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Every suicide where the victim had experienced abuse at home should be considered a possible murder case, as per calls from campaigners who seek to hold abusers accountable for the devastating impact of their actions.

This step is necessary because police and prosecutors are not doing enough to bring perpetrators accountable in instances of suicide after domestic abuse.

“In case after case, there is widespread breakdown, particularly within the criminal justice system, to examine these deaths with the seriousness they deserve,” remarked a co-director of a campaign group at a landmark meeting in Westminster earlier this week.

The meeting, arranged by a organization running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” initiative to advocate for change in the criminal justice system, brought together families who had lost loved ones to suicide following domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Loss

One mother lost her daughter her 23-year-old daughter in spring 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had informed her former partner to authorities, providing a two-hour video interview as evidence about his conduct.

After her death, the perpetrator was convicted of coercive and controlling behavior and jailed for over three years. He was later jailed for three years and seven months after a another victim stepped up to disclose that she had been in a harmful partnership with him.

In the wake of her loss, the mother chose to advocate for a new law to hold offenders accountable; however she then realized that regulations were already in place, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I concluded it wasn’t a new law I needed as current statutes were in place, 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 needed to do their job properly, and things needed to change,” she said.

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

Another Tragic Case

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

“She 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 partnership where she was systematically destroyed by her partner,” she explained.

“She endured physical assaults, she was psychologically tortured, she was dominated and dismantled piece by piece until she was unable to envision a path ahead. The individual who caused this went unpunished, 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 move on. Honestly, Hannah didn’t just die by suicide. She was killed. Her death was gradual 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 informed that there was nothing that they were able to take.

“There was no investigation into her passing. The domestic homicide review, which I had to struggle to obtain, required five years and changed nothing. A four day inquest found death by suicide, despite substantial proof over a extremely distressing four day period of domestic abuse and shortcomings by multiple services.”

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

She said the suicide is homicide campaign was vital “since when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve endured domestic abuse, we have to examine it for what it really is, which is homicide.

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

“The statutes exist. We need the will, we need police to investigate properly. We need the prosecution authority to prosecute. We need the judiciary to understand that words and control can cause death equally to hands and weapons.”

Political Response

At a follow-up gathering in the Parliament, led by a Labour MP, and including the safeguarding minister, the bereaved relatives again shared their experiences.

A junior minister told the meeting: “Such fatalities are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they opted for this, when, reality, these were the result of actually, another person’s abuse, and these are not isolated stories.”

“The legal system is flawed, we know that,” she stated. “Especially around homicide or unlawful killing, it is piecemeal. It lacks statutory basis regardless, it has been developed with traditional legal customs for centuries, and it is no longer fit for purpose, quite frankly, it’s the world we inhabit today.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be easy to fix. It is incredibly complex and challenging, particularly when you look at the issue of homicide, but we recognize that it requires examination.”

Prosecution Service Statement

A representative for the legal body said: “Family violence is a heinous crime and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to consider homicide allegations in self-inflicted death instances where there is a known context of family violence or other controlling or coercive behavior.

“We have previously charged a number of defendants for causing the death of a partner they mistreated, encompassing in cases which are ongoing.

“We are collaborating with police and other stakeholders to ensure these kinds of offences are clearly recognized – so that we can bring perpetrators accountable for the full extent of their wrongdoings.”