🔗 Share this article

Every suicide where the victim had experienced domestic violence must be considered a potential homicide, according to calls from advocates who aim to make perpetrators accountable for the catastrophic consequences of their behavior.

This step is essential because law enforcement are failing to bring perpetrators accountable in cases of self-inflicted death after domestic abuse.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the criminal justice system, to examine these fatalities with the gravity they warrant,” stated a leader of a advocacy organization during a landmark meeting in Westminster recently.

The meeting, organized by a group running a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign to advocate for change in the criminal justice system, brought together relatives who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death after family violence.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, Chloe had informed her ex-boyfriend to police, providing a two-hour video interview as evidence against him.

After her death, the individual was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct 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 violent and abusive relationship with him.

After Chloe’s death, the mother 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 achieve convictions.

“I concluded it wasn’t a new law I required as current statutes were already there, and after learning how much my daughter had been let down previous to her death by the police and numerous services, they had to fulfill their duties, and things required reform,” she explained.

“Over 47 families have found me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she added. “I was so shocked to see so many families who have been fighting 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 inquiries that were not progressing.”

Another Tragic Case

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

“Hannah was vibrant, she was loving,” she said. “She was full of promise, and she was an amazing, deeply devoted mother to her two children, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a relationship where she was methodically broken down by her companion,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was controlled and dismantled gradually until she could not see a way forward. The man who did this to her walked free, because we label it suicide, we conclude the case and we proceed.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to move on. Honestly, Hannah 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 told that there was nothing that they could do.

“No inquiry was conducted into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to fight for, took five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest found death by suicide, despite substantial proof over a extremely distressing multi-day session of family violence and shortcomings by multiple services.”

The parent 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 critical “since when an individual takes their own life after they’ve endured family violence, we have to examine it for what it truly represents, which is homicide.

“We need to use the legislation we currently have effectively and it is not occurring at the moment, and we need to hold abusers accountable for pushing their targets to suicide.

“We have the laws. We require determination, we need police to investigate properly. We need the prosecution authority to prosecute. We need the judiciary to recognize that words and control can kill equally to hands and weapons.”

Government Reaction

At a second meeting in the Parliament, chaired by a Labour MP, and attended by the safeguarding minister, the bereaved relatives again told their stories.

A parliamentary under-secretary informed the assembly: “Such fatalities are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, in truth, these were the result of actually, somebody else’s violence, and these are not isolated stories.”

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she stated. “Particularly around homicide or unlawful killing, it is piecemeal. It lacks statutory basis anyway, it has been developed with common law practices for centuries, and it is no longer fit for purpose, honestly, given the society we currently live in.

“I will not claim that it’s going to be simple to fix. It is incredibly complex and challenging, especially when you look at the matter of murder, but we acknowledge that it needs to be looked at.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A spokesperson for the legal body commented: “Family violence is a terrible offense and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to consider murder and manslaughter charges in suicide cases where there is a known context of family violence or other controlling or coercive behavior.

“We have previously charged a several individuals for causing the death of a companion they mistreated, including in proceedings which are currently active.

“We are also working with police and other parties to ensure these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can bring perpetrators to justice for the full extent of their crimes.”