Angela Smith: We must not forget tragic effects of domestic abuse

“It took just 15 minutes on October 22, 2014, for my life and heart to be broken completely beyond repair. I had warned those involved with my case that my happy, funny boys would be killed by their own father; I was right.

“My boys were both with their father on that October day, and at around 6.30pm he enticed Paul, nine, and Jack, 12, up to the attic, with the promise of trains and track to build a model railway. When the boys were in the attic, he lit 16 separate fires around the house, which he had barricaded, so my sons could not get out and the firemen could not get in.

“Only 15 minutes later… the doorbell rang at my mum’s. (We were staying there temporarily after the separation.) ‘It’s the boys, they must be early’, my mum said but I knew that wasn’t right. The boys would have run into the house and straight into my arms; they always did after a visit to their dad. They were frightened of him – he was a perpetrator of domestic abuse. The statutory agencies involved in our case knew this.

“I opened the door. Blue lights were flashing. ‘There’s been an incident at your former home; the boys have been involved in a fire…’

“Running into the hospital, the first thing I saw was Paul receiving CPR. A doctor, drenched in sweat and exhausted, told me they were withdrawing treatment. I held Paul in my arms. I begged him to try, to stay, to not leave 
me.

“He looked at me, smiled, and the life left his beautiful blue eyes. His hair was wet with my tears as I kissed his nose. Then Paul, my boy, was taken out of my arms and into another room. There was no further chance of touching him; his little body was now part of a serious crime enquiry.

“Detectives arrived and informed me that my former husband was responsible for the fire, and that he’d also died. All this time I wasn’t allowed to see Jack, as they were still fighting to save him. Thankfully, he never knew that Paul 
had died. He’d tried to save his little brother.

“The police later disclosed that Jack was still conscious when carried out of the fire and told them ‘My Dad did this and he did it on purpose.’ This was taken as his dying testimony.​

“Jack clung to life for five days but his battle was too big for him to fight. His body had suffered 56 per cent burns. On October 27, he, too, died in my arms after suffering a cardiac arrest due to his horrific injuries.”

That is Claire’s story – it is tragic and heartbreaking, utterly heartbreaking. But I wanted that story on the Parliamentary record – and now, thank God, it is – because it is the testimony of these stories that will in the end engineer the changes we need to see to make sure that Claire’s story does not become another mother’s story.

The Women’s Aid report Nineteen Child Homicides was published earlier this year in response to the failure of the family courts to embed in their practice a culture of putting children first.

What exactly are the failures of the family courts? I suggest that there are two major reasons. First, there is the ongoing assumption that men who are abusive towards women can nevertheless still be good fathers.

Secondly, there is an ongoing failure on the part of the statutory agencies and the family court judiciary to understand that domestic abuse frequently involves coercive control; abuse is about power and control. That is why it is not surprising that fathers who beat up women can also abuse children.

This brings me back to Claire’s story. Her abuser exercised the ultimate control over her. Not only did he drag her to the family court for unsupervised access to his children, he went on to murder her children. In doing that, he has, with one awful, heartbreaking criminal act, exercised control over Claire for the rest of her life. That should give us pause for thought. Never again will Claire’s life be the same, as her two boys have gone. We all feel her pain, and we have a duty to act.

For Claire’s sake and for the sake of all vulnerable women, we need the Government to send out a very clear message that domestic abuse will be tackled, that it will be dealt with in all its forms and that we will not allow our children to be harmed by it.

Jack and Paul must never be forgotten. Claire wanted their names to be used in the serious case review, but the authorities refused, preferring to refer to them as P2. Jack and Paul were not 
P2; they were two dearly loved boys whose lives were snatched away from them by a violent father. Let us make 
sure that Jack and Paul will never be forgotten.

• Angela Smith is the Labour MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge who spoke in a Parliamentary debate on domestic violence. This is an edited version.