Woman Abused as Child Calls for Law Change to Strip Abusive Parents of Visitation Rights

A woman who said she was abused as a child by her mother has called for a change in the law so abusive parents lose their rights to see their children.

Kelly Higgins, 40, went to live with foster parents after her birth mother Bernadette McNeilly was jailed in 1993 for her part in the torture and murder of the children's babysitter, 16-year-old Suzanne Capper, in Moston, Manchester.

But despite McNeilly being in prison, she retained some rights to see her "petrified" children and make some decisions about their lives.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said protecting children was its "absolute priority".

McNeilly was one of a group of six that held Capper captive for eight days, burning her, pulling her teeth out, starving her and finally dousing her in petrol and setting her alight.

A judge jailed McNeilly, then 24, for life. But as birth mother to Kelly and her brother, her approval had to be given for things such as the children going on holiday abroad or having their ears pierced.

Kelly said visitation rights for abusive parents allowed them to exercise a form of control, adding: "It's still manipulation and it is still abuse – massive abuse on these children's little minds."

Kelly was seven and her brother James was five when their birth mother lured Capper to their home in Moston with a gang of five others. She was held captive there and later at another address.

Kelly said she remembered "hearing the scratches on the wall and the screaming".

Capper was forced out of a car at Werneth Low, Stockport, but suffered 70% burns and died soon after.

Kelly said McNeilly also physically abused her and her younger brother, but she claims reports of the abuse made to Manchester City Council's social services and to Greater Manchester Police were ignored.

Her mother has never been convicted of abusing her children.

"We were regularly tied to chairs, hit with belts," Kelly said. She added that some of the physical abuse happened in public, which led to "reports to social services".

On other occasions, she said, they would end up in hospital after beatings.

After the children were placed with foster families, McNeilly retained some degree of control over their lives.

Kelly said that while she was scared of her birth mother, "there is a very strange thing that no one understands unless you've been a child in that position".

"Once you go into a place where that mum who has been your abuser is actually nice – and you sit on her knee and she's stroking your hair and she's cuddling you and she's loving you – you then don't want to leave".

Kelly's foster mother Sue Williams, 73, said "it was tears going in [to visit] and tears coming out".

"It was hard but I had to do it. "I tried to talk her round and say it's your mum at the end of the day.

"Coming away that was horrific as well. So you were fighting with two feelings.

"We want to be able to say we can have a life with you, and not have to answer to somebody who's hurt you so much, because that keeps hurting the child," Sue said.

Kelly said a transfer of parental rights from abusive birth parents to foster parents would encourage more people to foster children.

"Sue and Pete's love for me is why I am who I am today," she added.

An MoJ spokesperson said that "through our Victims and Courts Bill we've automatically restricted the exercise of parental responsibility in cases of rape where it has led to the birth of a child, and serious child sexual offences with a sentence of four years or more".

Kelly said she did not believe the changes announced went far enough.

"Some of these children have got cigarette burns on their bodies, some of them have got scars on their faces, on their arms, on their legs – and they've got an answer for every single mark on their bodies as to who did it – and yet these foster carers are still having to drag these poor children to visit that abuser," she said.

The government has also pledged to enact a new law removing parental rights from those convicted of killing someone they have children with, but has been criticised for acting too slowly.

In addition, family court law is going to be changed so it is no longer based on the idea that contact with both parents is usually in a child's best interest.