Claire Throssell’s children were murdered by their father in a deliberate house fire in 2014. Now, she has taken her campaign to Downing Street, where PM Keir Starmer promised to repeal laws that allow violent parents to see their children.

11 years ago, Claire Throssell MBE promised her sons as they lay in hospital that no more children would die at the hands of an abusive parent.

Jack, 12, and Paul, nine, died after a court-ordered, unsupervised visit left them alone with their father. He lured them into the attic of his home with sweets and a new train set before blocking all the exits and setting 14 separate fires with Claire’s possessions. 

She said:  “I promised both Jack and Paul that no other child should have to die.

“Not at the hands of a parent, someone who should love them and protect them the most, not betray them, hurt them, humiliate them, and harm them in the name of love.”

Last week, she was in Downing Street when the Prime Minister announced his government’s plans to repeal presumption of contact laws that state it is in a child’s best interest to have contact with both parents, even if one is said to be abusive.

Claire, who lives in Penistone, Barnsley, suffered domestic abuse during her marriage to her ex-husband, Darren Sykes, for 16 years. She describes the violence she endured as “more and more dangerous” as time went on, until her boys became involved in April 2014.

“Jack was at the top of the stairs, and he’d been followed and asked and asked and asked, ‘have you done your homework?’” She said. “And the lad just turned around and said, ‘I told you I’ve done my homework.’ And the next thing, there’s a fist coming towards him. 

“I just got in the middle and took the punch myself on my arm, but the force of it spun me around, and I ended up at the bottom of the stairs. 

“The boys were devastated, and [Sykes] just stood at the top of the stairs and said, ‘look what you made me do’.

 “And I knew at that moment that we had to leave.”

Claire went to stay with her mother and said her boys had a normal childhood for the next five months, where she “did what she could to stop their father from seeing them”. 

She described Jack as a “gentle and caring” boy with “a smile that made the sun and the stars look dull”, who loved music because of a teacher at school.

“He was a really, really good trumpet player. Only a boy, but people listened and he made them feel something,” she said. 

“Jack made the world a better place by being in it, and he was a good friend to so many people and children. He was a proper gentleman.”

Paul was his brother’s opposite – “a complete ball of self-confidence” as described by Claire, who said he was a “gifted athlete” with “Puss-in-Boots eyes”. 

She said:  “He had a strong sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. 

“When he grew up, firstly, he wanted to be an Olympic runner and win the Olympics. Then he wanted to be a police officer because he would be fast enough to catch the bad people–people like dad.”

Claire later had to attend family court, where she warned of Sykes’ dangerous cruelty but was ignored because there was no evidence on record of violence towards the boys. 

As per the law, the judge presumed Sykes was safe to be around their children, and, despite protests from Jack and Paul themselves, he was given five hours unsupervised contact with them per week.

On 22 October 2014, during one of those visits, Sykes set fire to his house, barricaded all the doors, and locked himself, Jack, and Paul in the attic.

Claire said: “He had a visit for two hours, but he didn’t need two hours to do what he did. He absolutely intended to kill them. 

“I still think to this day, did he taunt them? Did he tell them they were going to die? Because when he set the fires, he, coward that he was, curled up in a corner, but the boys ran away.”

Claire was at home that evening, having missed seeing her children by five minutes after returning late from work.

“At half-past six, there was a knock at the door, and I said to my mum, ‘that’s not good’,” she said.

“I opened the door, and there was a policeman on the doorstep. I just said to him, ‘what’s he done?’”

She was blue-light rushed to Sheffield Children’s Hospital, where she witnessed doctors performing CPR on Paul, who had inhaled toxic fumes from the fire, making “his body bounce off the bed.”

They then told her there was nothing more they could do to save him.

“I said to him, ‘come on, Paul. You’ve got to fight, you can’t leave’. He smiled, and the light just went out of his eyes, and he became unresponsive.

“A nurse came and closed his eyes, and I said that promise to him. No more children should have to die by a parent.”

As she held Paul tightly in her arms, Claire was told by a forensic team that his body was a crime scene and she was no longer allowed to touch him – something she describes as “inhumane” and making her “go into full animal mode”. 

After he was moved to a side room, she was taken to see Jack, who had suffered burns to 56 per cent of his body after falling into the flames whilst trying to save his brother during their escape.

She said: “Even though my boy was dying, he thought about everybody else in there. He thought about Paul, he thought about me, he never once thought about himself.

“One of the firemen picked him up, and he said to him, ‘my dad did this, and he did it on purpose’.”

Jack was later transferred to a Manchester hospital as his severe burns could not be treated in Sheffield, meaning Claire was forced to leave Paul behind to travel with him.

Over five days, he had multiple “hours-long” operations to try and save his life whilst his mum remained by his side.

She said: “During those five days, I talked about Paul as if he was still alive. If [Jack] knew he had not saved Paul, it would hinder his recovery.

“So, Jack passed away truly believing he saved the life of his brother because I never told him otherwise.” 

Following Jack’s death, there was a serious case review into the incident, which found, despite agencies not “communicating comprehensively”, Sykes’ actions could not be predicted.

Claire argues much more should have been done to protect her boys. 

She warned the courts and social services that her ex-husband “understood why fathers kill their sons”, and that Paul spoke of his father’s cruelty during a single interview. 

She said: “Paul met Cafcass (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) once and told the officer his dad used to make him sit at the table and eat peas until he was sick.

“Jack never got his interview, but he had to sit at the same table and watch Paul being forced to eat and be called crybaby. His words, his feelings, his wishes were never heard.”

After Jack and Paul’s deaths, Claire said it was her mother, Pam, and her community who helped her through the devastating bereavement and her financial troubles after paying for her own court costs.

She said: “In those first days, I would sit on the sofa with their blankets around me and over my head with the pure, insane logic that if I couldn’t see the world, the world couldn’t hurt me anymore. 

“I was literally a broken shell. Almost at an animal level, just drinking and eating when forced to.

“Every day, my mum would say, ‘you can sit on the settee all day, but you are not laying down. You’re getting up, and you’re fighting’. She was the first strength.”

She called the community her “second strength” as they rallied around her during the boys’ funeral and helped to rebuild the fire-damaged house for resale on Christmas Eve. 

“They created a circle of love around the church, strangers holding hands and linking arms, and it only broke when the boys were carried into church. 

“That circle is still around me today. They gave me the first look at humanity again.”

Claire was not allowed to challenge the serious case review or its findings. She deemed the injustice of Jack and Paul being unnamed, referred to as “Child A and Child B” due to government policy, as her “third strength”.

“I could have turned to hate. I could have hated the world and given in, but that wouldn’t build a legacy for two boys or for lives that had only just started,” she said.

Her campaign began when she was approached by the charity, Women’s Aid, and Claire discovered that Jack and Paul were the 18th and 19th children to die because of a court-approved, violent parent.

Together with the charity, her Child First campaign achieved 40,000 signatures on a petition to repeal presumption of contact in 2016. 

This sparked a debate in Parliament, but because the House of Lords refused to pass the change as part of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, it was not made law – which Claire calls a “national scandal”.

Women’s Aid released a report on the 10th anniversary of Jack and Paul’s death and another earlier this year. They found that 67 children, not including Sara Sharif, have died at the hands of a violent parent during court-approved visits in the last 30 years, some of them since Claire’s boys in 2014.

She said: “Jack and Paul were 18 and 19, and since then, 19 more children have died.

“That really hit like a sledgehammer in the chest. The symmetry was just heartbreaking because it’s an ironic parallel that I never wanted to see.”

The petition has since reached 110,000 signatures, which Claire said “will change the course of history.” She credits her MP, Marie Tidball, for helping to push the government to review the law again after they met at a remembrance event at Jack’s school.

She described her invitation to Downing Street as “a wow moment” following years of setbacks, five prime ministers, and the Covid-19 pandemic delaying debates. 

During a 40-minute meeting with PM Keir Starmer, he held a picture of Jack and Paul and promised Claire that his government would ensure “presumption of contact has no place in law.” 

The next day, he made a formal announcement, paying tribute to the boys with their mum in the audience.

Claire said: “Finally, we are going to change generations of children’s lives.

“Not just today, not just tomorrow, but for generations to come, and it’s a lasting testament to Jack and Paul. 

“It doesn’t feel like a victory. It’s bittersweet because it shouldn’t have taken 11 years to get to this point. It should never have taken more children after Jack and Paul to die.”

Claire, who has since published a book about her loss and campaign, holds the Prime Minister to his promise and wants to see mandatory training for judges and social workers who deal with domestic abuse in family cases.

She hopes the proposed law will be passed and named in memory of her sons, so that children in future will be listened to, not seen as “the property of their parents”. 

“Children can’t wait. There’s children in danger right now,” she said.

“I will keep my promise to my boys. Presumption has no place in a court of law. Never has, never will.”