Keena Dawes: complex questions at the heart of the case

“I was murdered.”

These were the strong words Keana Dawes typed into her mobile phone before taking her own life in July 2022.

In the same note, the 23-year-old mother-of-one from Fleetwood, Lancashire described her partner Ryan Wellings as a “monster” and “bully” who “killed me”.

wellings he was acquitted of murder On Monday, but was found guilty of assault as well as controlling and coercive behaviour.

For those crimes the 30-year-old landscape gardener, from nearby Bispham, Sent to jail for six years on Thursday.

At the center of the trial was a complex legal question – can an abuser be held criminally responsible for the death of a victim who has taken his own life?

Warning: This article contains disturbing images and content

Ms. Dawes’s own words from “Beyond the Grave”, As lead prosecutor Paul Greaney Casey put it in courtThese were the starting points for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) when it considered charging Wellings with murder.

Detailed notes written by Ms Dawes on her phone describe two and a half years of physical and emotional abuse at his hands.

One described how he broke a small shrine he had built for his late father, while another detailed the time he threatened stain his face with acid,

Wellings’ lawsuit also described how, when she told him she wanted to end their relationship, he pulled the trigger on a drill and told her he would use it to “take a tooth out” of her mouth.

In other evidence, the jury heard that police had been called several times to the flat she and Wellings shared in Fleetwood and that in the months before his death, Ms Dawes had told officers that he had “completely skinned” her. , strangulated them, made them wear black clothes. Winked and tried to drown him in the bath.

On 4 January 2022, she called a confidential helpline run by the domestic abuse support charity Refuge.

Notes kept by Charity, which were read out in court, described how Wellings had hit her, thrown objects at her and thrown her into a glass on the floor before pulling her hair.

In early July 2022, Wellings was arrested but denied intentionally causing harm to Ms Dawes and was released on bail.

Two weeks later, she drove to her friend’s house, let herself in, and safely placed her nine-month-old daughter in her car seat in the living room.

While her friend was taking a bath, oblivious to their presence, she left her mobile phone near her child and walked away.

Shortly afterwards Ms Dawes took her own life.

In court, Wellings’ defense drew attention to Ms Dawes’s history of mental illness, dating back to her childhood and including attempts to take her own life before she met him.

Symptoms of her diagnosed emotionally unstable personality disorder, including increased impulsivity, were also cited as a possible cause of her death.

In criminal proceedings, jurors are instructed that they must be satisfied “beyond reasonable doubt” that a person is guilty of a crime before they can convict him.

Jurors cannot be asked to explain why they reached a verdict, but the verdict confirmed that in Wellings’ case, the jury accepted that he had physically and psychologically abused Ms. Dawes, but They found him not criminally responsible for her death.

Speaking outside court after Wellings was convicted on Monday, Angela Dawes said she hoped “no other young woman or child” would have to go through what happened to her daughter.

He said her sentence “clearly” demonstrated that “perpetrators of domestic abuse will be held to account”.

Speaking after the trial, a CPS spokesperson said the case was “tragic” and that prosecutors respect the jury’s decision.

Chief Crown prosecutor Kate Brown, who leads domestic abuse for the CPS, said the not guilty verdict in relation to the murder charge would not prevent the service from considering similar charges in the future.

“There’s nothing that we’ve seen that would prevent us from bringing other cases,” he said.

“We are actively looking into the cases that the police are bringing to us.”

Only one man, Nicholas Allen, has been jailed for murder over the death of his partner, who took her own life after a long period of domestic abuse.

In 2017, Allen admitted killing justin reese And was jailed for 10 years.

Sentencing him, Judge Michael Chambers KC said Allen had made Ms Rees’s life “a living nightmare” and had “clearly” driven her to suicide.

Charities supporting victims of domestic violence said the outcome of the case had not changed their view about the link between someone being abused and them taking their own life.

Julia Dwyer, Refuge’s head of services, said her charity remained “firm” in its position that there was “an undeniable link between domestic abuse and suicide”.

The charity estimates that three women experiencing domestic violence commit suicide every week.

It said that 24% of its service users had considered taking their own lives on at least one occasion.

Harriet Wistrich, director of the Center for Women’s Justice, told BBC Radio 4 that her charity is aware of a number of cases which are currently under consideration by the CPS.

He said he believed the jury in the case “would have had to grapple with the fact that Keena already had a weakness, that she had previously attempted suicide”.

He said this means it may be difficult for jurors to be “sure” that domestic abuse was a “causative factor.”

However, he said that Ms Dawes being vulnerable and likely to harm herself could have made Wellings more culpable for “pushing her over the edge”.

He said, “We would like to see criminal courts bring in expert evidence, not just psychiatric evidence, but also evidence that explains how coercive control operates.”

He said this would help the court understand “how women in these relationships become completely trapped in the trap created by the abuser and they see no other way out”.