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Each self-inflicted death where the victim had experienced domestic violence should be treated as a possible murder case, according to calls from campaigners who seek to make perpetrators accountable for the catastrophic impact of their behavior.

This move is necessary because police and prosecutors are failing to bring perpetrators accountable in cases of self-inflicted death following family violence.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the legal system, to scrutinise these fatalities with the seriousness they deserve,” remarked a co-director of a campaign group during a landmark meeting in London earlier this week.

The assembly, organized by a organization leading a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to advocate for reform in the criminal justice system, brought together relatives who had suffered bereavement to self-inflicted death following family violence.

Personal Stories of Loss

Sharon Holland experienced the death of her child her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had informed her ex-boyfriend to police, submitting a two-hour video interview as proof about his conduct.

Following her passing, the individual was convicted of coercive and controlling behavior and imprisoned for over three years. He was later jailed 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 mother decided to campaign 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 decided it wasn’t a fresh legislation I required as current statutes were already there, and after learning how much my daughter had been let down previous to her taking her life by the police and many other agencies, they had to do their job properly, and things required reform,” she said.

“Over 47 families have found me and just a handful of us have had a guilty verdict,” she added. “I was astonished to see such a large number who have been battling the authorities and CPS for years and getting no justice for their child or brother or sister and didn’t have a voice in case it impacted investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

Saskia Lightburn Richie’s child her 30-year-old daughter passed away in May 2017, in what she called “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“She was energetic, she was loving,” she said. “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 partnership where she was systematically destroyed by her companion,” she said.

“She endured physical assaults, she was mentally tormented, she was controlled and dismantled gradually until she could not see a way forward. The individual who did this to her went unpunished, because we label it self-inflicted death, we close the file and we proceed.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she said, “and I have not managed to let go. Honestly, Hannah did not merely take her own life. She was killed. She was killed slowly and deliberately over a 24-month span, and when I went to the police, when I pleaded with them to look into what he had done to her, I was told that there was no action that they could do.

“No inquiry was conducted into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to struggle to obtain, required five years and had no impact. A four day inquest determined self-inflicted death, notwithstanding huge evidence over a extremely distressing multi-day session of family violence and failings by various agencies.”

The mother told the meeting that for a decade she has “struggled against a system that refuses to see what is right in front of it”.

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

“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.

“We have the laws. We need the will, we need law enforcement to investigate properly. We need the prosecution authority to take legal action. We need the judiciary to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill equally to physical force and arms.”

Political Response

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, chaired by a opposition politician, and including the government official, the grieving families again shared their experiences.

A parliamentary under-secretary informed the assembly: “These deaths are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they opted for this, when, reality, these were the result of in fact, another person’s abuse, and these are not rare incidents.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she stated. “Particularly around murder or manslaughter, it is fragmented. It lacks statutory basis regardless, it has been developed with common law practices for generations, and it is outdated, quite frankly, 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 challenging, particularly when you consider the issue of homicide, but we acknowledge that it needs to be looked at.”

Legal Authority Comment

A representative for the prosecution service said: “Domestic abuse is a heinous crime and our legal officers are regularly instructed to evaluate murder and manslaughter charges in suicide cases where there is a established background of domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

“We have in the past prosecuted a number of defendants for leading to the fatality of a companion they abused, encompassing in cases which are ongoing.

“We are also working with law enforcement and other parties to guarantee these types of crimes are clearly recognized – so that we can hold offenders to justice for the full extent of their crimes.”