Maya's Law: Petition by County Durham family hits 100k signatures
The milestone means it could be debated in Parliament
The 'Maya's Law' campaign by a County Durham family could be debated in Parliament after their petition hit more than 100,000 signatures in just four months.
The campaign started in memory of Maya Chappell who was shaken to death by her mum's partner at the time in 2022.
The two year-old's family has been calling for a new Child Risk Disclosure Scheme to be brought in so people can access information about caregivers’ violent or abusive histories.
The petition now has over 100,000 signatures meaning it could be debated by politicians in Westminster.
Gemma Chappell, Maya's great aunt, said: "Thank you so much for everything that everybody's done. I can't believe it. We were stuck at about 26,000 about two weeks ago and Richie Howey, an influencer, got messaged by one of my friends, Charlotte, just out of the blue. He just sat there and went 'I need to get behind this family and give these children a voice.'
"We're not stopping at this 100,000. We've still got days left and we still need to get voices for Maya.
"When people watch a series on the telly and they got hooked, everyone's been hooked on these numbers but they've also got behind it. Honestly to see it go over that 100,000 is something that is just a complete milestone and I couldn't be prouder of myself, my family, and everybody that's got behind it.
"I was always hopeful that we can still do this. There's plenty of people in this that wants to support children, so we just needed some sort of vehicle to help us get that out there and we got that in Richie but I was always hopeful. We just had to keep working at it every day and every second just to keep the word out there.
"Every single person that's liked, signed, shared, done a video for us, done a post for us, opened up to us about stories, lived experiences that they've got, every single one of them if that's even just got one signature, that's one signature more than what we had.
"From the bottom of our hearts both Rachel and I thank you so much because without the power of people behind us, we can't get this through. We can't keep going. We need support around this. We need their voices to be a voice for Maya and for Maya's voice to be a voice for all the children."
If the petition had not reached 100,000 by Thursday (5th Feb), it would have reset back to zero.
Gemma added: "I even wrote up a new petition to go back out to ask, so I had already planned for it to not hit that 100,000 and the fact that I can now scrap those plans is brillant. I can't wait to rip them up, to say that we don't need to do another petition."