21st October 2025
Right to Equality welcomes today’s announcement that the Government will automatically restrict parental responsibility when a child is conceived through rape, and when any parent is convicted of child sexual offences carrying a sentence of four years or more.
Previously, the Government had committed only to restricting the parental responsibility of offenders convicted of serious sexual offences against their own children. This narrower approach would have left other children in the family, and children of offenders who targeted victims outside their family, at continued risk of harm.
Right to Equality first called for this broader protection in May 2025, when the Victims and Courts Bill was released. We urged the Government to extend these measures so that children and their protective parents would no longer have to apply, and often pay for, safeguards through family courts, which are currently ill-equipped to address the risks posed by child sexual abuse.
We are grateful that the Government has listened to victims and their families and acted to provide this automatic protection. We now urge the Government to go further by addressing the pro-contact culture, repealing the presumption of parental involvement and examining the systematic failings in how family courts respond to victims of child sexual abuse.
“This reform is long overdue,” said Dr Charlotte Proudman, barrister and Co-Director of Right to Equality. “No survivor or protective parent should have to go through the trauma of the family courts to protect their child from a convicted sex offender. The law must put children’s safety before the rights of abusers. While this is a welcome step forward, we need systemic reform of the family courts to ensure that children who have experienced sexual abuse are truly protected.”
“We welcome the wider scope of the restriction on the parental responsibility of child sex offenders,” said Dr Adrienne Barnett, Co-Director of Right to Equality. “However, restricting parental responsibility does not stop a perpetrator of child sexual abuse from having contact with their child. The ‘contact at all costs’ culture of the family courts means that children continue to be forced into contact with their abusers. Mothers have even lost custody of their children to abusive fathers when they have raised child sexual abuse in court. Urgent change is needed to protect vulnerable child victims.”
Further information about these new measures can be found on the Ministry of Justice website.