Huddersfield GBH father to battle jail term

Jun 23 2009 By Sam Casey

She told Sykes: "You present a significant danger to young vulnerable children left unsupervised in your care."

But yesterday Bradford Crown Court told the Examiner an appeal against Sykes’s sentence had been lodged. It is not yet known when the appeal will be dealt with.

The news came as Charlie’s mum, Joanne Senior, went on the This Morning programme on ITV1 to talk about her experience.

Joanne wants legislation to enable people to find out if their partners have committed any previous offences of violence against children.

When asked by presenters Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton if one previous conviction should be flagged up time and time again, she said: "Yes I do. In Paul’s case it was such a long time since his previous conviction, but it did happen again."

She said there could be a system for doctors to access information about a man’s previous conviction when they go on to father children.

Claude Knights, director of children’s charity Kidscape, said it would be difficult to have a system that would have helped Joanne because Sykes had not displayed any violent tendencies before injuring Charlie.

"There would need to be some way of monitoring offenders quite intensively, and that would be difficult," she said.

"Hopefully what Joanne has done will help highlight that people working in child protection need to think about what might be done, because her situation cannot be unique."