text: Prosecutors in southern Minnesota aren’t saying that Long Vang provided a weapon to Jessica Haban or gave her instructions on how to kill herself. And they aren’t saying Vang supplied Haban, the mother of his two children, with an illicit drug that led to her death. 
   
   But prosecutors are accusing Vang of inflicting 10 years of relentless physical and emotional abuse on Haban during their relationship until she lost her will to live and died by suicide. 
   
   Now Vang, 34, of Stewartville, is charged in Olmsted County District Court with third-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter and stalking in connection with Haban’s Dec. 16 suicide. A message was left with Vang’s attorney Wednesday seeking a response to the charges. 
   
   “I believe Mr. Vang’s conduct directly contributed to the death of his partner,” County Attorney Mark Ostrem said in a statement announcing Friday’s charges. “Mr. Vang was clearly aware of the precarious state of his partner’s emotions following her hospitalization, and he continued the relentless contacts until her death.” 
   
   Charging an abuser with murder for another person’s suicide is a rarity in Minnesota if not unprecedented, according to Ostrem and others. 
   
   Ostrem said Wednesday that he has come upon no other prosecution under these circumstances ever in Minnesota, and he knows that means extra pressure on his office as it pursues its case against Vang. 
   
   Long Vang 
   
   “We have put a lot more scrutiny into charging this than in a typical case,” he said. “We know there are going to be some challenges and some questions. We plan to have our ducks in a row.” 
   
   Haban’s family has found comfort in the charges. It “means there is finally going to be some justice for Jessica,” said her mother, Rita Prinzing. “While we know that it won’t bring her back, he will be held accountable.” 
   
   Bob Small, executive director of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association, said Ostrem “is being courageous” with this new approach. 
   
   Small anticipates that other county attorneys “certainly could” follow Ostrem’s lead and bring their own criminal cases involving suspected abuse triggering suicide. “If prosecutors come up with new ways to do things, as an association we want to share those,” said Small, a former Hennepin County judge and federal prosecutor. 
   
   Suicide by abused women is not new. Liz Richards, executive director of the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women, which was founded in 1978 and has been tracking homicides related to domestic abuse since 1989, noted that when it looked at data of Minnesota women who died by suicide over a three-year period﻿, it found that between 6 percent and 13 percent of cases included “a documented court record about domestic violence of some type,” Richards said. 
   
   The research involved suicides from 2009-2011. Noting the difficulty in collecting information on suspected abusers, she called the correlation significant. “What we take away from this brief review of the records is that this is an issue that warrants deeper inquiry and research,” Richards said. 
   
   A mental blow 
   
   The abuse inflicted upon Haban was wide-ranging and persistent, and some of the interactions came despite a court ordering him to have no contact with her, according to charges. 
   
   She was sometimes knocked unconscious, had her hair pulled and was thrown against a wall. Bruises were evident on her arms, legs and hands. 
   
   Vang put a knife to her throat once during a gathering in a home in Austin, Minn., and surrendered the weapon only when a man in the home intervened, according to the charges. 
   
   Jealousy prompted one outburst, and financial difficulties were behind another. In one instance, Vang poured vegetable oil “all over” Haban because she “had bad in her,” the complaint read. 
   
   But it was Vang’s final blow — this one emotional — that apparently pushed Haban over the brink, the complaint spelled out. 
   
   Haban told a county social worker assigned to her domestic abuse case that Vang was pressuring her to leave inpatient mental health treatment and return home. Otherwise, Vang told her, she would be institutionalized and lose custody of their two children. 
   
   On Dec. 10, Haban told the social worker she wanted to end her treatment, and she was discharged on Dec. 13. 
   
   She killed herself three days later. 
   
   Richards, of the battered women’s coalition, said that though her knowledge of the case is limited, “there appears to be some culpability” for Vang to bear. 
   
   This is “a [prosecutorial] approach, at least on a tentative basis, that we support,” Richards said. 
   
   Haban’s mother said the case against Vang “has brought back a lot of emotions” for her and the children, who are now living with Prinzing in Rochester. “Two precious little ones have lost their parents,” Prinzing said. 
   
   Despite the accounts of chronic abuse inflicted on her daughter by Vang, Prinzing said while fighting back tears, “He’s very sick. I honestly have given this over to God. … We can’t get consumed with anger or revenge.” 
   
   Haban grew up in Rochester and graduated from John Marshall High School in 2006. She and Vang were “culturally married” in 2010, according to an obituary in the Rochester Post-Bulletin. 
   
   Prinzing said her daughter had recently graduated from cosmetology school and had been balancing “taking care of the kids, working and going to school. … She was amazing.” ||||| GoFundMe Prosecutors say Jessica Haban took her life after years of domestic abuse, and now they want to hold her partner accountable. 
   
   For approximately 10 years, Minnesota authorities say, Jessica Haban was physically and emotionally abused by her partner. Long Vang, 34, allegedly smashed her head into a washing machine, tossed her into the wall by her hair, held a knife to her throat, and in May 2015, punched her in the head with a closed fist, causing a traumatic brain injury. 
   
   The head trauma left Haban struggling with dizziness, confusion and nausea. She fell into a depression, and told a social worker that she felt as though Vang had already killed her. While Vang was under court order to stay away from her, she told police, he was continuing to call and text. The abuse, she said, was starting to take a severe toll on her mental health. 
   
   Haban was hospitalized on three occasions, but never stayed long. She was afraid of losing custody of her kids -- which, according to a social worker, is what Vang told her would happen if she continued receiving care. 
   
   On December 16, 2015, three days after being discharged from the hospital, Haban killed herself at age 28. Earlier this month, in a surprising move, authorities arrested Vang and charged him with murder for allegedly driving his partner to take her own life. 
   
   "I believe Mr. Vang’s conduct directly contributed to the death of his partner," Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem said in a press release. "Mr. Vang was clearly aware of the precarious state of his partner’s emotions following her hospitalizations and he continued the relentless contacts until her death." 
   
   It’s extremely rare for a person to be charged with causing someone else's suicide. People who die by suicide are typically considered to have intentionally and voluntarily taken their own life. None of the experts contacted for this story had heard of a similar case involving domestic violence. 
   
   However, in the past few years, there have been a few high-profile cases involving children. In 2013, Florida officials charged two girls with felonies for allegedly bullying a 12-year-old girl until she killed herself. And in 2015, a Massachusetts teen was charged with manslaughter for allegedly encouraging her online boyfriend to kill himself. 
   
   Vang was charged with a type of murder referred to as "depraved heart murder," which doesn’t require prosecutors to prove an intent to kill. Instead, they must prove that the suspect consciously did something that was very likely to kill, and in doing so, displayed complete disregard for human life -- or, in other words, acted with a depraved mind. (The ancient-sounding charge received renewed attention this year, when the Baltimore police officer who drove the van Freddie Gray rode in before he died was charged with depraved heart murder.) 
   
   "In common law, courts and judges decided over time that sometimes people were so reckless, so indifferent to human life, that it was functionally equivalent to intending to kill them," explained Joseph Kennedy, professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "A modern example would be a guy who rode his high-speed motorboat through a lake crowded with swimmers. Maybe you can’t prove that he was intending to kill someone, but he is so indifferent to the high risk that it is a functional equivalent of intending to kill." 
   
   For the prosecution to make a successful case against Vang, Kennedy said, they would need to prove that he consciously disregarded a substantial risk that Haban would kill herself as a result of his conduct. 
   
   "If he can prove that, I think the depraved part comes easily," he said. "Domestic violence is antisocial by its very nature." 
   
   Experiencing domestic violence significantly increases a person's risk of suicide, according to research. 
   
   "Women who make suicide attempts experience higher rates of domestic violence than women who do not, and women who experience domestic violence have higher rates of suicide attempts and ideation than women who have not been victimized by an intimate partner," said Carole Warshaw, director of the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health. 
   
   She pointed to a 2012 survey conducted by the National Domestic Violence Hotline in which 73 percent of callers reported that their partner deliberately did things to make them feel like they were going crazy or losing their minds. 
   
   "It's critical that people be attuned to the ways that perpetrators of domestic violence actively engage in behaviors designed to undermine their partner's sanity," Warshaw said. "They may try to control their access to treatment, coerce them to overdose on drugs, threaten them with involuntary commitment or take actions to sabotage their recovery. The stigma associated with these issues can mean that the perpetrator is seen as more credible than the person they have been abusing for years." 
   
   It's critical that people be attuned to the ways that perpetrators of domestic violence actively engage in behaviors designed to undermine their partner's sanity. Carole Warshaw, National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health 
   
   Liz Richards, director of the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women, said this was the first case that she was aware of in which an accused domestic abuser faced criminal charges for his partner’s suicide. 
   
   “We know that domestic violence, and specifically, domestic violence that involves coercive control and occurs across many years, does have a negative impact on people’s psychological and mental well-being,” she said. 
   
   After years of hearing anecdotal reports of domestic violence victims' suicides, members of Richards' organization did some research into the problem. They pulled all the public records of adult women in Minnesota who died by suicide from 2009 to 2011, and cross-referenced them with protective orders and criminal charges of domestic violence. 
   
   "Even with extremely limited information, we found that between 7 and 14 percent of those cases had a documented domestic violence record," Richards said. "This is an area that would be nice for someone to look into deeper." 
   
   David Rossman, professor of law at Boston University School of Law, said the case against Vang raises complicated legal questions. In many cases of suicide, he said, it would be easy to find someone in an individual's past who had mistreated them when they were vulnerable. But how far back do you go? And how do you prove that it was another person's actions that ultimately caused the suicide? 
   
   Rossman also worried about prosecutorial overreach. 
   
   "It leaves a lot of power in the hands of the prosecutor to bring a criminal prosecution when there is an awful lot of speculation," he said. 
   
   For Haban's family, the charges offer some reassurance that authorities are taking her death seriously. 
   
   "There is finally going to be some justice for Jessica,” her mother, Rita Prinzing, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "While we know that it won’t bring her back, he will be held accountable." 
   
   An obituary for Haban described her as a highly talented young woman who excelled at everything she put her mind to. 
   
   "She loved her children with all her heart and did everything she could to make their dreams come true," it read. "She really made an impact on many people's lives and was known for her caring heart, long conversations and putting others in front of her own personal needs." 
   
   Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline. 
   
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   Melissa Jeltsen covers domestic violence and other issues related to women’s health, safety and security. Tips? Feedback? Send an email or follow her on Twitter. 
   
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target: – In a potentially unprecedented move for the state, a Minnesota man is being charged with murder for allegedly driving his partner to suicide. According to the Olmsted County Attorney, Long Vang and Jessica Haban were together for 10 years. During that time, Haban was subject to increasing levels of domestic violence. She was thrown into a wall by her hair and had a knife held to her throat, the Huffington Post reports. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, Vang allegedly knocked Haban unconscious multiple times and poured vegetable oil on her because she "had bad in her." In May 2015, Vang allegedly punched Haban in the head, causing a traumatic brain injury, which led to depression. Despite a court order, Vang repeatedly called and texted Haban. She told a social worker she felt like Vang had killed her. Haban sought mental health treatment, but Vang threatened her, telling her she would lose custody of their two kids if she didn't stop getting medical care. Three days after leaving treatment in December 2015, Haban killed herself. She was 28. Vang was arrested this month and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The county attorney believes Haban killed herself to escape Vang. It's extremely rare to be charged with murder for someone else's suicide. In what is called a "depraved heart murder," prosecutors must prove Vang "did something that was very likely to kill" while displaying "complete disregard for human life," HuffPo explains. The county attorney believes they can do so. Haban's mother tells the Star Tribune the charges mean "there is finally going to be some justice for Jessica."