Suicides Linked to Family Violence Should Be Investigated as Potential Murders, Demand British Relatives

Every suicide in which the deceased had endured domestic violence should be considered a potential murder case, according to demands from campaigners who aim to make perpetrators accountable for the catastrophic impact of their actions.

This step is necessary because law enforcement are not doing enough to bring perpetrators accountable in instances of self-inflicted death after domestic abuse.

“In case after case, there is systemic and structural failure, particularly within the criminal justice system, to scrutinise these fatalities with the gravity they warrant,” stated a leader of a advocacy organization at a significant meeting in London earlier this week.

The assembly, arranged by a group running a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign to advocate for change in the legal framework, united relatives who had suffered bereavement to self-inflicted death after domestic abuse.

Personal Stories of Tragedy

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in spring 2023. Before her death, Chloe had informed her former partner to authorities, providing a lengthy recorded statement as proof about his conduct.

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

After Chloe’s death, the mother chose to advocate for a legal change to bring perpetrators to justice; however she then realized that regulations were existing, they just were rarely applied to secure prosecutions.

“I decided it wasn’t a new law I required as current statutes were already there, and after finding out how much my child had been failed before her taking her life by the authorities and many other agencies, they needed to do their job properly, and things required reform,” she explained.

“More than four dozen relatives have contacted me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she continued. “I was so shocked to see such a large number who have been battling 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 impacted investigations that were not progressing.”

Another Tragic Case

One mother’s daughter her 30-year-old daughter died in May 2017, in what she described as “the ultimate abusive action” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“Hannah was energetic, she was loving,” she stated. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, really loving mother to her two children, and she took her own life after 24 months in a relationship where she was methodically broken down by her companion,” she explained.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and broken down gradually until she could not see a path ahead. The man who did this to her walked free, because we call it self-inflicted death, we close the file and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to move on. In truth, she did not merely take her own life. She was killed. She was killed slowly and deliberately over a 24-month span, 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.

“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to struggle to obtain, took five years and had no impact. A lengthy coroner’s hearing found self-inflicted death, despite huge evidence over a very traumatic multi-day session of family violence and shortcomings by various agencies.”

The mother informed the gathering that for a decade she has “been fighting a establishment that refuses to see what is right in front of it”.

She said the suicide is homicide campaign was critical “because when someone takes their own life after they’ve endured family violence, we have to examine 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 need the will, we need police to investigate properly. We need the prosecution authority to take legal action. We need the judiciary to understand that verbal abuse and manipulation can cause death equally to physical force and arms.”

Political Response

At a follow-up gathering in the House of Commons, chaired by a opposition politician, and attended by the safeguarding minister, 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 opted for this, when, in truth, these were the culmination of in fact, somebody else’s violence, and these are not rare incidents.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she said. “Particularly around homicide or unlawful killing, it is piecemeal. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been shaped with traditional legal customs for centuries, and it is outdated, quite frankly, given the society we inhabit today.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be simple to resolve. It is incredibly complex and difficult, particularly when you look at the issue of homicide, but we acknowledge that it requires examination.”

Legal Authority Comment

A spokesperson for the legal body said: “Family violence is a heinous crime and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to consider 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 partner they mistreated, including in cases which are ongoing.

“We are also working with law enforcement and other stakeholders to guarantee these kinds of offences are well-understood – so that we can hold offenders to justice for the complete scope of their wrongdoings.”