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Every suicide where the victim had experienced abuse at home should be treated as a possible murder case, according to calls from advocates who aim to make perpetrators accountable for the catastrophic impact of their actions.

This step is necessary because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to hold offenders accountable in instances of suicide after domestic abuse.

“In case after case, there is systemic and structural failure, particularly within the legal system, to examine these fatalities with the seriousness they deserve,” stated a leader of a campaign group during a landmark meeting in Westminster earlier this week.

The meeting, arranged by a organization running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to advocate for change in the legal framework, brought together relatives who had suffered bereavement to suicide following family violence.

Personal Stories of Loss

One mother experienced the death of her child her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had informed her former partner to authorities, providing a lengthy recorded statement as evidence against him.

After her death, the perpetrator was convicted of coercive and controlling behavior and imprisoned for over three years. He was later 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.

In the wake of her loss, the mother chose to advocate for a new law to bring perpetrators to justice; yet she then realized that laws were existing, they just weren’t often being used to achieve convictions.

“I decided it wasn’t a new law I required as existing laws were in place, and after finding out how much my daughter had been failed before her taking her life by the authorities and numerous services, they had to fulfill their duties, and things required reform,” she said.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and just a handful of us have had a guilty verdict,” she continued. “I was astonished to see so many families who have been battling the police and prosecution service for years and getting no justice for their child or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it impacted inquiries that were not progressing.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

One mother’s daughter Hannah passed away in May 2017, in what she described as “the ultimate abusive action” in a campaign of abuse.

“She was energetic, she was loving,” she stated. “She had great potential, and she was an exceptional, really loving mother to her two children, and she died by suicide after two years in a relationship where she was systematically destroyed by her companion,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was mentally tormented, she was controlled and broken down gradually until she could not see a way forward. The man who did this to her went unpunished, because we call it self-inflicted death, we conclude the case and we proceed.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to let go. Honestly, she did not merely take her own life. She was killed. She was killed slowly and intentionally over a two year period, and when I approached the authorities, when I begged them to investigate what he had inflicted upon her, I was told that there was no action that they could do.

“No inquiry was conducted into her passing. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to struggle to obtain, took five years and changed nothing. A lengthy coroner’s hearing determined death by suicide, notwithstanding substantial proof over a extremely distressing multi-day session of family violence and shortcomings by multiple services.”

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 “since when an individual takes their own life after they’ve suffered domestic abuse, we have to investigate it for what it really is, which is homicide.

“We must apply the laws we already possess properly and it really isn’t happening 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 Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. We need judges to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can cause death equally to hands and weapons.”

Political Response

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

A junior minister told the meeting: “These deaths are often written off as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, reality, these were the culmination of in fact, another person’s abuse, and these are not isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she stated. “Particularly around homicide or unlawful killing, it is piecemeal. It lacks statutory basis anyway, it has been shaped with traditional legal customs for centuries, and it is no longer fit for purpose, quite frankly, it’s the world we currently live in.

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

Prosecution Service Statement

A spokesperson for the legal body said: “Family violence is a terrible offense and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to consider homicide allegations in suicide cases where there is a known context of domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

“We have previously charged a number of defendants for causing the death of a partner they abused, encompassing in cases which are currently active.

“We are also working with police and other stakeholders to ensure these kinds of offences are well-understood – so that we can hold offenders accountable for the full extent of their crimes.”