For Chloe & all our daughters
NEW LAW BID OVER DOMESTIC ABUSE SUICIDES
TAKING pride of place in Sharon Holland’s living room is a large picture of her daughter Chloe.
At first glance the young woman in the slouchy grey jumper, holding her cheeky little boy with his arms outstretched, looks happy and content.
But, with hindsight, Sharon, 51, can tell something is wrong. She says: “She just looks withdrawn. I didn’t see it before. She looks so thin and her eyes look tired. It’s upsetting.”
The photograph was taken in the summer of 2022.
By March the next year Chloe was dead.
Aged 23, Chloe
Holland took her own life after sustained abuse by ex-boyfriend
Marc Masterton.
He controlled what she wore, who she saw and he assaulted her.
He tracked Chloe’s phone, hit her with a dumbbell and told her to kill herself – at one point handing her a knife. Eventually she did.
Masterton, 26, was sentenced to 41 months after admitting coercive and controlling behaviour last August.
But for the grieving grandmother, who can now only cuddle her daughter in the form of a teddy bear containing her ashes, this is hardly justice.
“He gets out next January and he’s literally caused the death of my daughter,” claims Sharon.
“It’s very unfair, justice hasn’t been served. We need to prevent this from happening with higher sentences.”
Sharon, of Portsmouth, Hants, is now calling on the Government to introduce Chloe’s Law – a new offence of “manslaughter by coercive control”.
Her pleas echo one of the key demands in our Justice
For Our Daughters campaign. The Mirror is calling for domestic abusers to face manslaughter charges – and tougher sentences – whenever they drive someone to take their own life, whether through existing or new laws. The issue is complicated as under current law someone can be charged with “unlawful act” manslaughter, which could mean someone may face court if their abuse directly drove someone to suicide.
The Ministry of Justice has rejected calls for Chloe’s Law as it says existing legislation can be used to the same end.
But campaigners have pointed out that there have been no unlawful act manslaughter convictions connected to coercive control – despite women who suffer domestic abuse being three times more likely to try to kill themselves. Sharon hopes a new law would lead to more convictions. Chloe met Masterton at school but they only started dating in January 2022.
Sharon’s “happy, lively and energetic” daughter soon began to change. She stopped doing her nails and getting eyelash extensions which on the surface is insignificant, but in hindsight was a marker of the dark cloud of Masterton’s coercive control.
Masterton isolated her from friends and family, including her four-year-old son from a former relationship.
In July 2022, Chloe rang her mum saying Masterton gave her a black eye and she had reported him to police.
But she was soon back with him. In the following weeks, the pattern continued until she moved to a hostel.
But that November, Masterton won her back yet again. Then in January last year, Chloe made a video statement to Hampshire Police detailing her abuse.
But on February 1, 2023, a friend said Chloe had livestreamed her intention to take her own life.
Panicked, Sharon called police, who found her daughter in nearby woods and rushed her to hospital.
“He was on the phone to her before she did it,” says Sharon. Chloe spent five weeks on life support at Portsmouth’s Queen Alexandria Hospital before dying on March 6. “It was the hospital that got me, that
was the most traumatic part,” says Sharon. As the end neared, she took Chloe’s son, who we have chosen not to name, to see her.
Portsmouth crown court heard Masterton’s abuse had led to the demise of Chloe’s mental health.
Sharon is working with criminal justice lawyer Sophie Naftalin to get a more detailed coroner’s inquest into why her daughter died. They fear many authorities do not immediately consider manslaughter in suicide cases.
The pair believe the existence of a manslaughter by coercive control” offence could raise extra awareness around the issue. The Ministry of Justice said: “We’ve toughened up the law to better protect domestic abuse victims and punish perpetrators, and those who drive their partners to suicide already face prosecution for manslaughter.”
Sharon has started a Facebook group called Coercive and Controlling Behaviour Contributing to Suicide, to help others.
But there is nothing that can heal the devastating loss of Chloe. “It just changed my life for ever,” Sharon says.
He gets out in January and he literally caused her death
SHARON HOLLAND ON CHLOE’S EX-PARTNER