Our Senior Research Officer, Dr Kathryn Royal, spent six years on the Home Office’s Quality Assurance Panel for Domestic Homicide Reviews. As her time sitting on the panel ends, and to mark the launch of our new research, she reflects on her experiences below.
From 2019 to July 2025, I had the difficult but important job of representing Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) on the Home Office’s Quality Assurance Panel for Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) in England and Wales. This work was originally started by Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs OBE, SEA’s founder, before transitioning to me. Whilst the work was harrowing, it was an honour to be part of the process, and I, both personally and professionally, learned a huge amount. I am grateful to Quality Assurance Panel members past and present for their work in this difficult space.
During these six years, I read hundreds of reviews into the circumstances of victims’ deaths linked to domestic abuse. This period also saw huge changes in the landscape around domestic abuse. This included the naming of economic abuse in the statutory definition of domestic abuse introduced by the 2021 Domestic Abuse Act, the criminalisation of post-separation controlling and coercive behaviour and greater recognition of the role of non-traditional stakeholders, such as financial services, in responding to domestic abuse. Throughout this time, I saw the growing awareness of economic abuse more broadly being mirrored in the DHRs that came to the Quality Assurance Panel.
However, though I could see improvements, I also saw that there were many instances where agencies did not understand economic abuse or did not consider it as dangerous a form of abuse when compared to other forms, or where DHR panels did not recognise it at all.
In addition, there were other difficulties in doing this work, not least that SEA did this tough but vital work in an unpaid capacity. We were pleased to see this transition to a paid role through the recent public appointment process. Personally, the biggest struggle was the huge feelings that reading reviews left me with. This, of course, includes the overwhelming grief and loss, and the feeling of hopelessness which followed reading review after review of another life lost. But there was also anger at poor reviews or bad practice from Chairs conducting DHRs. As well as these reviews failing to see victim and their experiences, it also meant that vital lessons were at risk of being lost. I knew that these reviews had not done justice to the victim and their experiences, and I often thought about how this process had felt for their loved ones.
It became clear to me that we knew little about how economic abuse was a factor in the cases of victims of domestic abuse-related deaths and how it was being presented in the reviews of these deaths. These concerns prompted us to want to learn more.
Our research looked specifically at economic abuse in DHRs in England and Wales, which we believe is the first time this has been done. We examined who victims of economic abuse from an intimate partner were. We explored the different forms of economic restriction, exploitation and sabotage that perpetrators used to limit victims’ economic independence and their ability to escape a dangerous abuser and rebuild their lives free from abuse. We analysed responses to economic abuse, including whether or not DHR panels recognised it and made a recommendation linked to it.
Our findings are stark. Over half of the reviews we quality assured involved a perpetrator using economic abuse against their current or ex-partner. This was equivalent to a victim of economic abuse from their current or ex-partner losing their life every 19 days. [1] This shocking figure demonstrates the national emergency presented by economic abuse and how it is a risk factor for homicide and suicide. We also found that while abusers used a range of economically restrictive, exploitative and sabotaging behaviours, there were missed opportunities by agencies to recognise and respond to this abuse.
As Frank Mullane, founder and CEO of Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA) a charity that provides essential support to those who have lost a loved one to domestic abuse, has so eloquently put it, the role of DHRs is to “illuminate the past to make the future safer”. [2] This includes victims’ experiences of economic abuse. Without naming or fully understanding how the economic abuse perpetrators use impacts victims’ lives, we cannot begin to make the future safer. To do this, we need to involve all agencies across the coordinated community response. This includes non-traditional stakeholders, such as financial services (who are recognised as a stakeholder by the guidance accompanying the Domestic Abuse Act). All services hold different pieces of the puzzle – it is only by putting these pieces together that we will see the full picture of the abuse a victim is experiencing. Only then can we ensure that a victim is truly supported to safely escape the perpetrator and rebuild their lives free from the abuse.
We are calling for a number of changes based on the findings in our research. This includes around risk assessment and the need for economic abuse to be fully integrated in these assessments. Our research also signals the need for local DHR panels to be trained on economic abuse, and support for local panels to engage non-traditional stakeholders who hold information on economic abuse. If the government is to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, it needs to make sure that all agencies – from local authorities and financial services to the Child Maintenance Service and the legal system – prioritise tackling economic abuse and ensure victim-survivors receive the support they need to prevent future deaths.
The experiences of the victims whose reviews I read during my time on the Quality Assurance Panel will stay with me for the rest of my life. It is my sincere hope that the findings from the research will illuminate these victims’ experiences of economic abuse, and that the recommendations, if enacted, will make future victims safer. I hope that this research does justice to the victims we have lost.
To all victim-survivors of economic abuse, please know that, at Surviving Economic Abuse, we see your experiences, we hear your voices, and we will work tirelessly to create change for you. Together, we will save lives and stop economic abuse forever.
Read the report – Hidden risks, fatal consequences: Economic abuse in Domestic Homicide Reviews
[1] Calculation based on 231 recorded deaths between 2 January 2012 and 13 March 2024 (a total of 4,454 days, or 636 weeks and 2 days). The average interval of 19 days is derived by dividing the total number of days in the period by the number of deaths (4,454 ÷ 231 = 19.3 days), rounded to the nearest whole day.
[2] Mullane, F., (2017), ‘The impact of family members’ involvement in the domestic violence death review process’, in Dawson, M., (ed.), Domestic homicides and death reviews: an international perspective, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 257–286.
