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Every suicide in which the victim had endured abuse at home should be considered a potential homicide, according to demands from advocates who seek to hold abusers accountable for the catastrophic impact of their actions.

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

“In case after case, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the legal system, to scrutinise these deaths with the gravity they warrant,” stated a leader of a campaign group at a landmark gathering in Westminster recently.

The assembly, organized by a group leading a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to fight for change in the legal framework, united families who had suffered bereavement to suicide after domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

One mother lost her daughter Chloe Holland in March 2023. Prior to her passing, Chloe had reported her former partner to authorities, submitting a two-hour video interview as evidence about his conduct.

After her death, the individual was convicted of manipulative and domineering conduct and imprisoned for over three years. He was later jailed for three years and seven months after a another victim stepped up to report that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

In the wake of her loss, the parent chose to advocate for a legal change to hold offenders to justice; yet she then discovered that laws were existing, they just weren’t often being used to secure prosecutions.

“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 before her taking her life by the authorities and many other agencies, they needed to fulfill their duties, and practices needed to change,” 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 so shocked to see such a large number who have been fighting the police and prosecution service for a long time and receiving no resolution for their child or brother or sister and could not speak out in case it affected investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Another Tragic Case

Saskia Lightburn Richie’s child Hannah passed away in May 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“Hannah was vibrant, she was loving,” she said. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, deeply devoted mother to her kids, and she took her own life after two years in a relationship where she was methodically broken down by her companion,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and dismantled piece by piece until she could not see a way forward. The man who did this to her walked free, because we call it suicide, we conclude the case and we move on.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to let go. Honestly, Hannah didn’t just die by suicide. She was murdered. She was killed slowly and intentionally over a two year period, and when I approached the authorities, when I pleaded with them to investigate what he had inflicted upon her, I was told that there was no action that they were able to take.

“There was no investigation into her passing. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to struggle to obtain, took five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest found death by suicide, despite substantial proof over a extremely distressing four day period of domestic abuse and failings by various agencies.”

The parent informed the gathering that for eight years she has “struggled against a establishment that refuses to see what is obvious”.

She said the self-inflicted death is murder campaign was vital “since when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve endured domestic abuse, we have to investigate it for what it really is, which is murder.

“We must apply the laws we currently have properly and it really isn’t happening at the moment, and we need to make perpetrators responsible for pushing their targets to suicide.

“The statutes exist. We require determination, we need police to investigate properly. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to take legal action. We need the judiciary to recognize that words and control can cause death 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 safeguarding minister, the grieving families again shared their experiences.

A junior minister told the meeting: “Such fatalities are often written off as if they were their own choice, they opted for this, when, in truth, these were the result of actually, another person’s abuse, and these aren’t rare incidents.”

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she stated. “Especially around murder or unlawful killing, it is fragmented. It lacks statutory basis anyway, it has been shaped with common law practices for generations, and it is outdated, honestly, it’s the world 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 consider the issue of murder, but we acknowledge that it requires examination.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A representative for the prosecution service said: “Family violence is a heinous crime and our legal officers are actively advised to evaluate homicide allegations in self-inflicted death instances where there is a established background of family violence or other controlling or coercive behavior.

“We have in the past prosecuted a number of defendants for leading to the fatality of a partner they mistreated, encompassing in proceedings which are ongoing.

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