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The Domestic Abuse Sector Has Known for Years - Now Let's Turn Awareness Into Action

 By Rebekah Wilson, The Wish Centre

World Suicide Prevention Day, 10 September 2026

For those of us working in domestic abuse services, the link between coercive control and suicide isn't news. We've seen it in those we support, heard it in their words, and known it long before anyone put a number on it. What's changing now is that the rest of the world is starting to catch up, and on World Suicide Prevention Day, that shift is worth marking.

If you’d have walked through St John's Square in Blackpool on 10 July this year, you'd have found 150 pairs of shoes, all painted blue. Lancashire's Police and Crime Commissioner put them there. Each pair stood for someone across the country suspected to have taken their own life, in a single year, after, or during, suffering domestic abuse.

One pair could stand for Kiena Dawes. She was 23, a hairdresser from Fleetwood. She left a note read out at Preston Crown Court: “I was murdered. Ryan Wellings killed me.” Wellings was cleared of manslaughter but was sentenced to six and a half years for assault and coercive and controlling behaviour towards her.

We need to talk about why that verdict was possible and why it shouldn't be the end of the story.

The same road, not a separate tragedy

For years, domestic homicide and domestic abuse-related suicide have been treated as different things: one a crime, the other a private sorrow. The evidence doesn't support that split. Suspected suicides linked to domestic abuse have now outnumbered domestic homicides for three years running nationally - 150 in the year to March 2025 alone, more than the 80 homicides recorded in the same period.

Criminologist Jane Monckton-Smith has spent years mapping how controlling relationships escalate, and her research treats homicide and suicide as two possible endings to the same road, not two separate stories. That matters. It means a victim's death, by their own hand, can be the direct result of somebody else's campaign of control, not simply a tragedy that just happened to follow it.

Why it stays hidden

Coercive control works by shutting down a person's choices, one by one, until they believe they only have one exit left. That's entrapment, not despair coming from nowhere.

It's been made more difficult to understand by something else: the person who could tell us the truth is gone, and the person left to tell the story is frequently the one who caused, or at least contributed to, how they felt. They often deny it happened. Attack the victim’s credibility. Claim to be the real victim. Campaigners call this pattern DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender), and it shows up again and again in the aftermath of deaths related to domestic abuse.

Kiena might have known this was coming and named her abusive partner in her note, in an attempt to stop exactly what happened next.

The children who are already living it

Some of the smaller shoes displayed in Blackpool weren’t painted. This was a quiet way of including the children and that's not incidental. Children in these households aren't standing outside the abuse watching it happen to someone else. They're living inside the same fear and the same rules demanded by the perpetrator every day. What they carry forward from that sometimes isn't visible for years, and it deserves to be treated as its own harm, not a footnote about “impact on the family.”

Where the law still falls short

Kiena's case is why a new campaign now exists: Kiena's Law, backed by Lancashire's Police and Crime Commissioner, calling for the law to change. Right now, prosecuting a coercive controller for a victim's suicide is extraordinarily hard. The courts' usual tests for proving someone caused a death weren't built for a case where the final act was carried out by the victim themselves. That’s not a technicality. It’s the difference between a name being spoken in a courtroom, and a name being written only in a note nobody was ever legally required to read.

What needs to happen

This World Suicide Prevention Day, three things are worth asking for. Back Kiena's Law, and the principle behind it: that a death can be caused by control even when the final act wasn't carried out by the person causing the harm. Push for suicide risk to be taken as seriously as physical violence when we're assessing danger to domestic abuse victims not treated as an afterthought. And say the words plainly, in courtrooms, in coroners' reports, and in conversations like this one: sometimes, when someone takes their own life, somebody else laid the foundations of that road.

If you have the opportunity to see the exhibition, please do. See the shoes, really look at them. Each pair was someone who felt like every exit but one had already closed. We can still change how many more there'll be at any future exhibition.

Smiles by Sabrina Stobbs - Make The Change Facilitator at The Wish Centre

Smiles on faces but turmoil inside

It seems cameras do lie and pain they do hide

For not all smiley faces tell the facts of life

A wedding photo of a happy husband and wife

Could actually hide the pain of a coercively controlled victim of crime

For they are not living their dream on this day at this time

iPhones a plenty and memories are snapped

Confetti is thrown and guests hands are clapped

Only serving to show that this crime is hidden

Isolated, alone the truth deeply forbidden

Perpetrators driven by power and control

Chipping away at their victim till they’re no longer whole

It’s funny really how many think it’s not domestic abuse

Yet the victims will toy with escape by a noose

See it’s easier to leave those that they love

Floating from earth to a place up above

Where safety may lay and peace they will find

No longer subjected to hands so unkind

See it’s not just violence that equals domestic abusive behaviour

It’s the perpetrator who becomes the victims worst fear but also their saviour

To understand that it’s not that easy to leave

Remaining because the gaslighting will have the victim believe

It’s them that’s at fault for surely they provoked

Pushed the buttons, said the wrong thing, made the wrong jokes

Looking in the mirror to see a black eye

On the bathroom floor sat sobbing in secret they silently cry

Self blame and self loathing is all that remains

Trapped in this hell with Invisible chains 

Hearing the myths from family, colleagues, a friend

Their words hurt but still you pretend

See this is the bit they don’t seem to get

He just isn’t the man that they all just met

Behind close doors he pulls me to bits

Accused of cheating and in my face he spits

He always says he’s sorry though and gently strokes my hand

He lifts me from the floor and helps me up to stand

Sure my ribs hurt where his boot hit my belly

I’m a little wobbly and my legs feel like jelly

He didn’t mean it though, he’s just really stressed out at work

He said he’s really sorry for acting like a jerk

Excusing his behaviour because my heart still thinks it’s love

It wasn’t really that bad just a little shove

I’m sure he wants to change and needs me to be there

He tells me all the time I’m the only one to care

He cannot live without me, if I leave he’ll end up dead

How would I live with this knowledge in my head

I know he stops me wearing my favourite little dress

Maybe he’s right though, it’s a bit short and makes me look a mess

We’re saving money since I stopped going to the gym

No more nights out drinking with my best mate Kim

It’s better just the two of us he tells me all the time

He’s doing it because he cares it’s not like it’s a crime

He didn’t mean to hit me when the door opened onto my foot

Wrong place, wrong moment, maybe it was accidentally shut

At least that’s what he tells me before the tension starts to build

Heart racing, head spinning as the atmosphere feels chilled

Swearing and shouting here we go again

He’s lost the plot ranting like he’s gone insane

Screaming about my wages as my bank card is removed

I’m allowed it back in future once myself to him I’ve proved

At least it will stop me spending no more hair and nails can be done

Unable to get the new uniform for my youngest son

While all of this sounds crazy and many won’t understand

Why I’ll return tomorrow to my husband hand in hand

I want you to know it’s not because I do not feel fear

Entirely the opposite see it’s safer to keep him near

For when the perpetrator starts to lose his grip

Behaviours only escalate and the offender starts to flip

When all of the above and more has been your life for so much time

It’s easier to remain a victim of this twisted crime

To walk away is risky and by that I mean life or death

Removing a victim from the offender is no safer than smoking Crystal

meth

Coercive control is madness that barely anyone fully knows

Building over time so subtly it barely shows

Cycle of abuse like a big wheel on Blackpool prom

Round and round as they isolate you from dad, sister and mom

What anyone will tell you if you take the time to ask

Is that escaping the situation needs to be a meticulously planned task

You don’t just pack a bag one day and walk right out the door

That would be like signing your own death warrant for sure

It starts with tiny little steps of putting things in place

Speaking to an idva who will find you refuge space

Guiding you towards the path that will help you live again

A new start, hope, joy and leaving behind the pain

I’d like to tell you all that the offender will get punishment in court

Sadly, I’d be lying though and this I just cannot report

The actual truth is that only 1% of rapes are prosecuted by the CPS

Victims left without justice, hurt and in a mess

Even when convicted for domestic abuse before a judge

The sentence is barely none existent on this they do not budge

Usually finding ABH reduced to common assault

A tap on the wrist, a minuscule fine, no justice, no result

That’s what makes it so much harder to walk the other way

To build yourself back up from all the things you’ve heard him say

Year upon year of hearing how you’re a cheating little hooker

Ugly, useless little bitch definitely not a looker

Imagine that said time again every single night

Eventually the lies he tells become the truth and you give up the fight.

Abuse after Separation by Rebekah Wilson. 26.11.2020 

If we had £1 for every time we’ve heard or read “why doesn’t she just leave” we would need no other means of fundraising.  Whilst many people presume leaving a relationship will be the end of the abuse, in many cases that simply doesn’t happen.  In some cases the abuse escalates. 

The Femicide Census* was published yesterday and, out of the women whose lives have been taken by partners or former partners in the last 10 years, 43%, 378 women, had in fact separated or made arrangements to separate.  89% of them were murdered in the first year after separation.

If you’re planning on leaving an abusive relationship, you can get advice and support from a Domestic Abuse Service to ensure that you have a plan for leaving and a plan for staying safe once you’ve left.  Many of course can leave the relationship safely and embark on a new life without intrusion from their ex-partner. However, for some people, particularly if there are children involved, it can take many years.

The decision to end the relationship can cause the abuser to feel as though they have completely lost control of their partner and any children, and lead them to behave in intense and persistent ways to try and regain that control.  These behaviours can consist of emotional manipulation, promises to change and a return to good times, begging for your return and forgiveness or gift giving. Behaviours can also manifest as stalking and/or harassment, such as numerous telephone calls, text messages, turning up where they know you’ll be, notes through the door, threats to you, the children or your family members, attending your place of work or employing surveillance techniques (trackers, asking neighbours, friends etc.).  This can often make a survivor feel that they are safer in the relationship where they can at least gauge the abuser’s mood.

Stalking and harassment legislation dictates that it is the fear of the victim or survivor that is the important issue.  Even if you’re told that their behaviours are innocent or non-harmful, if they put you in fear, you should seek support and report to the police if you feel able to.  Domestic Abuse Services can support you with making reports to police.

Many perpetrators often can seek to regain control through the Family Court, making repeat applications for contact, enforcement, specific issues etc.  Even if they have shown little interest in the children either before or after separation.  Some perpetrators use contact with children to question them about the other parents movements and “keep tabs” on your life, placing the children in the middle of the conflict to the detriment of their emotional health and wellbeing.

If you have left, or are considering leaving an abusive relationship, and are concerned in any way about the abusers continuing behaviour, please call or email us for advice or support.

* The full report can be read here