Today, Women’s Aid have published the third of a series of harrowing reports, revealing 67 children have been killed by a parent who was also a perpetrator of domestic abuse, in circumstances relating to child contact, over the last 30 years.
Women’s Aid’s new Nineteen More Child Homicides report found that 18 families were impacted by this devastating crime between 2015 and 2024, a 50% increase on the previous decade. There was a total of 28 deaths in these families, with 19 children, 3 mothers, 2 dogs.
Nineteen More Child Homicides shows the urgent need for the family justice system to recognise diverse children’s experiences of domestic abuse, including coercive control, and to centre children’s voices in child contact cases.
Systemic problems in the family courts, including those around unsafe contact between children and perpetrators of domestic abuse, are well documented. Five years ago this week, the Ministry of Justice published the Harm Panel report, which found that the family courts were failing to protect children and called for urgent reform to ensure the safety of survivors.
Despite all the evidence, half a decade on, a lack of political and judicial will has haltered progress, with the government, statutory agencies, and family court professionals failing to implement many of the lifesaving recommendations in the Harm Panel Report.
This new report highlights how a widespread lack of professional understanding around patterns of coercive control, a constant minimisation of risk, and significant over optimism that perpetrators of abuse can still be “good enough” fathers, led to children killed by known perpetrators of domestic abuse.
A ‘pro-contact culture’ is costing children’s lives, and the government must repeal the presumption of parental involvement in urgent legislation to prevent children from paying the price for a lack of action.
Over the last 30 years, Women’s Aid’s research reveals that a total of 67 children have been killed by abusers in circumstance relating to contact. How many more children will we have to report and grieve before the government, statutory agencies and family court professionals are held to account for failing to keep children safe?
Farah Nazeer, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, said:
“When Women’s Aid published the original Twenty-Nine Child Homicides report in 2004, we never imagined that two decades on, we would have to produce a further two reports documenting avoidable losses. Every single one of the deaths in this new report, as well as those in our previous ones, were preventable but a lack of action to reform an institution that is not fit for purpose ultimately let these children, and their families, down. Every case is one too many.
This new report exposes the life-threatening consequences of not acting on well-document risks of failing to address the pro-contact culture and must be used to finally drive long overdue change of the family courts response to child survivors. We must prioritise the safety of children over an archaic presumption and put an end to any more avoidable child deaths.”
