🔗 Share this article

Each self-inflicted death in which the victim had experienced domestic violence should be treated as a potential murder case, according to demands from advocates who seek to make perpetrators responsible for the devastating impact of their behavior.

This step is essential because police and prosecutors are failing to hold offenders accountable in instances of suicide following family violence.

“In case after case, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the legal system, to examine these fatalities with the gravity they warrant,” stated a co-director of a advocacy organization at a landmark gathering in London recently.

The assembly, organized by a organization running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to advocate for change in the criminal justice system, united families who had suffered bereavement to self-inflicted death after domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

One mother lost her daughter Chloe Holland in March 2023. Before her death, Chloe had reported her ex-boyfriend to police, providing a two-hour video interview as proof against him.

After her death, the perpetrator was found guilty of coercive and controlling behavior 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 harmful partnership with him.

After Chloe’s death, the parent decided to campaign for a new law to hold offenders accountable; yet she then discovered that laws were existing, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I concluded it was not a fresh legislation I required as current statutes were already there, and after learning how much my daughter had been let down previous to her taking her life by the authorities and many other agencies, they had to do their job properly, and things needed to change,” she explained.

“Over 47 families have contacted me and just a handful of us have had a guilty verdict,” she continued. “I was so shocked to see such a large number who have been battling the police and CPS for a long time and getting no justice 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

Saskia Lightburn Richie’s daughter Hannah died in spring 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“She was energetic, she was loving,” she said. “She had great potential, and she was an amazing, deeply devoted mum to her two children, and she died by suicide after 24 months in a partnership where she was methodically broken down by her companion,” she explained.

“She was physically beaten, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and dismantled gradually until she was unable to envision a way forward. The man who caused this went unpunished, because we call it suicide, we close the file and we move on.

“But I could not move on,” she said, “and I haven’t been able to move on. Honestly, she didn’t just die by suicide. She was murdered. Her death was gradual and deliberately over a two year period, and when I went to the police, when I begged them to look into what he had inflicted upon her, I was informed that there was nothing that they could do.

“There was no investigation into her passing. The domestic homicide review, which I had to fight for, required five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest determined death by suicide, notwithstanding huge evidence over a extremely distressing multi-day session of domestic abuse and failings by various agencies.”

The mother 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 self-inflicted death is murder movement was vital “because when someone dies by suicide after they’ve endured domestic abuse, we have to investigate it for what it really is, which is homicide.

“We need to use the legislation we already possess properly and it is not occurring at the moment, and we need to hold abusers accountable for driving their victims to death.

“We have the laws. We require determination, we need police to investigate properly. We need the prosecution authority to prosecute. We need judges to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill equally to hands and weapons.”

Government Reaction

At a follow-up gathering in the House of Commons, chaired by a Labour MP, and including the government official, the grieving families again shared their experiences.

A junior minister told the meeting: “These deaths are often dismissed as if they were their own choice, they chose to do this, when, reality, these were the culmination of in fact, somebody else’s violence, and these are not rare incidents.”

“The legal system is flawed, we are aware,” she said. “Especially around murder or manslaughter, it is piecemeal. It lacks statutory basis anyway, it has been developed with traditional legal customs for generations, and it is outdated, quite frankly, given the society we currently live in.

“I will not claim that it’s going to be simple to fix. It is extremely complicated and difficult, especially when you look at the issue of homicide, but we recognize that it requires examination.”

Legal Authority Comment

A representative for the prosecution service said: “Domestic abuse is a heinous offense and our legal officers are actively advised to evaluate homicide allegations in suicide cases where there is a established background of domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

“We have in the past prosecuted a number of defendants for causing the death of a companion they abused, including in proceedings which are ongoing.

“We are also working with police and other stakeholders to ensure these types of crimes are well-understood – so that we can hold offenders accountable for the complete scope of their wrongdoings.”