The painful reality of the Sara Sharif case

It is a sad day when a child dies, and it is truly a terrible one when this happens at the hands of their family. For Sara Sharif, this happened in a way unimaginable to most people. Even when taking into account what we thought we already knew about the awful extent of child abuse, what happened to Sara was profoundly horrifying. 

When something happens to a child that has been subject to proceedings, we as legal professionals cannot help but feel a collective pain that those amongst our number were involved to one extent or another. In that context, it is easy to understand how Mr Justice Williams came to his decision in December 2024, when his thoughts turned to the welfare of his colleagues, and, concerned about a public backlash, he made orders to protect the apparent anonymity of the Judges concerned in Sara’s earlier Children Act proceedings.

The decision by Mr Justice Williams

The application before Mr Justice Williams concerned the lifting of reporting restrictions and the inevitable identification of those involved, either directly by naming them or else by giving sufficient information to cause them to be identified. Mr Justice Williams had taken the view that the presiding judges were to be included in the list of those whose identification was under consideration. Yet the names of the judiciary and details of their decisions are already publicly available to an extent, appearing on any published judgment and on the court listing alongside the case concerned. Although it would take some digging to find which judge had dealt with which case, the information was nevertheless already in the public domain. That aside, the fact that Mr Justice Williams was considering an injunction to prevent the publication of their names caused a stir, as if anonymity was in place and should remain so.

The Court of Appeal’s decision

The Court of Appeal made findings of procedural irregularity and of unfairness, and Mr Justice Williams had made a number of comments about the press that promoted those findings of unfairness. Those matters would have meant the appeal was allowed in any event. However, the more interesting point was that of jurisdiction, namely whether the judge had the jurisdiction to make the decision at all. The Court of Appeal concluded that he did not. 

The court’s power to preserve anonymity has its base in Section 37 of the Senior Courts Act 1981, which gives the court wide injunctive powers. Mr Justice Williams considered this alongside Section 6 of the Human Rights Act, which sets out that it is unlawful for a public authority, including a court, to act in a way that is incompatible with a person’s rights under the Human Rights Act 1998. In this case, the judge considered that Article 8 should be considered, that everyone has the right to respect for their private and family life, their home and their correspondence.

Article 10 was also engaged, the right to freedom of expression, and a balancing act would determine where the scales rested. So far so good. However, where the judge erred was the manner in which he decided upon the Article 8 rights of the judges concerned.

There was no application before the court to deal with that issue specifically. The court has a discretion to consider matters peripheral and relevant to the decisions it is being asked to make, otherwise how would litigants in person ever manage? The court can also, on fairly minor issues, take judicial notice of commonly known factors. The problem here was not necessarily that there was no application being advanced, but that that the judge made a decision without having seen or heard evidence on this point, and without submissions being made. The jurisdiction to make those orders was not engaged. Even had this technical hurdle been overcome, it would still have given rise to the question as to which way the balancing act should in fact fall. Absent of any clear evidence of threat to the Article 2, 3 or 8 rights of the judges concerned that were so significant that they outweighed the right to freedom of expression, then the balance should fall in favour of publication.

Instead, it was a decision taken by the judge based on his view about how he thought the judges would be treated by the general public. As it turns out, he was right about those judges being subjected to negative comments on social media, but such predictions cannot form the legal basis for a decision.

The Children Act proceedings

This point brings us right back to the original decisions concerning Sara. The judges involved in those earlier proceedings were similarly constrained. The court has to act on evidence, and not on conjecture or instinct. 

There were two sets of care proceedings, the last concluding in November 2015. That case ran for 52 weeks which, in itself, tells us that it was not a straightforward case. It is generally the case that where the parents of children in care proceedings put in the work, make sufficient genuine changes, and are assessed as low risk, then a great many cases conclude in children remaining in the care of their parents. Imagine the outcry otherwise, if children were simply placed into care? This was one such case. Based on the progress made by the parents, and an assessment as to her ability to care for the children, all of the parties agreed that the children should live with their mother, Mrs Sharif. A child arrangements order was made under Section 8 of the Children Act 1989 that Sara lived with her mother and had supervised contact with her father, alongside a supervision order, giving the Local Authority the ability to befriend and assist the children and, in turn, to keep an eye on the family.

In 2017, an anonymous referral was made to social services that Sara’s mother was hitting the children and leaving them unattended. That did not appear to give rise to any action on the part of the Local Authority, certainly not further proceedings, and the children remained with their mother until 2019, when Sara’s father raised concerns about Mrs Sharif using physical chastisement. The fateful decision was then taken, agreed between Mrs Sharif and Mr Sharif, that the children would live with Mr Sharif. The Local Authority on that occasion closed their case because they were satisfied that Mr Sharif was caring for them appropriately, and it is in that context that the final set of proceedings arose. 

A private application was brought by Mr Sharif and Ms Batool to vary the earlier child arrangements order, with Mrs Sharif as the respondent. There was agreement between the parties that the children should live with Mr Sharif, but nevertheless the judge hearing the case directed that a Section 7 report be undertaken so that the children’s circumstances could be examined more closely.

That report was undertaken by Surrey Social Services, who conducted a number of interviews and enquiries, and interviewed the children themselves. At that time, Sara’s mother said that she had no concerns about the children being in their father’s care. Both Sara and her sibling said that they were scared of their mother and liked living with Mr Sharif and Ms Batool, and that they felt safe with them. The school the children attended had no safeguarding concerns about the children living with Mr Sharif and Ms Batool. The Section 7 report writer concluded that the children should live with Mr Sharif and Ms Batool.

Although the court can go against Section 7 report recommendations, it must have a good reason for doing so. There appears to have been no basis for the judge to make any decision other than to either make ‘no order’ if none were considered necessary or, as in this case, to vary the earlier order to confirm the arrangements already in place. Whatever horror we may feel at Sara ending up in her father’s care, it is difficult to find fault with the legal processes that were followed, or with the judges faced with those decisions. 

The fact remains that, whatever the statutory framework, judges can only work on the evidence before them. For Sara, the obvious question will undoubtedly be this: what, if any, interventions could have been put in place to protect her? The bigger question, however, is how a parent could conceal such abuse from professionals over a sustained period, and with such tragic consequences.

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