Sitting by my daughter’s bedside, one question played on repeat in my mind: ‘How did we get here?’ For four generations, domestic abuse has plagued my family, and Chloe was its latest victim. She suffered silently for over a year, and now she lay motionless in a hospital bed after a suicide attempt. I knew the answer: she felt it was her only way out.
Official statistics track only 6.5% of cases where women die by suicide due to domestic abuse. Latest figures show an increase in victims taking their own lives in England and Wales. It is suspected that 150 people died by suicide in the year to March 2025, compared to 98 the previous year. For the first time, both victim and suspect were under 18 in one case.
I have seen firsthand the devastating effects of these campaigns of violence on mental health. The UK has only one criminal conviction for manslaughter where a woman died by suicide following domestic abuse. That is why I am fighting for better recognition of the link between suicide and domestic abuse.
My daughter may have killed herself, but she was driven to it by her abuser. I lost my daughter, and my grandson lost his mum. Chloe met her abuser at school, but I only learned of his existence when he tried to add me on Facebook when she was 20. Two years later, in May 2022, she announced they were in a relationship.
One night, she called me crying: ‘He’s just slapped me.’ Then the line went dead. When she called back 24 hours later, she brushed it off: ‘We were arguing. We always argue when we drink.’ My heart sank. I knew this was just the beginning.
By March 2023, Chloe was gone. Over the next months, I watched helplessly as he chipped away at her. She stopped dressing how she wanted, became isolated from friends, and missed supervised visits with her son because of black eyes or injuries. In August 2022, she sent me a picture with a black eye and said she had left him. I sighed with relief. She got a place in a women’s hostel and started to recover.
But in October, things went wrong again. He found her, threw a brick through a window, and hit her, leaving a head injury. She was asked to leave the hostel for the safety of others. He tracked her to a hotel and assaulted her again. He gave her another black eye before Christmas, causing a cancelled visit with her son. She confessed she had been in his area on purpose.
She cut him off again, but his hold was unbreakable. By January, Chloe attempted suicide three times. On February 1, 2023, she was found too late. Police took 20 minutes to find her; one officer resuscitated her. In hospital, she had only a 5% chance of survival. I stayed by her bedside for a month.
Police assured me they would secure a conviction. Unbeknownst to me, Chloe had given a two-hour video statement two weeks before her attempt. Because of that evidence, police arrested and charged Marc Masterton with coercive and controlling behaviour. On March 6, Chloe was taken off life support and slipped away.
During the trial, we learned he controlled her appearance, who she spoke to, and committed assaults. He told her to take her own life, handed her a knife after an assault with a dumbbell, and during a hotel attack said: ‘Say goodbye to your son.’ In October 2023, he was jailed for 41 months for coercive and controlling behaviour, and later received an additional three years and seven months for the same offence against another partner.
I am glad he is behind bars, but it is not enough. Half of all suicide attempts by women are linked to domestic abuse. We must find a way to change that. More support is needed for vulnerable people in abusive relationships. Perhaps if this help existed, Chloe would still be here.
This March marked three years since I lost my daughter. My grandson, now six, asks where his mummy is. It breaks my heart that he is growing up without her. When he is older, I will show him my campaigning and how I am fighting to make the world safer so no other child has to grow up like he does.
