*WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES* Grieving mum Claire Throssell has spent years fighting for a change in the law after her sons were murdered by their dad – as she shares her unfathomable pain
The mum of two children who were murdered by their own father has recalled the harrowing moments she held her dying sons in her arms for the last time. Claire Throssell’s sons, Jack, 12, and his nine-year-old brother, Paul, died, after her ex-husband, Darren Sykes, lured them to the attic of the family home in Penistone, near Sheffield, and set fire to the house. He died in the blaze but not before ensuring his sons wouldn’t survive, after starting 14 separate fires around the house in October 2014.
Claire, 53, had repeatedly warned social workers, the courts, and Cafcas – whose role is to represent the interests of children and young people in the family courts – that her abusive ex was capable of murder. Yet he was granted unsupervised access to his boys under a legal guideline “presumption of contact” – which advises family courts to base their custody deliberations on the assumption that a child having having contact with both parents is always the best outcome, even in cases where one is being accused by the other of a crime.
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It was just months after her husband was granted unsupervised access to her boys that Claire’s family was ripped apart. Now after 11 years of campaigning, Claire, has written a moving book about her battle to end this guideline and save other children from a similar fate.
Here, in an exclusive extract, she recalls the moment doctors called her into a room at Sheffield Children’s Hospital to say her goodbyes……
Extract from For My Boys, By Claire Throssell
Someone must have ushered me onto a chair. I don’t remember, but Paul was placed in my arms. “No”, I gasped. The sound coming out of my mouth was raw, guttural, unrecognisable. I remember thinking he was naked – just like the day he was born. But back then, he was pink and healthy, this time his poor, broken body, was irreparably damaged and still.
It had been my arms that had help Paul when he entered the world, and now those very same arms were holding him as he quickly slipped away, his life over before it had barely started. “Please don’t go” I begged, my words hardly more than a whisper, the words catching in my throat. “I love you so much. I’ve always loved you and I will always love you”.
I thought my heart was literally breaking. Paul smiled one last time, then the light in his beautiful blue eyes turned grey. Their sparkle vanished. His eyes empty. My whole body reeled in a pain that consumed every fibre of my soul. It enveloped me. Smothered me. It tore my very being apart. A nurse discreetly closed his eyes, and I held my precious son in my arms, my tears falling and ever-so-subtly darkening his nearly white, blonde hair.
“Please could I have a blanket?” I asked. Both my sons had always hated the cold, and all the heat had left Paul. I gently wrapped him up, and all I could do was hold him as the pain deep within me ripped my heart, chest and lungs apart, leaving me incapable of functioning on any level. I just wanted to stay there, holding my son tight.
If I didn’t let him go, then maybe none of this was real. I would wake up, realise it was all a horrible dream, and the boys would be snuggled beside me on my bed, laughing and smiling. But then I realised there were a lot of people around me, encouraging me to let Paul go. I turned away from them.
‘No,” I cried. “He’s my son. I’m not letting you take him.” I clung to Paul’s body, They couldn’t take him from me. “I’m sorry Ms Throssell,” a voice said. The voice pierced my thoughts. “Your son is a crime scene.” What were they talking about? “No!” Claire protested. “He’s my boy, not a crime scene.”
Two medics gently prised Paul from my arms and everything that was left inside me shattered. I couldn’t process what was happening. It was all too much. Nothing felt real. Paul was taken to a side room and laid on a bed, underneath a blanket. If I didn’t know the cruel truth, I would have assumed he was simply sleeping.
Claire’s pain didn’t end there. Her eldest son, Jack, was still fighting for his life and had to be transferred to a specialist burns unit in Manchester.
For five days, Jack clung to life, but on October 27, 2014, after doctors’ best efforts, my life ended and her existence began. Jack had been in theatre for hours when a ward sister burst into the patients’ room, grabbed my hand and we ran.
My heart and mind were screaming ‘No!’”. When we got to Jack’s room, it was like history repeating itself. Doctors, nurses and anaesthetists were performing CPR, but only this time it was for my oldest son.
I tried to be strong. I willed myself to be brave. “I love you Jack”, I shouted, hoping to give him my strength. I resolutely refused to give up hope. I couldn’t give up. I couldn’t.
But then the surgeon cut off Jack’s bandages, and I saw Jack’s chest and torso for the first time. That’s when my heart and soul cracked open. When I saw how badly injured my son was, I knew I couldn’t beg him to fight any longer. His poor body had literally been ripped apart. The longer CPR continued, I knew the less of my son I would ever get back. After 20 minutes, I couldn’t watch anymore and left the room. At 45 minutes, I forced myself to go back in. An exhausted doctor looked at me. He was drenched in sweat, shaken and visibly upset. “I’m sorry,” he said.
He didn’t have to instruct the other medical staff to stop. I think they must have been waiting for me, and just parted so I could get to my son. My whole body was consumed in pain. Somehow, I walked to Jack and climbed onto the bed next to him. I took my lovely boy in my arms and held him tightly, just like I had with his younger brother five days earlier. “I love you to infinity and beyond,” I whispered, repeating the same phrase we had had told one another for years.
The medical staff discreetly stepped out, leaving me to envelop my son and hold onto our final moments together. The room was silent except for the single flat monotone of the machine, confirming the life of my gentle boy, who had the heart and courage of a lion, had been stolen away from me.
But even worse, this wasn’t some tragic accident. Both Jack and Paul had been murdered at the hands of their father, a man consumed by anger and hatred. Anger and hatred towards me, and he had committed the final act of cruelty, by taking away the two people I loved most in the world.
I no longer wanted to live, but something told me I had to carry on, so I made one final promise. I quietly whispered into Jack’s ear, I would do everything I could to prevent any more children dying, at the hands of a parent. Then I silently vowed to myself that no other mum or dad, not one, should ever have to hold their child in their arms as they die, knowing it’s at the hands of the other parent.
I was vaguely aware of people filling the room, though I barely recognised their movements. I was, however, acutely aware of the awful, deafening silence when all the machines and monitors were switched off, and a simultaneous pain raging through my chest, like a gale force wind.
I couldn’t let my son go and I curled myself closer to Jack’s, tightly encircling him in my arms. I couldn’t let him go. I needed him. I had to keep him close, because I knew as soon as I let Jack go, my life as I knew it was finally over. I would have to face a new, unbearable, reality.
DC Dave arrived. His eyes were red, betraying an upset he was trying to hide, but somehow, he took charge. Kindly and compassionately, he gently prised me off Jack, allowing the medical staff to do what they needed to so. No longer physically connected to my son, I found I couldn’t hear. Instead, a roaring sound filled my ears, and my vision blurred as my eyes flooded with tears. Then everything went black.
Claire’s book , For My Boys, is out now. With a foreword from Mel B, it tells the story of Jack and Paul and calls on The Government to change the presumption of contact guidelines. To order For My Boys published by Mirror Books, click here.
If you or a loved one needs help with a toxic relationship visit www.womensaid.org.uk, call Samaritans on 116 123, or call the National Domestic Abuse Helpline – 0808 2000 247 (free phone run by Refuge) / The Men’s Advice Line, for male domestic abuse survivors – 0808 801 0327 (run by Respect). In an emergency, always call 999.
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