Fallen Women
Ensuring suspicious deaths are never dismissed.
We want all domestic abuse-related deaths to be recognised and investigated as potential homicides from the outset, through changes to legislation, national policing guidance and oversight mechanisms.
Launched in March 2024, Killed Women’s Fallen Women campaign calls for the deaths of all women who have fallen from a height to be reviewed by police to identify whether domestic abuse may have been a feature.
We want official data collection to track the number of women who die after falling from a height each year, and believe that domestic abuse should be a key line of inquiry for police in all such cases.
Criminologist Professor Jane Monckton Smith estimates there are around 130 primarily female victims killed every year in England and Wales whose deaths are not investigated or prosecuted as homicides.
BBC Documentaries has announced three brand new powerful documentaries from Stacey Dooley, each looking at timely issues facing the UK today. “Fallen Women”, which will be broadcast in Autumn 2026, sees Stacey look into a series of cases involving British women who died following falls from height, asking whether patterns of domestic abuse may have been overlooked in some of these deaths.
‘The film begins with the story of Bianca Thomas, a young mother from Birmingham whose death after falling from an 11th-floor balcony was ruled accidental. Stacey meets Bianca’s family [including her sister, Killed Women co-founder Jhiselle Feanny] and friends who are unhappy with the verdict and who still have questions about the circumstances of her death.
Women are more likely than men to die in suspicious circumstances in falls from height. Through intimate interviews with bereaved families, experts, campaigners and law enforcement, the documentary explores the challenges police face investigating these cases, and the growing campaign for “Bee’s Law”, which would encourage such scenes to be treated more consistently as potential crime scenes.
Taking Stacey into a little understood and deeply troubling world, this powerful film examines grief, justice and the difficult questions surrounding women who die after falling from height in the context of abusive relationships.’
Following Killed Women’s Fallen Women campaign, which launched in March 2024 and calls for the deaths of all women who have fallen from a height to be reviewed by police to identify whether domestic abuse may have been a feature, the NCVPP's annual ‘Domestic Homicides and Suspected Victim Suicides Report’ now contains coding and recording of deaths specifically involving a fall from height.
This year's newly published report, covering 2020–2025, states (pp. 24–6): “In Year 5 (April 2024 – March 2025) there were 18 reported cases of deaths involving a fall from height, compared to 21 victims (associated with 22 suspects) reported in updated figures covering the previous four-year period (April 2020 to March 2024, excluding one case of child death). Therefore, across all five years there were 39 victims reported to have died following a fall from height, accounting for approximately 3% of deaths overall (1452).”
The report continues: “The analytical focus on this method of death and requests to forces to submit these cases are likely to have improved understanding and awareness of such cases involving a history of domestic abuse.”
The campaign opening coincided with the Channel 4 documentary ‘The Push: Murder on the Cliff’, which follows the case of Fawziyah Javed, who died after being pushed off Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh by her husband in 2021.
Fawziyah’s mother Yasmin, a member of the Killed Women network, said: “Domestic abusers will continue to get away with murder if we don’t ensure the cases of so-called fallen women are rigorously investigated by authorities. We must have a system that delivers justice for these women.”
‘The Push’ has won ‘Best Programme’ at the Asian Media Awards and ‘Best Documentary Series’ at the Grierson Awards. This telling of Fawziyah’s story has helped people leave abusive relationships and saved lives around the world.