More than 50 MPs have agreed that men who have fathered a child via rape should have their parental rights stripped from them.
Last year, Sammy Woodhouse, one of the survivors of the Rotherham grooming gang, went public after a report told the story of how her abuser was allowed to have access to her son.
And now MPs, across all parties, have decided to try and make it so that abusers are stripped of parental rights to children conceived by rape.
Sammy, 33, who was abused by Arshid Hussain when he was 24 years old and she just 14, said she had proof that her abuser would cause harm to her son. Hussein is serving a 35-year-jail sentence for his child abuse, and has no parental responsibility, but Rotherham Council made it possible for him to have access to the child he fathered through rape at a family court hearing concerning Sammy’s son’s care.
In a video posted to YouTube, Sammy said: ‘This story is about myself, about my son and about the man that raped me... and the fact that Rotherham Council have offered him to apply for parental rights over my child.’
She implored the government to do something about it, because the law, as it stands, means rapists can ‘retraumatise their victims’. She wanted them to ensure that the law could ‘protect children and mothers from harm’
She also pointed out this was happening to mothers up and down the country, and set up a petition calling for a change to the law. The petition currently has over 400,000 signatures.
The motion, tabled by shadow policing minister MP Louise Haigh, will demand a change to the Children Act 1989, reports The Times. It has been signed by more than 50 MPs.
This is not the first time Sammy has campaigned for a change to the law. In 2017, she called for a ‘Sammy’s law’. The idea was to waive all criminal convictions of those survivors of grooming gangs who’d committed crimes under instruction from their abuser. It’s also not the first time Rotherham authorities have left Sammy feeling let down. She has told of how, though many South Yorkshire police officers were in contact with her and Hussein, they never intervened in what they saw as a relationship between him and Sammy, even though she was just a child.