It takes a strong stomach to confront the details of the way in which Claire Throssell’s two sons – Paul, nine, and Jack, 12 – were killed by their father in 2014 after he was granted access to the boys by the family court. The case was explored in grim detail in Rob Rinder’s admirable crime show. This was a man whom their sons feared, but a family court judge made the decision to allow Throssell’s ex-husband unsupervised access to the children for five hours a week. The children did not feel safe with him. As their mother said, ‘he saw our children as possessions’.

‘I defy any judge to see children crying and physically holding onto you, physically shaking, and saying they don’t want to see their dad,’ their mother said, ‘and see how they felt as a parent, having to say to them, “You’ve got to go.”’

The father bought the boys a new train set and while they were playing with it, barricaded the house from inside and set fire to it. Jack, who had tried to save his little brother, told as many people as possible in hospital before he died, ‘My dad did this, and he did it on purpose.’

It is cases like this that have led the Government to remove the presumption in family law (introduced in 2014 to the Children Act 1989) that contact with both parents is in the interests of a child. The justice minister, Alex Davies-Jones, said this week that the government has found a legislative means of repealing it without waiting until there is enough parliamentary time.

It would be a victory for domestic abuse campaigners, but the obvious question is whether the presumption does need repealing or just implementing sensibly. Plainly there is a common-sense argument that children benefit from contact with both their parents after separation or divorce but not in the case of abusive and violent parents like Claire Throssell’s former husband. In situations where one parent weaponises their children against the other – family barristers must have the lowest view of human nature of any member of the profession – denying access to a child is not uncommon. I know of one case in Kosovo where a mother alleged violence on the part of her former husband, who was proven to be innocent of any offence, in order to secure sole custody of their son and failed subsequently to allow supervised access.

The presumption of contact with a child is not, after all, unconditional. The original provision suggested that, unless proven unsafe, a child should have some form of relationship with both parents following separation.

The court must always consider what arrangements are in the children’s best interests, and it takes into account what’s known as the ‘welfare checklist’. This includes the risk of harm to a child. Plainly in the case of Claire Throssell’s children, allowing unsupervised access by the father was a catastrophic misjudgement (a subsequent investigation decided, oddly, that his actions could not have been anticipated although he seems to have given as many indications as Euripides’ Medea that he wasn’t safe with his children). But those murders happened in the same year that the presumption of contact was introduced. We have mechanisms to protect children with or without the presumption principle and maybe the real issue is how to apply those safeguards.

Would repealing the presumption that the child should have contact with both parents make much difference? Either way, a child’s safety is, or should be, paramount. But let’s cut to the chase here. Most of the parents who have custody of their children after divorce or separation are women; the parent seeking equal contact is likely to be the father. And the trouble is that while the fathers who kill their children are relatively rare (67 children have been killed in the last 30 years in this context, by a parent who was a perpetrator of domestic abuse, according to Women’s Aid). Those who lose contact with their children against their will are more numerous. Repealing the presumption of contact won’t mean that divorced or separated fathers will get short shrift from the family courts but it will certainly be interpreted that way. A child isn’t a mother’s chattel any more than a father’s; it would be a pity if the need to protect children from cruel fathers were at the expense of those who do love them.