Claire Throssell missed seeing her sons by five minutes. She was on her way back from work when they set off for a visit to see their father.
When police knocked on her door later that night, her first thought was: “What has he done?”
Her estranged husband, Darren Sykes, had started a fire in his home while Jack, 12, and Paul, nine, were inside the attic looking at a train set, then locked them in.
The unsupervised access visit had been sanctioned by the family court despite evidence that Sykes had abused both his sons and Claire, and was capable of harming them.
Paul died on that same night, 22 October 2014, and Jack passed away a few days later, believing he had saved his younger brother’s life.
Claire made Jack a promise while he lay in her arms in hospital – and this week she feels like, more than a decade on, she kept that promise.
Claire, from Penistone near Barnsley, has spent 12 years campaigning to change the law around presumption of parental involvement, which assumes children benefit from contact with both parents after separation, and on Tuesday she saw the Courts and Tribunals Bill go through its final stages in the Commons.
That means it will become the law she has spent so long fighting for.
I remember sitting in her front room more than a decade ago, nearly a year to the day after the boys were killed.
Some people’s nightmares stay with you for a long time.
But Claire has gone through what happened to her, Jack and Paul, thousands of times, in incredibly intricate detail, with hundreds of different journalists.
All because she wanted to keep doing her best to keep her promise.
“There are many days when they are dark. I can sit and think ‘how do I get through the next minute?’ Never mind the next hour or the next day.
“But then I remind myself that that are dozens of children that don’t have that day tomorrow and I’ve kind of made it my mission to try and educate other people.
“For anyone at risk of harm there is only today, there is no tomorrow and if we can do something better, do it today.”
Twelve years on, 2026 marks the year that Jack has been dead for as long as he was alive.
“The right thing to do is love. The right thing to do is take the boys’ love and move it forward and share it with the world. Make difference in their names and make a legacy that will last,” Claire explains.
“This year, Jack will have been sleeping as long as he was alive. It never feels like a victory, how can it because the boys are not here anymore.
“But it does fell like this is a step to the future, to give generations of children to come, a safe, happy life, free from fear.”
