Hours before she hanged herself in 2023, Katie Madden spoke on the telephone with her abusive former partner, Jonathon Russell, who had been banned from contacting her after an alleged assault. After hearing testimony at the inquest into her death, the coroner cited Ms Madden’s long, toxic relationship with Mr Russell as a contributory factor in her suicide. But there has been no criminal investigation into her death.
As our reporting this week has highlighted, this is a tragic but far too familiar story. The Domestic Homicide Project, a programme led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, recorded 98 such suspected suicides following domestic abuse in 2024, compared with 80 cases where victims were killed by their partners.
Even those bleak statistics are likely to be a severe underestimate. New research from a suicide prevention programme in Kent, shared with the Guardian, found that fully a third of all suspected suicides in the county occurred in the context of domestic abuse. Extrapolated nationally, that could mean that as many as 1,500 victims are taking their own lives each year.
It is a scandal that such studies have not already been carried out on a national basis. The numbers we do have underline the pressing need for better and more joined-up prevention strategies. But as Ms Madden’s case illustrates, there also needs to be a radical change in the mindset of authorities investigating suicide, informed by a deeper understanding of domestic abuse.
Too often in such cases, superficial and cursory police investigations have failed to take into account the wider context that has led a victim to take their own life. Phones and laptops have not been seized; locations of death have not been properly secured and viewed as potential crime scenes. Against a backdrop of official indifference, it has required the persistence of bereaved relatives to shine a light on the harrowing circumstances that preceded their loved one’s death.
This is clearly an unacceptable state of affairs. Justice is not being done for victims and their families, and perpetrators are not being held properly to account. The only successful prosecution of a domestic abuser for manslaughter was in 2017 – in a case where the defendant pleaded guilty. It is, as Dame Vera Baird, the former victims’ commissioner for England and Wales, has said, “a shocking record”.
The campaigning organisation Advocacy after Fatal Domestic Abuse has called for the introduction of a new law, specific to suicide triggered by domestic abuse. That proposal merits serious consideration, particularly as it would force a national reckoning about causation. In relation to victims whose sense of self and agency has been crushed by violent, coercive and controlling partners, it is deeply flawed to think of suicide as a voluntary, free act. The legal framework should reflect that, as should police procedures. Routes of criminal investigation that should have been pursued have been closed down, deepening the grief of the bereaved.
A coroner found that Kay Barter’s daughter, Georgia, took her own life after suffering years of violence and coercive control. She told our reporter: “These suicides must be recognised for what they are. It’s not suicide. They need to investigate why these women have become so desperate.” Her voice and the voices of so many other grieving relatives need to be heard.
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