Katy Reid was already in St Anne Street police station in Liverpool when she learned that her sister Alex was dead. It was 24 February 2020, late on a Monday afternoon. Katy was frantic with worry and had gone to the police. A week earlier, Alex’s former partner, Peter Yeung, had been arrested for assaulting her – but was quickly released. Now, Alex was not picking up calls, responding to messages or answering her door. In the midst of explaining all this to the officers, Katy’s phone rang. It was one of Alex’s friends. She was screaming, hysterical, and told Katy that she had gone to Alex’s house and looked through the letter box. She had seen Alex’s body in the hallway. It was later established that Alex had killed herself. “It was a complete and utter shock,” says Katy. “I had no idea Alex was feeling like this – not in a million years. I thought if something happened to her, it would be at the hands of Peter. That’s what I was scared of. That’s why I was at the station. Suicide didn’t enter my head.” We hear a lot, although maybe not enough, about domestic homicides. An average of two women are killed each week by a current or former partner. Yet campaigners believe this is a serious underestimation of how many lives are lost to domestic abuse, because we do not know how many victims kill themselves. These suicides can be poorly investigated, connections missed, the histories unrecorded. Seven years ago, one activist, Karen Blatchford, began collating cases – she tweets them at Female Suicide (@we_are_nina) – and soon concluded that figures are impossible. “I’m dependent on local press reports of inquests and only one in 10 [of all inquests] are reported,” she says. “Families are often unrepresented. The abuse might not be raised.” One seminal work, by the sociologist Prof Sylvia Walby, estimated that about one-third of female suicides in England and Wales were women who had experienced domestic violence. A US study that tracked women’s use of a casualty ward discovered that domestic abuse was the single most important factor in female suicide. In this study, 65% of female suicide attempts were made within six months of visiting hospital for treatment to injuries inflicted by a partner or former partner. In 2018, a UK study of more than 3,500 clients of the charity Refuge, which provides support for women and children experiencing domestic violence, established that 24% had felt suicidal and 18% had made plans to end their life. “We know enough to know we should be seriously concerned about this,” says one of its authors, Prof Vanessa Munro, from the University of Warwick’s School of Law. “We know enough to be asking difficult questions about prevention, intervention and criminal responsibility.” Yet, for Katy, the thought her sister might have been a suicide risk did not cross her mind. Alex, who was 30 when she died, was five years younger than Katy and had followed in her sister’s footsteps to become a nurse. She was a sister, whose job it was to deliver intravenous therapy to patients in the community. “She loved her work and was really good at it,” says Katy. “She was bubbly, really funny, outgoing. We’re from a small family – me, her, my mum, two uncles and Grandad. Alex and I were each other’s go-to people. We went on loads of holidays together, out for meals, on day trips. We told each other everything. If we didn’t see each other, we’d call every day. “She had only started seeing Peter in June 2019 and she was dead by the next February. How can that happen in less than a year?” The couple had connected through Facebook. Years earlier, they had worked together at Next and then lost touch, but last spring Yeung messaged her out of the blue. “When Alex told me she was going out with him, I was very surprised; I’d never have put them together,” says Katy. “He was a bit of a conman. He worked in a chip shop, but told Alex that he had a couple of properties and owned all these takeaway businesses. All Alex wanted was to settle down and have a family and he promised her everything. By September, they were moving in together.” They found a house in Anfield – Alex was the main tenant, as Yeung couldn’t get a guarantor. “The day they moved in was the day it changed,” says Katy. “He had a roof over his head. Alex paid the rent, the bills, she bought the furniture. She was working all the time, taking loans left, right and centre. She was quickly in a lot of debt – and she’d never been in debt. She was always a saver.” Alex later told Katy that Yeung was a gambling addict, which Yeung confirmed in court – although he denied taking her money to spend in casinos. “Her personality started to change,” Katy says. “I’d visit, Peter would grunt and go upstairs or sit in the living room, playing on his phone. Alex wasn’t so talkative any more, just not happy. She wasn’t eating, either. There was nothing in their fridge. She’d say: ‘I’ve put on loads of weight, I need to lose it.’” Within months, Katy was seeing bruises on Alex’s arms and legs. “At first, she said she’d knocked into something, but over time she admitted that he was hitting her, telling her she was fat, that she was a slag,” says Katy. Alex had experienced domestic abuse before – her previous partner had been sentenced for assaulting her. Yeung used this against her. “He’d tell her: ‘This is why it happens to you – because you deserve it,’” says Katy. He also claimed that no one would believe her the second time around. Katy and her mother begged Alex to leave. “Her fear was always that, if she left, Peter would smash up the house and she’d have to pay for it,” says Katy. Yeung had already broken a table, a chair and all the Christmas presents Alex had bought for her family. Alex called the estate agent many times – once in tears – explaining that she was with a violent man and needed him to leave the house. “They said there was nothing they could do as he was on the contract as the second tenant,” says Katy. A week before Alex died, she knocked on Katy’s door at 1.45am. “Her lip was burst; she had a massive bruise across her face, which was covered in blood,” says Katy. “She told me that Peter had rung the police and told them that he’d done nothing, but his partner was accusing him of domestic abuse and she’d done this to her previous partner, too.” Katy took Alex back to the house to wait for the police to arrive. “Peter looked at me and said: ‘I don’t know what happened. She just went into the kitchen and, when she came out, her face was like that.’ Calm as anything,” says Katy. “He sat on the stairs, laughing on his phone while we sat in the living room waiting,” she says. The police finally arrived more than eight hours later. After taking statements from everyone, they arrested Yeung. “Alex said she felt better now that he’d gone, that she felt safer,” says Katy. “She seemed a little bit calmer. The police said they’d inform her when Peter was released.” Instead, by 10pm that night, Alex surmised from Yeung’s WhatApp activity that he was out on bail. She had heard nothing from police. “I didn’t see much of her that week,” says Katy. “Peter wasn’t allowed near the house. I’d call and message Alex to see if she was OK and she’d say that she was, but she didn’t elaborate. On the Friday, me and my mum turned up at her door but didn’t stay long, as she wanted to be left alone. She said she hadn’t been sleeping, she was exhausted and wanted to go to bed.” By Monday, Alex was dead. “One thing that preyed on her mind is that she’d talked to a policewoman investigating the case in that week and, in Alex’s head, it sounded like she wasn’t believed,” says Katy. “The policewoman said there’d been domestic violence on ‘both sides’. Alex had said to me: ‘No one’s going to believe me.’ I told her that the truth always comes out.” Katy says she complained to the police, although the complaint was not upheld. The fear of not being believed or properly supported can play a huge part in driving a suicide, says Dr Jane Monckton-Smith, a forensic criminologist who specialises in homicide, stalking and coercive control. Domestic abuse has a higher rate of repeat victimisation than any other crime, says Monckton-Smith, who has written a book about coercive control. “If you’re not believed, then you can’t get safety,” she says. “It means the police can’t help you, the court can’t help you – and the abuser can act with impunity. It means there’s no way out.” Far from seeing an abuse-related suicide – or suicide attempts – as a “cry for help”, Munro believes it is a “cry of pain”. “It’s about a genuine sense of desperation, of despair and worthlessness,” she says. “It’s a belief that there’s no escape, no rescue.” The very limited research in this area suggests there are certain factors that can make a case particularly high-risk. Significant correlation has been found between suicide and so-called “honour” violence – as well as abuse from several partners, sexual abuse and isolation from friends and family. Monckton-Smith has just received Home Office funding to examine about 100 suicides related to domestic abuse in order to pick out the patterns and identify the red flags. With regard to criminal responsibility, the abuser has been held accountable in only one case. In 2017, Nicholas Allen was given a 15-year extended sentence after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of his former partner Justene Reece. Reece, 47, had previously fled Allen for a women’s refuge. He had made 3,500 attempts to contact her by phone or text, stalked five people close to her, threatened her son and contacted her employer. When Reece killed herself, she left a note saying she had “run out of fight”. (Allen’s response, when he heard, was to ask the internet whether he could be held legally responsible.) “The journey to suicide is complicated; it can span decades,” says Munro. “But, for criminal law purposes, the domestic abuse doesn’t have to be the only cause. It has to be a ‘substantial and operating’ cause. “You may ask if we want to be holding people criminally responsible for someone’s suicide and I think we probably do. If we’re criminalising abusive conduct and that conduct is a substantial cause of somebody taking their own life, then it’s appropriate that that’s recognised.” Katy does not feel it was recognised in her sister’s case. Alex left three notes – for her mum, for Katy and for her grandfather. “We haven’t looked at them; we can’t,” says Katy. “My grandad doesn’t even know he’s got one, as I’m too scared of giving him a heart attack. But the police have seen them and I know Alex talks about the abuse. I felt like Peter was to blame. I had to trust that, going forward, something would come of it.” After Alex’s death, Yeung asked if he could move back into the house now that Alex was no longer in it. “The police told me it was his human right,” says Katy. “I had to take away all of Alex’s belongings, all the furniture – it was awful, awful – then he stayed there until his trial in December.” Katy hoped for a manslaughter charge. “That’s what it felt like to me,” she says. “I kept hoping police would find evidence on Alex’s phone – but, to this day, they are saying they are still trying to get into it. They’re blaming Covid delays.” Instead, Yeung pleaded not guilty to two charges of assault – which included throwing Alex against a wall, pushing her down the stairs and throttling her. In court, he claimed that he “didn’t know” how Alex had sustained her injuries on either occasion, but that she had been plotting to falsely report Yeung, “like she had with previous partners”. In fact, Alex’s previous partner, Karl Houghton, testified to confirm that he had assaulted Alex when they were together, she had not made it up and it was “one of the biggest regrets” of his life. Yeung was found guilty in February of two charges of assault and one of criminal damage and sentenced to six months in prison. The judge described Yeung as “calculating and thoroughly dishonest” and said that Alex’s suicide was the “tragic shadow” hanging over the case. “Alex lost her life, I’ve lost my best friend; my mum doesn’t leave the house, not even to do the shopping,” says Katie. “It feels like we’re carrying a very heavy weight, that I haven’t been able to breathe properly. All this and he gets a few months inside. It’s not enough.”