26/11/24
Recent important development in Family Law
In a recent Family Court Decision in September 2024 the court found it appropriate to remove the parental responsibilities of a father who received a criminal conviction in 2008 for rape. The father, Kristoffer White, had a criminal conviction for the rape of a stranger, and during the course of the family proceedings had also been found to have raped the child’s mother on three occasions. He had been granted unsupervised access to his daughter despite these serious findings.
The mother appealed the decision of the family court and it was overturned with the court concluding that the conviction of rape and the “devastating emotional harm” he caused to the family was viewed by the court to make him “a danger to women and children” as well as, too “unsafe to have any involvement in ‘[the child]’s or her family’s life” and therefore he was stripped of his parental responsibilities.
This is the first case of kind where Parental Responsibility (PR) has been removed as a result of a conviction. This will have a huge impact on the means and ease by which parents can lose PR. The Ministry of Justice, since the decision, have already noted how important it is that judges have extensive powers to block parental involvement when there is a risk to a child. In light of this, they have also expressed their intention to bring forward legislation that will restrict parental responsibility for any parent convicted of child sex offences.
What is Parental Responsibility?
Parental Responsibility (PR) is defined by Section 3(1) of the Children Act 1989 (CA) as “all the rights, duties, powers, responsibilities and authority which by law a parent of a child has in relation to the child and his property”.
However, PR is not the same as just being a parent. It is the woman who carried and gave birth to the child who, at common law, is considered the legal mother of the child in all circumstances and the main, and sometimes only, recipient of automatic parental responsibility. A father only automatically gets PR if they are married to the mother at the time of the child’s birth or are named on the child's birth certificate as the father. Therefore, fathers who are not married to or in a civil partnership with the mother do not get automatic parental responsibility.
PR can only be terminated in two ways: automatically, when the child turns 18, or by court-order under section 4(2A) of the CA 1989.
Whilst the courts do have the power, through a court order, to remove PR, the applications are very rarely successful. To lose PR, the parent’s behaviour must have been exceptional or extreme.
New Powers to remove PR in the Criminal Law?
There have been extensive discussions over the last year about making an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill so that when child rapists are sentenced, their ability to make decisions about their own children’s lives will also be suspended. This would also apply in cases where the perpetrator attacks any child. This proposed amendment was tabled by the government in May 2024. These proposed changes aim to build on Jade’s Law, introduced via the Victims and Prisoners Bill, which applies an
automatic suspension of parental responsibility in cases where a perpetrator has killed a partner or ex-partner with whom they share children.
However, whilst there has been no movement forward yet with this amendment, the recent decision in the family court and the subsequent comments by the Ministry of Justice, show that these reforms, aiming to safeguard children against “those whose despicable actions have shown them to utterly lack any nurturing and caring instincts”, are still very much in the forefront of the government’s minds.
Significance
If these changes are implemented it will mean that judges in the criminal courts, alongside family court judges, will have the power to remove parental responsibility, but only in cases where there has been a conviction for child rape. It will save the time it currently takes to refer cases from one court to the other for a decision, as under these developments parental responsibility will be automatically suspended.
This shows a growing concern about the ability of parents convicted of rape, whether that be the rape of a child or the rape of an adult, to adequately parent their own children. Therefore, with this new awareness and concern, any parent convicted of rape is at risk of having their parental responsibilities revoked. Furthermore, if the proposed amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill are approved, responsibilities of parents convicted could just automatically be revoked, the difficulty with this is that the only means of getting them back would be an appeal to the family court.
Please get in contact with us if you have any questions.