19th June, 2025

Nineteen More Child Homicides

Nineteen More Child Homicides is the third report published by Women’s Aid in the past three decades as part of Women’s Aid Child First campaign. This report tells the stories of children who have been killed by a parent who is a perpetrator of domestic abuse through child contact (formally or informally arranged). Nearly a decade on from the publication of Nineteen Child Homicides, this report documents a further 19 children’s lives that have been lost as a result of unsafe contact arrangements. These findings illustrate the need for a culture shift at all levels to domestic abuse from professionals involved in child contact arrangements, whether informal and formal.

Please cite this report as:  Women’s Aid. (2025) Nineteen More Child Homicides, Bristol: Women’s Aid.

Methodology

This study reviewed relevant serious case reviews (SCRs) and child safeguarding practice reviews (CSPRs) for England and Wales, published between September 2015 to September 2024 (inclusive). Building on findings from our previous reports we have included three case studies regarding the further harms that children experience through ongoing contact with parents who are perpetrators of domestic abuse.

Key findings

In 18 families 19 children were killed by perpetrators of domestic abuse who had access to these children through formal or informal contact arrangements.

17 of the 18 perpetrators were men, 15 of which were fathers to the children they killed. The remaining two were the biological fathers of other children in the family. In one case the perpetrator was female and mother to the child who was killed.
There were 28 deaths in total: 19, children, four women, two dogs, and three perpetrators who committed suicide.
There were 44 children of the mothers and fathers in these 18 case studies. This means that through these homicides, 25 children lost a sibling, eight lost a parent, and six children lost both a parent and a sibling.

In all the eight cases where the child who was killed was over five years old there was evidence to suggest that they were subject to coercive and controlling tactics by the perpetrator.

Coercive control experienced by children included preventing the children from accessing support, medical treatment, speaking to agencies alone or isolating them, verbal and physical threats, and physical abuse of the mother in front of the child/ren.
Children were not granted sufficient opportunity to disclose abuse or time to explore their feelings about contact with an abusive parent.
In two of the cases, the perpetrators had a history of committing child sexual abuse, including child sexual exploitation. In one of these cases the victim was the mother of one of the children killed and agencies had failed to respond appropriately to this concern at the time.

There is still a widespread lack of understanding of coercive control and how perpetrators use child contact as a tool to manipulate professionals.

Claims by perpetrators that their abusive behaviour was a result of only wishing to see their children was common.
In the three cases the mother was also killed a Domestic Abuse, Stalking, Harassment and Honour Based Violence (DASH) risk assessment had been completed and was scored as medium risk.

Ensuring specialist support for survivors is key, including financial support to overcome the impact of increases in the cost of living.

In five of the cases, the couple appeared to be living together despite being separated. In three of these cases, the reviews stated that this was for financial reasons. 
In two out of the three cases in the report where the mothers were from a Black or minoritised background there were issues around professionals not using interpreters and fears regarding information sharing from survivors with uncertain or insecure immigration status. Neither of these survivors were supported by a specialist Black and minoritised ‘by and for’ domestic abuse service who could have helped them to understand their rights.

There is a need for a culture shift at all levels in the response to domestic abuse from professionals involved in child contact arrangements, both informal and formal.

In the five cases where it was stated that the abusive behaviour of the perpetrator was not known to agencies, there were failed opportunities to ask or follow up concerns regarding domestic abuse.

There were two cases in these reviews where opportunities to provide the survivor with relevant information about the perpetrator’s history of abuse were not utilised.

In the same way that parental separation is a crucial risk indicator, so is the point in which agencies step down and end involvement. Agency separation, siloed working, and resource constraints was a risk factor for families in these cases.