A senior police chief has unveiled a plan to charge more domestic abusers with manslaughter after their partners take their own lives. It comes after the death of Kiena Dawes, whose partner Ryan Wellings was cleared of manslaughter but convicted of domestic abuse.
Wellings had subjected Dawes to repeated assaults and verbal abuse before she killed herself and left a suicide note on her phone in which she described Wellings as a monster, stating: “Slowly … Ryan Wellings killed me.”
He was jailed in January for six and a half years.
The case was referred to at the launch of the annual national police report on domestic homicides.
It revealed that the most common cause of death among domestic abuse victims in England and Wales, in the year to the end of March 2024, was suspected suicide for the second year running.
It was only the second time a man has stood trial for causing his partner’s suicide, with the first in 2006 also resulting in an acquittal. The charge has been successfully brought only once: in 2017, when Nicholas Allen pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Justene Reece.
The jury heard repeated evidence of the violence Wellings meted out on Dawes including: trying to strangle her with an iPhone charger cable; screaming at her that she was a “slag”, throwing a stool at her and telling her to kill herself; putting a drill to her face and saying he would drill her teeth out of her mouth; and threatening to make Dawes look like the TV presenter and acid attack survivor Katie Piper.
While he was jailed for six and a half years for assault and coercive and controlling behaviour, Dawes’s mother said “justice has not been done in the way we all hoped”.
Assistant commissioner Louisa Rolfe, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for domestic abuse, said it was “heartening” that more investigations are being launched into deaths after domestic abuse, and spoke of her regret that a manslaughter conviction had not been achieved in the case.
This was despite the “excellent” work of investigators and the “extensive trail” left by the Dawes family, she added.
Another case cited by Rolfe on Monday was one in which a woman died after she was pushed from a rocky outcrop at a Scottish beauty spot, as part of a police investigation looking more deeply into whether domestic abuse was a hidden factor in unexpected deaths.
Fawziyah Javed, 31, died when she was pushed from Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh by her abusive husband Kashif Anwar, who falsely claimed he had slipped and bumped into her while the couple were on holiday in 2021.
Anwar, 29, from Leeds, was found guilty of the murder of his wife and causing the death of her unborn child. She had used her dying words to reveal it was Anwar who pushed her, telling a witness: “Don’t let my husband near me, he pushed me.”
In April 2023, Anwar was sentenced to a minimum prison sentence of 20 years.
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A recommendation in the report for police to check for a history of domestic abuse when there is an unexpected death was welcomed by the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW), which said there was a need to urgently address gaps in identifying domestic abuse and coercive controlling behaviour.
“This is contributing to the high number of domestic abuse reports that do not result in charges being brought against a perpetrator,” said Andrea Simon, EVAW’s director.
“We know that many victims do not feel able to report to the police, and these proposals could help shed light on the devastating scale and impact of abuse, including holding perpetrators accountable for deaths by suicide following abuse.”
Sarah Davidge, the head of research and evaluation at Women’s Aid, said the report proved that domestic abuse is a national emergency.
“Whilst we welcome the government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, a truly effective response to this national emergency requires sustained, adequate funding for specialist domestic abuse services,” she added.
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In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
