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Every suicide in which the victim had endured domestic violence should be treated as a potential homicide, as per demands from advocates who seek to hold abusers accountable for the catastrophic consequences of their actions.

This move is essential because law enforcement are not doing enough to bring perpetrators accountable in cases of suicide after domestic abuse.

“Time and again, there is widespread breakdown, especially within the legal system, to scrutinise these fatalities with the seriousness they deserve,” remarked a leader of a advocacy organization during a significant meeting in Westminster earlier this week.

The meeting, arranged by a group leading a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign to fight for reform in the legal framework, united relatives who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death following domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Loss

One mother lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in March 2023. Before her death, the young woman had reported her former partner to police, submitting a lengthy recorded statement as proof against him.

Following her passing, 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 another victim came forward to report 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 hold offenders accountable; yet she then discovered that regulations were existing, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I concluded it wasn’t a fresh legislation I required as current statutes were in place, and after learning how much my daughter had been failed before her death by the police and numerous services, they needed to do their job properly, and things 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 added. “I was astonished to see so many families who have been fighting the police and prosecution service for years and getting no justice 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 daughter her 30-year-old daughter passed away in spring 2017, in what she described as “the ultimate abusive action” in a prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“Hannah was energetic, she was caring,” she stated. “She had great potential, and she was an amazing, deeply devoted mum to her kids, and she died by suicide after two years in a partnership where she was methodically broken down by her companion,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and broken down gradually until she was unable to envision a path ahead. The individual who caused this went unpunished, because we label it self-inflicted death, we close the file and we move on.

“But I could not move on,” she said, “and I have not managed to move on. Honestly, she didn’t just die by suicide. She was killed. Her death was gradual and deliberately over a two year period, and when I approached the authorities, when I pleaded with them to investigate what he had done to 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 fight for, required five years and changed nothing. A lengthy coroner’s hearing determined death by suicide, notwithstanding substantial proof over a very traumatic multi-day session of domestic abuse and failings by multiple services.”

The parent told the meeting that for eight years she has “struggled against a system that ignores what is obvious”.

She emphasized the suicide is homicide campaign was critical “since when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve endured family violence, we have to examine it for what it truly represents, which is homicide.

“We need to apply the laws we currently have effectively and it is not occurring at the moment, and we need to make perpetrators responsible for driving their victims to death.

“The statutes exist. We need the will, we need law enforcement to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to take legal action. We need the judiciary to understand that verbal abuse and manipulation can cause death equally to hands and weapons.”

Government Reaction

At a follow-up gathering in the House of Commons, led by a opposition politician, and attended by the safeguarding minister, the bereaved relatives again told their stories.

A parliamentary under-secretary informed the assembly: “These deaths are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, in truth, these were the result of actually, another person’s abuse, and these aren’t rare incidents.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she said. “Especially around murder or manslaughter, it is piecemeal. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been shaped with common law practices for generations, and it is outdated, quite frankly, it’s the world we currently live in.

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

Prosecution Service Statement

A spokesperson for the legal body said: “Domestic abuse is a heinous crime and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to evaluate homicide allegations in suicide cases where there is a known context of family violence 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 cases which are ongoing.

“We are collaborating with police and other stakeholders to guarantee these types of crimes are well-understood – so that we can hold offenders to justice for the full extent of their crimes.”