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Every suicide in which the deceased had endured abuse at home must be treated as a possible murder case, according to calls from advocates who seek to make perpetrators accountable for the devastating consequences of their actions.

This move is necessary because law enforcement are failing to bring perpetrators to justice in cases of self-inflicted death after family violence.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, particularly within the criminal justice system, to examine these deaths with the seriousness they warrant,” stated a co-director of a advocacy organization during a landmark meeting in London recently.

The meeting, organized by a organization running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” initiative to fight for change in the criminal justice system, united families who had lost loved ones to self-inflicted death following family violence.

Individual Accounts of Loss

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child Chloe Holland in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, Chloe had reported her ex-boyfriend to police, providing a two-hour video interview as proof against him.

Following her passing, the perpetrator was convicted of manipulative and domineering conduct and imprisoned for 41 months. He was later sentenced for three years and seven months after a second woman stepped up to disclose that she had been in a violent and abusive relationship with him.

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

“I concluded it was not a new law I required as existing laws were in place, and after learning how much my child had been let down before her taking her life by the police and numerous services, they needed to do their job properly, 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 such a large number who have been fighting the police and prosecution service for years and receiving no resolution for their child or brother or sister and could not speak out in case it impacted investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Another Tragic Case

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 prolonged pattern of mistreatment.

“Hannah was vibrant, she was loving,” she stated. “She was full of promise, and she was an amazing, really loving mum to her two children, and she died by suicide after two years in a relationship where she was methodically broken down by her partner,” she said.

“She endured physical assaults, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and broken down piece by piece until she could not see a path ahead. The man who did this to her walked free, 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 let go. In truth, Hannah did not merely take her own life. She was murdered. She was killed slowly and deliberately over a 24-month span, and when I went to the police, when I begged them to investigate what he had inflicted upon her, I was told that there was nothing that they could do.

“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic violence fatality analysis, which I had to struggle to obtain, took five years and had no impact. A four day inquest determined death by suicide, notwithstanding huge evidence over a very traumatic four day period of family violence and shortcomings by various agencies.”

The mother told the meeting that for a decade she has “been fighting a establishment that refuses to see what is obvious”.

She emphasized the suicide is homicide campaign was critical “because when an individual takes their own life after they’ve endured family violence, we have to investigate it for what it truly represents, which is murder.

“We must apply the laws we currently have effectively 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 investigate properly. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. We need judges to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill just as much as physical force and arms.”

Political Response

At a second meeting in the House of Commons, led by a Labour MP, and attended by the government official, the grieving families again told their stories.

A junior minister informed the assembly: “Such fatalities are often written off as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, reality, these were the culmination of in fact, somebody else’s violence, and these are not isolated stories.”

“Our law is broken, we are aware,” she said. “Particularly around homicide or manslaughter, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been shaped with common law practices for generations, and it is no longer fit for purpose, honestly, it’s the world we currently live in.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be simple to fix. It is incredibly complex and challenging, especially when you look at the matter of murder, but we acknowledge that it needs to be looked at.”

Legal Authority Comment

A spokesperson for the prosecution service said: “Family violence is a terrible crime and our prosecutors are actively advised to consider murder and manslaughter charges in self-inflicted death instances where there is a known context of domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

“We have in the past prosecuted a several individuals for leading to the fatality of a partner they abused, including in proceedings which are currently active.

“We are also working with law enforcement and other parties to ensure these kinds of offences are well-understood – so that we can hold offenders accountable for the complete scope of their wrongdoings.”