7th May 2025
Today, the Government released their draft Victims and Courts Bill, which will automatically restrict parental responsibility for child sex offenders.
Right to Equality is disappointed by the limited scope of these measures. In 2024, the Conservative government prepared legislation to strip all child rapists of their parental responsibility. In this Bill, the Labour government have decided it should only apply to children who were directly abused by their parent or carer, whose case results in a conviction and where the offender was sentenced to imprisonment for four years or more. In practice, few victims will meet these criteria.
Right to Equality believes that all children of child sex offenders should be given protections so that they and their family have the right to go on holiday, to change their name, or to move house or school, without interference from a sexual predator.
This legislation also fails to address the concerns of the Government’s own Child Practice Safeguarding Review Panel, which highlighted how some children who disclose CSA in family law proceedings are being forced into contact with, or forced to reside with, their alleged abuser. In our experience, these cases often also involve child removal from the safe carer on the basis of counter allegations of ‘hostility’ or so-called ‘parental alienation’.
We urge the Government to engage meaningfully with the issue of CSA and family courts. We need better training for judges and professionals, the voice of the child to be strengthened in law, and legislation to prevent child removal on the basis of counter allegations of parental alienation, a tactic regularly deployed by abusers in these cases.
Finally, we wish to correct a statement made by the Government regarding the presumption of parental involvement, which is made in the notes accompanying the Bill. These notes state:
“Whilst this process does not focus on the presumption of parental involvement; it is important to note the presumption of parental involvement does not apply if the child is at risk of suffering harm. A child’s welfare must be the family court’s paramount consideration when making decisions about the child’s life. The presumption only applies to a parent who can be involved in the child’s life in a way that does not put the child at risk of harm. Even if the presumption does apply, it can be rebutted if there is evidence to show that that parent’s involvement would not further the child’s welfare.”
We disagree with this characterisation of how the presumption of parental involvement operates in practice.
Section 1(2A) presumes that a parent’s involvement in a child’s life will benefit their welfare. The burden is on the other parent, often the victim parent or safe carer, to disprove this presumption. Section 1(2A) also presumes that the non-resident parent can be involved in a child’s life without causing the child harm unless there is evidence to the contrary. This creates a further burden on the victim parent to disprove this presumption. These double burdens on victims are hard to disprove.
As an example, in a case publicised in the media last year, a man named Kristoffer White was granted unsupervised community contact with his biological child. This was despite being found, by a family court judge, to have raped his ex-partner on multiple occasions and serving a custodial sentence of less than five years for raping a teenage girl. In the original judgement where unsupervised access for the father was granted, which was subsequently overturned through expert representation from our Director, Dr Charlotte Proudman, the judge cited section 1(2a) of the Children’s Act, i.e. the presumption of parental involvement, as a key legal consideration.
This case illustrates how the legal presumption of parental involvement supports unsafe decision-making and minimises risk. Until the legal presumption of parental involvement is repealed, family courts will be unable to shift the pro-contact culture, and children will continue to be forced into unsafe contact arrangements.
We urge MPs and peers to consider amendments to this bill, which will ensure that protections can apply to more child sexual abuse victims. We also ask that they support the repeal of the presumption of parental involvement and press for improved safeguarding for all child sexual abuse victims in private family law proceedings.