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Each self-inflicted death where the victim had endured abuse at home should be considered a possible homicide, as per calls from advocates who seek to hold abusers responsible for the devastating consequences of their actions.

This step is necessary because law enforcement are not doing enough to bring perpetrators to justice in instances of self-inflicted death following family violence.

“Time and again, there is systemic and structural failure, especially within the criminal justice system, to examine these deaths with the gravity they deserve,” stated a leader of a advocacy organization during a landmark gathering in London earlier this week.

The meeting, arranged by a group running a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign to advocate for reform in the criminal justice system, united relatives who had lost loved ones to suicide after domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Loss

One mother lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in March 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had informed her former partner to authorities, providing a two-hour video interview as proof against him.

Following her passing, the perpetrator was convicted 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 harmful partnership with him.

In the wake of her loss, the parent decided to campaign for a legal change to hold offenders to justice; however she then realized that regulations were existing, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I decided it was not a new law I needed as current statutes were already there, and after finding out how much my daughter had been failed previous to her taking her life by the authorities and many other agencies, they needed to do their job properly, and practices needed to change,” she said.

“Over 47 families have contacted me and just a handful of us have had a guilty verdict,” she continued. “I was astonished to see so many families who have been battling the police and CPS for a long time and receiving no resolution for their child or sibling and didn’t have a voice in case it affected investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Further Heartbreaking Account

Saskia Lightburn Richie’s daughter Hannah died in spring 2017, in what she called “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

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

“She was physically beaten, she was psychologically tortured, she was controlled and broken down piece by piece until she could not see a path ahead. The man who caused this went unpunished, because we call it self-inflicted death, we conclude the case and we proceed.

“Yet I was unable to continue,” she said, “and I haven’t been able to move on. In truth, she didn’t just die by suicide. She was killed. Her death was gradual and intentionally over a two year period, and when I went to the police, when I begged them to look into 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 death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to struggle to obtain, took five years and changed nothing. A lengthy coroner’s hearing determined self-inflicted death, notwithstanding huge evidence over a very traumatic four day period of family violence and shortcomings by multiple services.”

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

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

“We need to use the legislation we currently have properly and it really isn’t happening at the moment, and we need to hold abusers accountable for driving their victims to death.

“We have the laws. We need the will, we need police to investigate properly. We need the prosecution authority to take legal action. We need the judiciary to understand that words and control can cause death just as much as physical force and arms.”

Government Reaction

At a second meeting in the Parliament, chaired by a opposition politician, and including the government official, the bereaved relatives again told their stories.

A parliamentary under-secretary told the meeting: “Such fatalities are often dismissed as if they were their own choice, they opted for this, when, reality, these were the result of actually, somebody else’s violence, and these are not isolated stories.”

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she stated. “Especially around homicide or unlawful killing, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been shaped with traditional legal customs for centuries, and it is outdated, quite frankly, given the society we currently live in.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be simple to resolve. It is extremely complicated and challenging, especially when you look at the issue of homicide, but we recognize that it needs to be looked at.”

Legal Authority Comment

A representative for the prosecution service said: “Family violence is a heinous crime and our prosecutors are actively advised to consider murder and manslaughter charges in suicide cases where there is a established background of family violence or other controlling or coercive behavior.

“We have previously charged a several individuals for leading to the fatality of a companion they mistreated, including in cases which are ongoing.

“We are collaborating with law enforcement 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.”