I’M an extremely proud father to my two children, seven-year-old Arthur and four-year-old Mia.

Their arrivals were life-changing events, ones which altered everything I’d known in my adult life – but their impact was most definitely for the better.

You’re thrust into a world where you’re completely relied upon by this tiny baby; nine months of pregnancy and gearing yourself up is not a lesson on how you actually adapt – it’s both the best thing in the world and one of the most daunting, too, but the way in which you take to it like a duck to water is remarkable.

Everything you do in life from that point on is – ultimately – for them and I noticed a huge change when Arthur was born in how I went about reporting close-to-the-bone, emotional stories.

I wasn’t particularly impacted, before – you just had to remove yourself and report the facts. It was part and parcel of the job; I reported on murder trials, rape cases and paedophiles at both Leeds and Sheffield Crown Court, but journalism has an odd habit of desensitising you.

That changed in 2018 when Arthur was born but before that point, I always recall reading former Chronicle colleague Lynsey Bradford’s harrowing stories about an inspirational woman by the name of Claire Throssell and just how shocked I was.

Having had the honour of speaking to and writing about her in more recent times, the parental aspect of what she’s been through resonates even more than before given my children are now growing older, thriving, hitting milestones at school and learning as each day goes by.

Claire’s sons – 12-year-old Jack and nine-year-old Paul – had their lives cut so cruelly short by someone who they should have been protected by at all costs.

Instead, they were lured to their home’s attic in Penistone by their despicable ‘father’, Darren Sykes, with the promise of a new train set on October 22, 2014.

Sykes sent texts to his sons telling them what he had bought, saying he needed ‘two engine drivers’, lulling them into a false sense of security.

He then barricaded the children inside and started a fire, which claimed their lives and his own via an indescribably horrendous act in which he even lodged chairs against door handles to prolong emergency responders’ rescue attempts.

But Claire – somehow – did not crumble in spite of the unimaginable horror and complete devastation she found herself having to confront head-on.

Last week, she released a book – For My Boys – which tells Claire’s heartbreaking story and her subsequent tale of determination to seek justice in honour of her beloved sons.

‘Presumption of contact’ – which is a legal principle which allows parents who have a known history of domestic abuse to have unsupervised contact with their children – is what should be scrapped, according to Claire who has submitted a petition with more than 100,000 signatures to the government.

It most definitely should – kids are the most precious gift that life can give you and any parent who disagrees with that, or brings disruption and upset to their lives – quite simply doesn’t deserve their time of day.

Imagining Claire’s pain simply cannot be done, and indeed it makes you think of your own children, but the fact that she’s point-blank refused to be silenced and has used her voice to campaign for changes in the law to protect other children is the very definition of inspirational.

Go get her book, please, and support her tireless quest for justice in Jack and Paul’s memory.