Campaigners have called for the safety of children to be placed at the heart of court decisions following the murder of Ellie Butler.

The Belmont six-year-old, who was beaten to death by her father Ben in 2011, is one of 19 children murdered by parents known to have committed domestic abuse whose deaths feature in a new report by Women’s Aid.

The charity said unsafe child contact arrangements had allowed to killings to happen.

Ellie was placed in the care of her maternal grandparents after Butler, who was jailed for her murder in June this year, was found guilty of violently shaking her when she was seven weeks old.

He was jailed for 18 months for causing grievous bodily harm but his conviction was overturned in 2010 after the Court of Appeal ruled the cause of her injuries could not be conclusively established.

Less than a year after returning to the care of her parents, Butler killed his daughter in a fit of rage.

Ellie had been returned to her parents despite Sutton Council social services and Ellie’s grandparents pleading for her not to be.

Dame Mary Hogg, who ruled Ellie should be handed back to Butler, even ordered the council to send letters to education, child protection and health bodies stressing Butler’s innocence, and appointed private social workers to work with the family.

As part of its Child First campaign, which was supported by Conservative MP for Sutton and Cheam Paul Scully in Parliament last Thursday, Women’s Aid is urging the government to introduce protection measures for domestic abuse survivors and oversight of the implementation of legal framework guidelines.

Polly Neate, the charity’s chief executive, said: “In the criminal courts, there are protection measures in place to give victims fair access to justice. This is not the case in the family courts.

“It is common for victims of domestic abuse to be cross-examined by the perpetrator. This must end.

“The desire by the family courts to treat parents in exactly the same way, and get cases over with quickly, blinds them to the consequences of unsafe child contact. As the report shows, these consequences can be fatal.”

The senior coroner for south London said in July she believed a public inquiry should be held to examine events that led to Ellie’s killing.

Mr Scully said: “I know what it’s like for looking at families and how helpless they feel in these sort of cases, and can’t actually begin to imagine actually being involved at the heart of that abuse.

“So it’s really important that the police, the agencies and, of course, the family courts do everything they can and we work to make those agencies and family courts work, that these tragedies cannot happen again.”