Male violence, female suicides

Last week, the conclusions of the inquest into the death of Royal Artillery Gunner Jaysley Beck were released to the public. The inquest found that the 19-year-old “died by suicide” after she was found in her room on December 2021. However, her death did not occur in a vacuum. In the two years before she died, Beck was bombarded with more than 4,600 messages from her line manager and army superior Bombardier Ryan Mason and was sexually assaulted by a Sergeant Major Michal Webber. Other senior men in the military pursued her relentlessly for sexual relationships. 

The Ministry of Defence found in an internal inquiry that the unwelcomed harassment she endured represented a “causal factor” in her suicide. According to her best friend, Beck was so frightened of being assaulted by her superiors that she slept in her car and made sure her friend stayed on the phone with her all night.

The inquest heard that the young soldier felt stressed and overwhelmed by the “possessive and psychotic” advances of her boss who would text her messages like: “I do love you Jaysley. I know you’ll be sick of hearing it. I could go in depth for a full day about it and I know you don’t want to hear it at all.” Beck, his subordinate, did not want to hear any of those messages. Still, her boss saw fit to send her 4,599 more messages along those lines. 

Beck stood up for herself, tried to fight her corner and explained clearly that the harassment was unwanted and causing her distress. She said: “I honestly feel trapped in this whole situation, I have tried to act as normal as possible because we are working together but nothing is normal about this situation. The truth is I am struggling to deal with all this, it’s taken a huge toll on my mental health for many reasons. I need time out.” He did not give her a break from the bombardment of messages.

Beck expressed feeling hesitant about making a formal complaint after some of the men “inappropriately touched her” and one superior forced himself on her “more than once” while on a teambuilding camp, because she had been told that women who report this behaviour get a bad reputation. Furthermore, when she express her intention to file a grievance, she was discouraged from coming forward by the army major running the camp who warned her to “think very carefully” about complaining about the sexual assault “because of the impact it could have on Webber’s career.” Afterwards, the Army promoted the man harassing her.

The tragic story of Jaysley Beck is not the only news item bringing to the forefront the connection between male violence and women’s suicide.

Back in January, The Telegraph reported that a man called Ryan Welling had been found guilty of assault, domestic violence and coercive and controlling behaviour, but not guilty of manslaughter for the murder of his girlfriend, Kiena Dawes. The woman committed suicide in July 2022, following years of abuse and Welling became the first defendant to be tried before a jury accused of committing unlawful killing against his partner for the domestic violence that he subjected her to. 

Dawes, a 23-year-old hairdresser from Lancashire, was described as being “bright and popular” and “almost universally loved” but a woman who went from being “a happy-go-lucky girl to frightened all the time.” She had a nine-month-old daughter who she left with a friend when she felt she had no choice but to end her life.

Like so many women around the world, she found that what started as a fairytale turned into a nightmare. Welling lovebombed her, for example by tattooing her name and face on his body a week after meeting her and proposing marriage to Dawes within three months of meeting her. Then, like so many abusers worldwide, he withdrew the affection and swapped it for violence, intimidation and denigration.

Her abuser told her that if she told the police about the violence or pressed charges against him, she would lose custody of her baby daughter, which is untrue but a common tactic used by perpetrators to deter women from coming forward and seeking much-needed support. The last assault Wellings committed against Dawes left her needing hospital treatment for her bruises. She sought the support of the police and made a statement, but when Wellings broke the bail conditions and faced no consequences, Dawes felt let down by the police and ended her life a few days later.

This was not Kiena’s only suicide attempt to escape abuse. During a horrific day in March 2022, her partner tried to drown her by holding her head underwater in the baby bath where she had been bathing their child. That night, he beat her and strangled her. Dawes tried to jump from an upstairs window but survived with some bruises on her legs. In his Sentencing Remarks, Judge Altham stated: 

Knowing of her previous attempts at suicide and of her fragile mental health, you repeatedly told her that she may as well kill herself. During arguments that was a common line of attack. On your own admission you called her names connected with her illness. You told her that if she spoke out about your abuse of her she would not be believed because of her mental illness.

From May 2020 until her death you abused, assaulted, exploited, controlled and demeaned her. When she died it is clear that she had begun to believe your lies to the effect that she was deranged, physically disgusting, friendless, worthless and an unfit mother. You had persuaded her that she had no one to turn to. 

Dawes wrote a message on her phone, identifying her abuser “from beyond the grave” after he spent two years threatening and physically assaulting her. Her last words are heartbreaking, but she wrote them because she wanted the public to hear her voice. She wrote: “The end. I fought hard, I fought long. I went through pain no one could imagine. I was murdered. Ryan Wellings killed me. He ruined every bit of strength I had left. I had dreams. I had a future at one point. That was taken away from me.”

Suicide is always a complex matter involving multiple factors, and it should never be attributed to a single cause. However, those of us who work directly with vulnerable women escaping male violence know that women committing suicide in a desperate attempt to break free is nothing new.

… it is not uncommon for women enduring the abuse and violence meted out by their partners to struggle with suicide ideation

In my decade of experience as a frontline worker supporting women and children escaping from male violence, I have encountered cases like these, in which society then adds further blame and shame on women for desperately seeking a way — any way — out of the abuse, after being failed structurally by so many systems that should, purportedly, be in place to support them. Each case leaves a scar. Moreover, it is not uncommon for women enduring the abuse and violence meted out by their partners to struggle with suicide ideation as the odds of them overcoming the oppression can oftentimes seem improbably and staked against them… as their abusers always know very well and exploit with sadistic abandon.

The women’s sector has known for a very long time that many women commit suicide because they cannot cope with the abuse meted out against them. International research suggests that women who experience abuse are twice as likely to attempt suicide multiple times. A report from March 2024 examining all deaths identified as domestic abuse-related and conducted in partnership between research staff from the University of Central Lancashire and funding from the Home Office, suggests that Police found 93 suspected domestic violence-related suicides in a year, one every four days. The Chief Executive of Women’s Aid said at the time: 

We know from working with survivors that almost half of those in refuge have experienced depression or suicidal thoughts as a direct result of their experience … We need urgent action to ensure the mental health impacts of domestic abuse are fully recognised and women can access the life-saving support they need.

Women are committing suicide because they simply cannot cope with the violence inflicted on them by men who claim to love them and instead choose to abuse them, and because the system meant to support them is simply failing them catastrophically. Based on the accounts of those closest to them, Kiena Dawes and Jaysley Beck were bright, bubbly and confident women. But that was before the abuse they were subjected to by men. If we could subtract the violence from their lives, those two young women would be alive and with us today. 

In her final note, Kiena Dawes wrote: “I hope my life saves another by police services acting faster. Don’t let bullies live free. Make sure the person who is tortured is heard. Let them have a voice. I lost my voice to them.” She was right and society should have listened before it became too late.