The government must carry out a full review of family courts to stop them being used by violent men to perpetuate abuse against their partners and children, MPs have said.



They called on the justice secretary, Liz Truss, to act swiftly to tackle deep-seated cultural attitudes among family court judges which put the rights of abusive men over the safety of women and children.

MPs were debating research by Women’s Aid which revealed that between 2005 and 2015, 19 children in 12 families were killed by violent fathers who had been allowed to see them through formal and informal child contact arrangements.

The debate focused on many personal stories of women who had been subjected to violence and coercive control by their partners, only to have to face them again in the family courts when the men fought for child contact.



MPs said the family court system was allowing violent men to re-victimise women. Increasing numbers of men were representing themselves and re-traumatising their victims when they made repeated and often spurious applications for access, they said.

Peter Kyle, the Labour MP for Hove, said: “The family courts are being used to perpetrate abuse against extremely vulnerable women … One of my constituents has been cross-examined by her former partner on three separate occasions, the man who beat her, broke her bones and battered her unconscious.”

He said a transformation of family courts was “desperately needed” to end the “abuse and brutalisation of women” via the legal system.

Angela Smith, the Labour MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, raised the case of her constituent Claire Throssell and her children, Jack, 12, and Paul, nine, as Throssell watched from the public gallery.

Throssell’s estranged partner, Darren Sykes, a perpetrator of domestic violence who had threatened her and his children, murdered both boys during a contact visit to his home in 2014 by enticing them to the loft with a new train set. He then set 16 fires in the house and barricaded the home.

He had been given contact by the family court despite the authorities’ knowledge of his violence and the children’s expressed fear of their father.

Smith read Throssell’s own words to MPs: “It took just 15 minutes on 22 October 2014 for my life and heart to be broken completely beyond repair. My happy, funny boys were killed by their own father … The police later told me that Jack was still conscious when he was carried out and he told them: ‘My dad did this and he did it on purpose.’ This was taken as his dying testimony.”

Paul died in his mother’s arms in hospital, while Jack lived for another five days, MPs were told. Sykes died in the fire.

Smith said the family courts needed to properly implement “practice guidance 12 J”, which is supposed to force judges to put the safety of children and their residential parent before the access rights of a violent and abusive parent.

She highlighted the demands in the Women’s Aid report for an end to the cross-examination of a survivor by an abuser in family courts, and for special protection to be brought in, such as separate waiting areas, to keep victims safe from violent partners in court buildings.

Smith said there was a need both to end the assumption that men who were abusive to women could be good fathers, and to embed a culture in the family courts of putting children first.

“These changes are critical if we are to make sure this never happens again,” Smith said in reference to the Throssell case. “For Claire’s sake and for the sake of vulnerable women, we need the government to send out a clear message by agreeing to act. Jack and Paul must not be forgotten.”

MPs also urged the government to respond to the all-party parliamentary group’s report on domestic abuse, child contact and the family courts, which said the courts needed to ensure there was safe child contact, not contact at any cost.

Gill Furniss, the Labour MP for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough, said: “I urge the minister to instigate a full review based on the Women’s Aid report and the APPG findings … because we must ensure that Jack and Paul and all other victims are never forgotten.”

Keir Starmer, the former director of public prosecutions and Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras, said it was important to look at the changes made to the criminal justice system to better protect victims of domestic violence – including special measures for victims and witnesses, and the presence of independent abuse advocates – and ask why the family courts were not making similar changes.



He said there was growing evidence that perpetrators of domestic abuse were using the family courts to continue to harass and control their victims.

Phillip Lee, the parliamentary undersecretary of state for victims, youth and family justice, said the government was not complacent. “I think it is fair to say the family court system can learn valuable lessons from the criminal justice system.”



He said the government was studying the research by the APPG on domestic violence extremely carefully.