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Every suicide in which the deceased had experienced abuse at home should be treated as a possible homicide, as per demands from campaigners who seek to make perpetrators responsible for the catastrophic impact of their behavior.

This step is essential because police and prosecutors are failing to hold offenders to justice in cases of self-inflicted death following family violence.

“Time and again, there is widespread breakdown, especially within the criminal justice system, to examine these fatalities with the gravity they deserve,” remarked a co-director of a campaign group during a landmark meeting in London recently.

The assembly, arranged by a group running a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign to fight for change in the criminal justice system, united families who had lost loved ones to suicide following family violence.

Individual Accounts of Loss

One mother lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, Chloe had reported her former partner to authorities, providing a lengthy recorded statement as evidence about his conduct.

After her death, the individual was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct and imprisoned for 41 months. He was subsequently sentenced for three years and seven months after a second woman stepped up to report that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

After Chloe’s death, the parent chose to advocate for a new law to bring perpetrators accountable; yet she then discovered that laws were existing, they just were rarely applied to secure prosecutions.

“I decided it wasn’t a fresh legislation I required as current statutes were already there, and after finding out how much my child had been failed before her death by the police and numerous services, they had to fulfill their duties, and things needed to change,” she explained.

“Over 47 families have found me and just a handful of us have had a conviction,” she continued. “I was astonished to see such a large number who have been fighting the authorities and prosecution service for a long time and getting no justice for their offspring or brother or sister and could not speak out in case it affected investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Another Tragic Case

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 campaign of abuse.

“Hannah was energetic, she was loving,” she said. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, really loving mother to her kids, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a relationship where she was systematically destroyed by her partner,” she explained.

“She was physically beaten, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and dismantled piece by piece 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 move on.

“But I could not move on,” she remarked, “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 intentionally over a 24-month span, and when I approached the authorities, when I begged them to investigate 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 passing. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to fight for, took five years and changed nothing. A lengthy coroner’s hearing determined self-inflicted death, notwithstanding substantial proof over a very traumatic multi-day session of domestic abuse and shortcomings by various agencies.”

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

She said the suicide is homicide movement was vital “since when someone takes their own life after they’ve suffered family violence, we have to investigate it for what it truly represents, which is homicide.

“We must use the legislation we already possess effectively and it really isn’t happening at the present, and we need to make perpetrators responsible for pushing their targets to suicide.

“The statutes exist. We require determination, we need police to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. We need the judiciary to understand that words and control can kill equally to hands and weapons.”

Political Response

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

A junior minister told the meeting: “These deaths are often written off as if they were their own choice, they opted for this, when, reality, these were the result of actually, another person’s abuse, and these are not isolated stories.”

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she stated. “Especially around murder or unlawful killing, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been developed with common law practices for centuries, and it is outdated, 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, especially when you consider the matter of murder, but we acknowledge that it needs to be looked at.”

Legal Authority Comment

A representative for the prosecution service said: “Family violence is a terrible offense and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to evaluate homicide allegations in suicide cases where there is a established background of family violence or other manipulative conduct.

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

“We are collaborating with law enforcement and other parties to ensure these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can bring perpetrators accountable for the complete scope of their wrongdoings.”