Women’s Aid urges reform as 19 more children killed due to statutory and legislative failures
Farah Nazeer, CEO
| Women's Aid
As the Victims and Courts Bill makes its way through parliament, Women’s Aid is urging the government to ensure long-awaited reforms to the family courts are included in the Bill
This month, Women’s Aid published Nineteen More Child Homicides. It’s a harrowing account of the failure of the family courts and statutory services to prioritise the safety of children over the rights of abusive parents - documenting 19 avoidable child homicides over the past nine years. The children’s ages at the time of death ranged from three weeks to 11 years old. And shockingly, the report found there has been a 50 per cent increase in the number of families in which children were killed, compared to the previous 10 years. This is the third report by Women’s Aid, documenting the 67 children who have been killed by a parent who is a domestic abuse perpetrator, in circumstances relating to child contact, over the past 30 years.
These deaths were heartbreakingly preventable, and action needs to be taken to stop anymore avoidable deaths
In 2020, the Ministry of Justice’s ‘Harm Panel’ – an expert panel set up to assess the risk of harm in private law children’s cases – found that the legal principle that entitles a parent to have contact with their child – the ‘presumption of parental involvement’ in the family courts – was not fit for purpose and recommended an ‘urgent’ review to address its ‘detrimental effects’.
In the words of our Ambassador, Claire Throssell MBE, mum to Jack, 12, and Paul, 9, who were killed when their abusive father set fire to their home after the court authorised unsafe contact: “These deaths were heartbreakingly preventable, and action needs to be taken to stop anymore avoidable deaths.”Published days before the Harm Panel report’s fifth anniversary, Nineteen More Child Homicides serves as a stark reminder that despite its recommendations, women and children continue to pay the price for a lack of expertise within the judiciary and statutory services around coercive control, and the reality that abuse often continues after a relationship ends, often in a court setting. This poor understanding results in a constant minimisation of risk, and a baseless over-optimism that perpetrators can still be “good enough” fathers.
To end avoidable child homicides, we’re urging the government to include family court reforms within the scope of the Victims and Courts Bill. As survivors tell us, they live in fear for their children’s safety due to perpetrators continuing to weaponise the family courts. Delivering on the Harm Panel’s aims is integral to achieve this Bill’s commitment “to deliver a justice system that puts the needs of victims first”.
As a first step, the Bill can prohibit unsupervised contact for a parent awaiting trial or on bail for a domestic abuse, sexual violence or a child abuse-related offence, or where there are ongoing criminal proceedings for these offences. This is a crucial interim measure while we await the Ministry of Justice’s publication of the review into the presumption of parental involvement, which we hope will end this archaic, life-threatening legal principle.
If you’re experiencing abuse, we’re here to help. Find information and support at www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support
To read the Nineteen More Child Homicides report, please visit www.womensaid.org.uk/nineteen-more-child-homicides
