Suicides among domestic abuse victims surpasses homicides

The number of victims of domestic abuse who took their own lives in England and Wales surpassed the amount of people killed by their partner for the second year in a row, a report has found.

The Domestic Homicide Project found 98 people were suspected to have killed themselves after experiencing domestic abuse in the year to March 2024. During the same period, 80 people were killed by a partner.

In response, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) said the scale and impact of abuse was “incomprehensible”.

The policing organisation said it was committed to seeing more abuse perpetrators charged with manslaughter where their victims takes their own life.

Bereaved relatives and domestic abuse charities have made renewed calls for authorities to act on the link between domestic abuse and suicide.

Between April 2020 and March 2024 there were 1,012 domestic-abuse related deaths – of which almost half were domestic homicides, the majority of which were committed by a current or ex-partner. The rest were committed by another adult relative.

Over the same period there were 354 suspected victim suicides.

Around three quarters of all victims were female.

However, in the last two years in a row, the report’s authors found that suicides linked to domestic abuse outnumbered homicides.

The report was backed by the NPCC, Home Office and College of Policing.

Julie Devey – the chair of the campaign group Killed Women, which also collaborated on the report – said she supported a proposal which would compel police to investigate any history of domestic abuse in the event of an unexpected death.

“For too long, these deaths have been treated as ‘unavoidable tragedies’ – but they are not. They are preventable,” Ms Devey said.

She said the report highlights how victims and their abusers are often already known to public services prior to a fatal incident, adding that there must be a “system that joins the dots and intervenes before it’s too late”.

A number of high-profile cases have cast a light on the link between abuse and suicide in recent years.

Last year, a court in Preston was told how years of domestic abuse by Ryan Wellings led to 23-year-old hairdresser Kiena Dawes taking her own life.

In January, Wellings was cleared of manslaughter but was jailed for six-and-a-half years for assault and coercive and controlling behaviour.

In 2023, Marc Masterton was jailed for 41 months for coercive and controlling behaviour in relation to the death of his ex-partner Chloe Holland.

Ms Holland’s mother, Sharon, said the sentence was not long enough and started campaigning for a change in domestic abuse laws so that “monsters are held accountable for destroying a young girl’s life”.