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Every suicide in which the deceased had experienced abuse at home should be treated as a potential homicide, according to demands from campaigners who aim to hold abusers responsible for the catastrophic impact of their actions.

This move is necessary because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to bring perpetrators to justice in cases of suicide after family violence.

“Time and again, there is widespread breakdown, particularly within the legal system, to examine these fatalities with the gravity they deserve,” stated a co-director of a advocacy organization during a landmark meeting in London earlier this week.

The meeting, organized by a group running a “Suicide is Homicide” initiative to advocate for change in the legal framework, brought together families who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death after domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child her 23-year-old daughter in March 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had informed her ex-boyfriend to police, submitting a lengthy recorded statement as proof about his conduct.

Following her passing, the individual was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct and jailed for 41 months. He was later jailed for an additional term after a another victim stepped up to report that she had been in a violent and abusive relationship with him.

In the wake of her loss, the parent chose to advocate for a legal change to hold offenders accountable; however she then discovered that regulations were existing, they just were rarely applied to secure prosecutions.

“I concluded it was not a new law I needed as existing laws were in place, 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 needed to fulfill their duties, and practices needed to change,” she said.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and only four of us have had a guilty verdict,” she continued. “I was so shocked to see so many families who have been battling the police and CPS for a long time and receiving no resolution for their offspring or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it impacted inquiries that were not progressing.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

Saskia Lightburn Richie’s child her 30-year-old daughter died in spring 2017, in what she described as “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“She was energetic, she was caring,” she stated. “She had great potential, and she was an amazing, really loving mother to her two children, and she took her own life after two years in a relationship where she was systematically destroyed by her partner,” she said.

“She endured physical assaults, she was mentally tormented, she was controlled and dismantled piece by piece until she was unable to envision a path ahead. The individual who caused this walked free, because we call it suicide, we close the file and we proceed.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to move on. Honestly, Hannah did not merely take her own life. She was killed. She was killed slowly and deliberately over a two year period, and when I went to the police, when I pleaded with them to investigate what he had done to her, I was informed that there was nothing that they could do.

“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 four day inquest found self-inflicted death, despite huge evidence over a extremely distressing multi-day session of family violence and failings by multiple services.”

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

She said the self-inflicted death is murder movement was vital “because when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve endured family violence, we have to investigate it for what it really is, which is homicide.

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

“The statutes exist. We require determination, we need law enforcement to conduct thorough inquiries. We need the prosecution authority to take legal action. We need the judiciary to recognize that words and control can cause death just as much as hands and weapons.”

Government Reaction

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, chaired by a opposition politician, and including the safeguarding minister, the bereaved relatives again told their stories.

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

“The legal system is flawed, we are aware,” she stated. “Especially around homicide or unlawful killing, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute regardless, it has been developed with traditional legal customs for generations, and it is outdated, honestly, it’s the world we currently live in.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be easy to fix. It is extremely complicated and difficult, particularly when you look at the matter of murder, but we recognize that it requires examination.”

Legal Authority Comment

A representative for the prosecution service commented: “Family violence is a heinous offense and our legal officers are regularly instructed to consider homicide allegations in suicide cases where there is a known context of domestic abuse or other controlling or coercive behavior.

“We have previously charged a number of defendants for leading to the fatality of a partner they abused, encompassing in proceedings which are ongoing.

“We are also working with police and other stakeholders to guarantee these types of crimes are well-understood – so that we can bring perpetrators to justice for the full extent of their wrongdoings.”