

“We are collaborating with law enforcement and other stakeholders to ensure these types of crimes are well-understood – so that we can hold offenders to justice for the full extent of their crimes.”