CLAIRE: I blame myself for what happened.
The coroner says it wasn't my fault.
The police said if it hadn't been that night,
it would have been another night, and I wouldn't have been
able to stop it.
But they only died
because he wanted to punish me.
I'm angry,
I'm broken... It is just torture.
I don't want anybody to have to live the way I do.
I don't live, I exist.
[producer speaks indistinctly]
Ah...
Just give me a... a minute.
WOMAN: At first glance, an ordinary family house.
But what happened here last night destroyed lives.
I will not speak his name... To call him by
his name is to give him a presence.
And he doesn't deserve a presence in this world.
MAN: There is a palpable sense of
shock in this quiet residential street.
I'm not gonna call him a man, because he wasn't a man.
He was just pure evil.
MAN: After the Sykes had divorced,
father, Darren, became vengeful.
No one could have anticipated what followed.
CLAIRE: I despise him for what he's done.
Everybody eventually started to see who he was,
but it was too late by then.
[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]
[strings continue playing sinister tune]
[static crackling]
[knock at door] [creaking]
[banging on door]
[creaking]
[water dripping]
[banging on door] [creaking]
[sinister chord strikes]
This photograph here was taken on our wedding day,
and he got quite emotional and started crying,
saying he was so happy...
and that he would love me forever.
At that moment, we were happy.
And then,
from that moment,
things started to change.
And I just feel sorry for the younger me in
this photograph.
Little did I know what was to come.
What started out
as a fairy tale wedding
turned into a nightmare.
And thinking about it now, I feel slightly sick, because...
he turned into a monster.
How he turned from a prince to a monster
in such a short time was scary.
♪♪
[sinister music plays]
♪♪
I first met Darren on the 19th
of October in 1996 at a store opening.
We both worked for the same company.
He was a salesman.
My first impressions of him was that
he was arrogant and very self confident.
He was asking me out, and it was like,
not really interested.
Don't really want to meet you again.
Thanks, but no thanks type of thing.
And then the red rose came the next day,
and it said, "Please go out with me."
The next day, another red rose came,
and he sent a red rose for three weeks.
I thought, "Wow, he must be really, really",
"really keen to send a rose for three weeks," and people
were saying, "Oh, my boyfriend doesn't do that.
I wish my boyfriend did that."
And everybody was saying at the time,
"Wow, he must really love you."
Everybody thought he was a good guy,
and I said I would go out with him.
Hi, Darren?
CLAIRE: The way he hooked me in was with the attention.
Darren bombarded me with love and tokens of gestures
of affection.
Every other week, he'd send a bouquet of flowers.
He was sending all these extravagant...
gifts... that's a warning sign.
Now, with domestic abuse training,
they now turn it as love bombing.
This is the first sign of their obsession.
Makes you feel a little bit more special than normal,
and that's a dangerous feeling to have, because it blinds you
to everything else that's around you.
It's like a spider that's
weaving this web, and then all of a sudden you're caught,
and you get snarled up in this web.
That's the best way to describe it.
♪♪
He wanted control of everything.
He would look at my emails.
He would start going through my phone.
I came home from work, and there was
a letter on the side, and it had been opened.
Did you read my mail?
CLAIRE: And I said, "That's actually addressed to me,"
and he said, "Well, there's no secrets between us."
What's the problem?
You trying to hide something from me?
CLAIRE: I think he snooped, because he wanted
to own every aspect of my life.
Nothing was just mine.
And it got to a point where you feel
like your every move is being monitored.
[phone ringing]
I'd turn up at work, and half
an hour later, the phone would ring.
This is Claire.
And it would be him
on the phone, "Just checking that you're okay."
Oh, that's sweet.
Then an hour later, the phone would ring again,
and it would be him saying something like, "Oh",
"I just want to hear your voice.
Oh, I just want to tell you that I love you."
I actually need to get back to work, so...
I'll talk to you tonight?
And by the end, I was having 40 phone calls a day.
What comes across as very caring and very loving at the start
starts to become very oppressive,
very intimidating.
And you feel like not one single moment
of the day is yours.
[phone ringing]
Because...
you're just being trapped all day long.
I realized that spying on me was getting out of control
when I found out that he was talking to my colleagues
behind my back.
I felt like I was being spied on,
like my whole life was being monitored.
I wanted him to realize
that his behavior wasn't normal,
but he didn't see anything wrong with what he was doing.
It seemed like wherever I was, he was there.
If I had a day off and I was meeting somebody for a coffee,
he'd turn up.
I was going out with the girls, and I got ready to go,
and he said, "Oh, where are you going?"
So I told him where we were going.
[glasses clink]
We went to the pub, we got the wine,
we're talking, and he just turned up and sat down.
Hello, ladies.
And I... all my friends were kind of looking,
and it was like, "This is a girls' night.
You're a guy. What are you doing?"
Darren, what are you doing here?
He'd sit there as if nothing was wrong.
I just missed you is all.
At first, my friends thought, he must really love you.
But then, after he turned up at a girl's night,
they started to view things differently.
My friends withdrew and felt like they couldn't
talk about what they wanted to talk about that night.
They just stopped inviting me along,
stopped including me in things.
Who wants another drink?
CLAIRE: And looking back, that's another warning sign that
he's starting to isolate you from your friends.
This is how it starts, and you don't
even realize that the abuse has started.
I'm sorry. I didn't think he would just show up.
CLAIRE: It doesn't take much
to start feeling those old feelings again.
Doesn't take much for me to feel useless and worthless.
Abuse doesn't stay with the abuser.
It stays with the abused.
You carry those feelings with you always.
New Year's Eve was when things really changed between us.
That was the first time that I saw what he was capable of.
We were going out for a meal with my mom and dad,
and then an argument started.
Why are you wearing that?
And these insults are being hurled at you,
very personal insults.
I had just about had enough, and I just flipped.
And I said, "I'm leaving. I've had enough."
You know what? I'm going by myself.
CLAIRE: So he went and locked the door
so that I couldn't leave the house.
And that then made me realize I was trapped.
I knew when he looked me in the it wasn't gonna end well.
You're not going anywhere.
It was like a red mist would come over his face,
and there was a twist to it that looked evil.
To see that was scary.
It's almost like he had a split personality.
And he punched me on my arm here,
and there was a big bruise.
I was angry that he'd hurt me and shocked, as well.
By this time, I was thinking, right,
I'd just rather cancel tonight.
You know what?
Let's just forget the whole thing.
But he said, "No, you want to go out with your parents.
So we're going out."
Now, go upstairs and get changed.
CLAIRE: So we went out that night,
and my dad immediately picked up on the bruise.
But I said I'd walked into the banister of the stairs.
And that was the first time that
I'm not being honest with my dad.
I wish now that I had told him the truth.
But you cover up for people,
and you cover up for your own humiliation.
He started being really pushy.
Um, wanted it all the time.
It was like another thing that was on overdrive.
Every night, he'd be wanting relations,
and it's like you don't want to have relations with
somebody when they made you feel like a piece of dirt
or when they've hurt you.
What are you doing?
- What do you think I'm doing? - No, Darren.
It's invading your body.
And you should be allowed to say no,
but he didn't understand the word no.
I said no.
CLAIRE: I would say no, and he'd carry on anyway.
And there were many, many times
he would force himself.
You just feel used and dirty,
and there's nothing worse or nothing more lonely.
I used to lay there and then go in the shower,
scrubbing myself in the shower, because I don't feel clean.
That feeling never goes away.
You begin to feel like just an object.
Looking back, it's another sign that things weren't right.
Despite everything going wrong in the marriage,
I didn't leave, because the year that I probably would
have left, I accidentally got pregnant with Jack.
Perhaps Jack coming along would change him as
a person, because people change when you have children.
But it only made his behavior worse rather than better.
There was a day, and Jack was just four months old.
Darren wanted some new furniture.
Oi, have a look at this.
CLAIRE: And this has been going on
for a long time, picking this furniture.
All the decor was picked by him.
Then argued and argued and argued,
and he was still saying he wanted furniture that
he wanted.
So I just says, whatever.
Do what you want. I don't care.
He just lost his temper, and just like a child, picked up
the heavy wooden chair, and he just
threw it across the room at me,
and it hit me on my ankle.
Are you serious?
CLAIRE: He was infuriated that
I wasn't giving him the response that he wanted.
Now, Jack was on the floor, and it could have hit Jack,
and it was a flashpoint for me.
And I gave him an ultimatum and said,
"If you don't learn to control your temper,
then I'm leaving, and I'm taking Jack with me."
I just walked out and went for a walk and walked and walked
and walked,
but I took Jack with me, because I didn't trust him
with Jack.
And when I came back, he said,
"Don't take Jack away from me again."
You will never take my son away from me.
Do you understand?
And that was the first warning sign that he saw
the children as a possession
and that he thought he was entitled to
the children more than me.
And the next day, flowers would arrive.
The worse the arguments got,
the more the flowers arrived.
I hate flowers now.
If somebody gives me some flowers,
I don't associate them with nice things.
I just see it as somebody who can't say sorry.
He went on the anger management course,
worked for a while, and then
just slip back into his old ways.
Leopards don't change the spots.
CLAIRE: In March 2002, Jack was born,
and three years later, Paul was born,
and there they were, two perfectly beautiful children,
most precious thing in the world.
But when the children was young, um,
as a father, he wasn't involved.
As a family, we didn't really have happy family moments.
When you look at that photograph,
he's smiling in that photograph as if he's
the proudest father on Earth.
But that happy look on his face...
didn't last.
Evil lurked within and raised its head more and more.
It was him that was the monster
that couldn't be stopped and would never change.
I think,
as a man and as a father, he was jealous of their talent,
and he was turnin' his spite and anger onto them.
This was my 40th birthday,
and there's Jack with his trumpet
playing Happy Birthday to me.
You can see in his eyes there
that he's watching his dad.
You can see the wary look on his face,
and there's fear in those eyes,
and that's because one day, he wants to do is practice,
but his dad didn't want to hear and plays beautiful music.
He wanted a television program on,
so he just took it out on Jack.
His dad, out of spite, knocked his trumpet
and made him cut his lip.
And he ended up with blood running down his chain.
This is Paul.
That smile there.
You'd just see him lit up from the inside out.
This was where he came alive.
He just loved to run.
In running, he was free.
In running, he expressed himself.
But one day, I was cooking tea,
and then all of a sudden, there was this hullabaloo,
and Paul was crying, and he came in to me, and he got red
marks on his legs, and he says,
"Dad's hurt me. Dad's hurt me."
Darren had been twisting Paul's legs.
He was supposedly play fighting.
We were just wrestling, having a little fun.
And because he was a runner, his father targeted his legs,
because if he twisted his legs and hurt his legs,
he wouldn't be able to run.
You could have really hurt him.
So it was his way of spoiling Paul's passion.
He was jealous of his own child.
In the end, I said that he needed to back
off from Paul and he needed to give him some space.
And he needed to stop bullying him.
And he said, "I'm not a bully."
He needs to toughen up.
I felt like I couldn't even leave him with them
on my days off, because I didn't trust him.
And what does that say about him as a father,
when I feel like I can't trust him to look after the children?
Jack and Paul didn't trust their dad.
They'd been hurt by him.
They were on eggshells with him.
If we were sat on a big sofa,
I'd be sat on one side, and the boys would be
crushed in with me as far... As far in as they could.
And they get the comments,
"Oh, you don't want to sit next to me, then?"
Well, why would you want to sit
next to somebody who twists your legs?
Or why would you want to sit
next to somebody that makes your lip bleed?
- You wouldn't, would you? - What?
I'm not good enough for you, is that it?
CLAIRE: They didn't want to be with him.
It was me that had the bond with them,
and he resented that bond, because whenever
they needed anything,
it was me that they came to and not him.
♪♪
I don't want that photograph near me.
That was the boys, uh, having an ice cream.
As you can see on that picture, Paul's looking away.
He didn't want to sit next to his dad.
There's a space between them,
and you can tell that he's on edge.
Jack's tolerating him,
but if you look at his body language,
he's closing off from his dad.
He's certainly not snuggling in and doesn't look happy
to be sat there.
That photograph just makes me feel ill
and angry.
One evening, I was sat on the sofa
and watching the news.
And on the news came this report that a father
in Wales had killed his children and then hung himself.
And I was absolutely heartbroken for that mom.
That's horrible. That poor mother.
CLAIRE: And I said,
"How could he have taken those children's lives?
How can anybody do that?"
Can you imagine?
And Darren's answer was, "Well, I understand
"why he did it,
"because fathers
aren't treated the same way as mothers."
And I just went cold, because the tone of voice,
he completely believed what he was saying.
That is a horrible thing to say.
It's true.
And I said, "How can you say that?"
And he said, "Well, they're not."
He understood exactly why that father
took his children's lives away,
and I was appalled.
Nobody's got the right
to take a child's life away.
I found it incredible that he could
even contemplate that,
let alone understand why he'd done it.
That was another warning sign for me.
It was almost like a premonition.
I knew inside that the children
would not be safe with him.
The boys were asking to leave.
I didn't have the money
to leave, and I knew that if I left,
he would have access to the children.
And if I wasn't there, who was gonna keep them safe?
I had a responsibility to keep them safe.
The final straw for me came in 2014.
The abuse was extending to the boys,
and I realized that I had to leave.
One evening, Jack and I were upstairs,
and their father was up there,
and he was getting on at him for doing his homework.
Enough fooling about!
You've got a report to finish.
CLAIRE: Jack came out with a flippant remark,
and the next thing I knew was
his father lunging towards him with his fist.
The force of the impact spun me around,
and I fell down the stairs.
And I realized that
I could no longer stay.
I knew I had to get out pretty quick,
because he could have locked the doors.
He could have done anything.
I just quickly scooped them up and said,
"Go to the car, go to the car."
And they just run to the car.
And I just said, "That's it. That's it."
It was just survival mode.
I saw this as an escape.
That's when the real abuse started.
His behavior went out of control.
He stalked me.
He sent text messages to my family,
abusive messages, which was absolutely horrible.
The day that my divorce came through,
I was taking the boys out for a meal,
basically to lift the mood a little bit.
And then as I walked out of the restaurant
and got in the car,
the tire on the driver's side
was down, and when I looked at it,
there was a big slash in the tire.
And I just went cold, because I knew who'd done that.
And I went back into the restaurant and said,
"Have you got any CCTV footage?"
And they went, "No, we don't have cameras."
So I didn't bother to report it to the police, because
I had no evidence, and it would have been a she said,
he said situation, which could have made things worse.
So I let it go.
But I knew that we were in danger.
Obviously, I believe that contact was
not in the boys' best interest,
and I had to go to court
to ensure that the boys were kept safe.
I was sat in the waiting area, being intimidated by him.
He was glaring at me across
the room, and he was verbally shouting.
Are you happy now?
I bet you think you've won.
CLAIRE: He was saying that I was manipulative.
I was a bitch.
I should tell the boys that it's
my fault that they're not seeing their dad.
But there was one sentence that he said,
and that was, "You will never have the children.
You'll never have the boys."
You're not going to take them away from me.
I promise you that!
CLAIRE: I could see that his anger was escalating,
but because there wasn't enough evidence of
physical violence
to stop him seeing the children completely,
five hours access was granted.
And when five hours non-supervised contact
was issued,
I almost fell to pieces.
Given the behavior in that courtroom,
I knew that those children were in danger,
and I couldn't do anything about it.
Nobody listened to the warning that I gave.
Everybody thought he wasn't capable of murder,
and I knew he was.
On the 22nd of October, they had
gone on an access visit to their father.
The day started just like any other day,
and as I dropped them off at school,
I said to them, as I did every morning, "I love you."
And they'd answer, "To infinity and beyond."
They loved "Toy Story."
Those were the last words
we spoke to each other in this world.
Later on, I came home from work.
I sat down, I'd just literally finished my tea,
and there was a knock on the door.
And I opened the door,
and there was a policeman stood on the doorstep.
We know each other, and when I came out, his face fell.
And the first words I said was, "What has he done?"
And the police officer said,
"There's been an incident at the house."
He said, "There's been a fire",
"and you need to come now with me.
The boys are at the children's hospital."
And that's all I knew.
WOMAN: At first glance, an ordinary family house,
but what happened here last night destroyed lives.
A father, Darren Sykes, was at home with his two sons
when a blaze took hold of the property.
Fire crews battled through the heat to find
all three trapped.
And I remember we got to Sheffield Children's Hospital.
I walked into this little room.
And my head was saying...
this isn't happening, and my heart was
screaming in pain, and the medic said, "Are you"
Jack and Paul's mom?" I said yes.
And he said, "Come with me."
MAN: The blaze broke out at around half past six last night.
Neighbors said at first they didn't realize anyone was in
the house, because Mr. Sykes's van wasn't parked outside.
By the time firefighters arrived, they found the father
and his two sons on the ground floor,
and attempts were made to revive them.
CLAIRE: I saw Paul, and I saw them doing CPR on him.
And his little body was bouncing off the bed,
and reality hit like a slap.
One part of my brain was screaming,
"That's my son.
My nine-year-old little boy lying there having CPR."
They looked at me, and they said,
"We're going to let him go now."
And I said, "No! No, you can't let him go."
And they said,
"All we can do now is let him go."
And they let me hold him in my arms.
I held him so tightly... His hair was wet
with my tears.
And I said,
"Paul, you can't leave. It's mom. I'm here."
And, um...
He looked at me and smiled,
and then the light just went out of his eyes,
and his beautiful blue eyes,
they just went gray.
And nothing was looking back.
And the nurse came past and subtly closed his eyes,
and then he just looked like he was sleeping.
And to know that I would never hear his laugh,
watch him run, have a future
and that I could only hold him as he died and told him
that I loved him...
I felt shame, pain.
And I felt as if I'd
physically been torn apart.
The detective sergeant came from the family liaison unit
and said that the fire had been set on purpose.
It wasn't an accident.
They told me that Jack had told the fireman that
cradled him in his arms that his dad had done this.
MAN: Jack was found on the first floor.
Conscious when he was taken to hospital,
he told police, "My dad started the fire."
CLAIRE: He'd set at least 14 separate fires.
The property was barricaded,
and there was no way that
the boys would have got out... He'd used a mattress
to barricade the living room and a kitchen chair
against the kitchen door to wedge that, too.
MAN: After the Sykes had divorced, father, Darren, became
vengeful... Sykes locked the house,
doused it in petrol, and set it alight.
Then they said to me, "Jack's in the other bay
if you want to come and see him,"
and they were running around, and they're all sweating,
and you could see on the faces the fear.
I just lost one son,
and they were doing their damnedest
to make sure that I didn't lose Jack, too.
This is two days after Jack
was taken to Manchester to
the pediatric intensive care burns unit.
This is what I looked at
for five days,
and I'm sorry that I upset
people when I show them these photos.
But this is reality.
This is real life.
And this is what happened to my beautiful 12-year-old boy.
He can't open his eyes... They're swollen and burnt.
And he's on a ventilator, because he's sedated.
Most of his body was destroyed.
He got these injuries from trying to rescue
his brother and get out of the fire.
And it kills me inside to keep showing this photograph.
But people need to know the reality.
This is what happens
when people don't listen.
I sat by this for five days.
I couldn't do anything other than read to him
and talk to him.
Jack wasn't in pain there. He was sedated.
But I hurt for him.
And not being able to help him,
I felt useless,
and all I could do was pray.
But it wasn't enough.
[beeping noises]
The next day, he started to deteriorate.
And if you watch medical programs, and you see the line
just go beeeeep...
That's exactly what happened.
There was no heartbeat at all.
[flatline beeping]
The medics were devastated, and they looked at me,
and I just waited for them to say it.
And they called it.
They told everybody to stop.
And the room just went eerily quiet.
[flatline beeping]
All you could hear was the one machine with a single beep,
and then just a line going across.
I held him in my arms,
but I didn't ask him to stay like I did
Paul, I just said...
"Be at peace. I love you."
He heard
that I loved it,
and I told him to be at peace now.
And I held him.
And then the detective came from Penistone, and he said,
"Now we're looking at a double murder."
And nobody touched me.
Nobody went near me.
And I just curled up on the floor in a ball,
because the pain, it was just too much.
I was really angry, because I wanted him
to face what he'd done.
They asked me to sit responsibility
for his body, and I refused.
My ex-husband did what he did
because
he couldn't accept that he wasn't loved.
He couldn't accept that he wasn't liked.
But the real reason why he did this...
was to punish me.
Those boys only died because of me.
They were taken away because he knew he couldn't have them.
And if he couldn't have them,
then nobody else could have them.
I had a tattoo done
and had their ashes mingled with the ink.
I wanted them close to my heart.
So the only place to make sure they were close
to my heart was to have a tattoo done on my chest.
To infinity and back.
These are the last words that we spoke to each
other in this world, and they were spoken in love,
and I have that love now etched forever next to
my heart.
The promise that I made to my two boys as they
lay dying in my arms was that I won't let this happen
to another child.
These laws need changing,
and they need changing now.
So I've challenged the government.
We're having a new domestic abuse
bill, which has now taken four years,
and we still haven't got it through Parliament.
And if I can change these laws in Jack and Paul's names,
then their legacy will live on long after I'm not around.
That's what I'm fighting for,
to make sure the right decisions are made for
the child, not for the parents,
for the child,
because they can't protect themselves.
Nevertheless, I should have fought the courts more,
and I have to live with those regrets.
The thing I regret the most is
not walking away.
There were signs, and I should have left rather
than stay and try to make the best of it.
I wish he'd taken his own life and left the boys.
I wish you'd taken mine and left the boys.
But all I can do now
is change the future.
I can't change the past, but I can change the future.
And that's what I'll keep trying to do.