Claire Throssell, whose two sons were killed by their abusive father, has said she is “one step closer” to fulfilling a promise she made as their lives ebbed away. New legislation repealing the presumption of parental involvement is due to reach report stage and return to the House of Commons this week, before being sent to the House of Lords.
Jack, 12, and Paul, nine, died when their father, Darren Sykes, 44, set more than 14 petrol fires around their home in Penistone, South Yorkshire. Sykes also died after promising the boys a £600 model railway and fun-sized chocolate bars before barricading them in the loft as the fire engulfed the property.
Twelve-year campaign
Claire, 53, has staged a 12-year fight to change the law. Before Jack and Paul died, she promised them that no other child would suffer like them. Since 1989, judges have had by law to initially assume it is best for a child to see both parents. Safeguards allowed restrictions, but research showed this could still leave children at risk of harm.
Under Labour's Courts and Tribunals Bill, judges would instead act solely in the child's best interests. Claire said: "In the hospital I promised them that no normal child would die like they did. No other child would be betrayed by a parent, somebody who should've loved and protected them with their own lives. This is more than 10 years of fighting. I made my sons a promise and I've still not been able to keep it, that stings. But this is one step closer to fulfilling that promise."
Abuse and the fire
Claire endured more than a decade of abuse at the hands of Sykes before finally leaving him in 2014. Despite their separation, Sykes continued to exert control over her. Jack and Paul were so scared of Sykes they would douse themselves in her perfume so they had a "piece of her with them" for protection when they visited their father.
Just six months after separating from Claire, Sykes concocted a plan to kill them. He convinced them to go to his house after sending a text saying: "I'm making some railway track - all I need are two engine drivers." He sent six text messages to friends and family minutes before the fire saying he had "found peace". Earlier he had posted several letters, including one to bank HSBC, which said: "I won't be paying the mortgage any more because I won't be alive."
Sykes barricaded the boys inside his home and used a chair to block the kitchen door to stop them escaping. He also tied blue string around the front and back gates. A patio door had been left partly open downstairs to fan the flames. Sykes died in the loft from inhaling toxic gases, and Paul's body was found near the edge of the loft.
Jack made a "valiant" effort to escape the "catastrophic" fire on October 22 2014 but suffered 50 per cent burns to his head, chest and upper limbs. He was found by firefighters still conscious at the foot of the loft ladder. Jack was taken to hospital where he told a police officer: "It was my dad that started the fire." He then later told a consultant it was deliberate. Five days later he died of his burns.
Family court concerns ignored
In the aftermath of their separation, Claire had told the Family Court of the abuse Sykes directed at his children. But her concerns were ignored and he was given unsupervised access. Sykes was not allowed to have the boys overnight or at mealtimes, but was granted five hours unsupervised access a week. Claire said: "My sons told everyone who would listen that they were frightened of their dad and didn't want to be alone with him, and still, because of this 'presumption' in law, his wants were prioritised above theirs."
The "presumption of access", designed so that one parent is not able to exclude an ex-partner from their child's life, is supposed to be disregarded when children are at risk of harm. But campaigners have long protested that the Family Courts' "pro-contact culture" means this doesn't always happen. Claire said: "It's a national disgrace that over the past 30 years, 68 children – 19 of them between 2015 and 2024 – have been killed by a parent who was also a perpetrator of domestic abuse in circumstances relating to child contact. We have to ask why?"
Claire's efforts resulted in her being awarded an MBE in the 2021 New Year Honours list. She said: "Life now is intolerable, I come home to silence. I don't sit at tables doing homework with them. I don't walk on the beach with them with their hands in mine. It's a wound that never heals."
Alex Davies-Jones, the Minister for Victims and Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls, said: "Every child deserves to be safe – now we're changing the law to protect them." She said Claire's story is one that stays with you long after you first hear it, and that Claire has taken Jack and Paul's names into Parliament, into government and into the national conversation. She said the government is determined to honour her campaign by repealing the presumption of parental involvement through the Courts and Tribunals Bill.
At the heart of the change is a simple principle: a child's safety must always come first. The current law asks family courts, in certain cases, to start from the presumption that both parents should be involved in a child's life, as long as it's safe. Repealing the presumption won't prevent courts from supporting those relationships where they are safe and in a child's best interests, but the court shouldn't begin with an assumption that involvement of a parent is always right.
Removing the presumption of parental involvement will mean courts approach every case based on what is best for that individual child. Where a parent poses a risk, courts will continue to be able to restrict their involvement – whether that means supervised contact, written communication only or, where necessary, no involvement at all. Being a parent does not give anybody the right to put a child at risk. Children have a right to be safe.
Claire has said this change doesn't feel like a victory, because no change in the law could ever bring Jack and Paul back. But she hopes that one day she can go to where her boys rest and tell them that children across this country have a safer, brighter future because of what was done in their memory.
