A Lack of Transparency Leads to a Lack of Accountability in Family Court
Murder and Mayhem are Par for the Course — and will Remain So as Long as Family Courts are Permitted Secrecy
Family Courts, where problems of the family are supposed to be solved, instead inflict the greatest human rights violations and sacrifice of lives most families ever experience anywhere. This is because they are largely predatory organizations where not only dangerously-disordered litigants but dangerously-disordered judges and court actors gather and work together. It is not an accident that they are tone deaf to human suffering and indifferent to the loss of lives. There is an urgent need for transparency and accountability for judges who are mostly out of control in their own fiefdoms — and irreparably, if not lethally, harm innocent children and loving adults. Below is recent, rare reporting on the Family Courts by the Guardian:
Our Challenge to the Ban on Naming Sara Sharif Judges was Always about Scrutiny, Not Blame
Light must be shed on the vital life-changing decisions that are made behind closed doors in Britain’s family courts
Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers
26 Jan 2025
In the wood-panelled courtroom, with low winter light filtering through high windows, our barrister sat down after making his final submissions, and Mr Justice Williams began to speak. It had taken us 14 months to reach this moment at the Royal Courts of Justice, to hear the high court judge’s decision on our application for disclosure of confidential documents in three sets of family court proceedings relating to the murdered schoolgirl Sara Sharif — and whether we would be allowed to publish the information they contained.
And for a few minutes, from a press freedom perspective, it seemed that things were going well: Williams gave what we believe is unprecedented permission for disclosure of dozens of documents.
And then he dropped a bombshell: none of the three judges who had made decisions about the Sharif children’s safety and welfare could be named. Two of them had made single, urgent protective orders; the third had presided over most of the proceedings, and made the final order placing the children with their father, Urfan Sharif, and stepmother, Beinash Batool, who went on to murder Sara.
It is a cornerstone of open justice that the names of judges — from magistrates up to supreme court justices — are known to the public in respect of the weighty and life-changing decisions they make. Their powers are derived from us, through laws enacted by parliament, and exercised on behalf of us all. And despite hearing cases behind closed doors, family courts are no exception to this principle: it is children whose privacy the law protects, not professionals. And this includes — well, had always included up to that moment — the judges. We looked at each other, appalled. Our barrister, Chris Barnes, who had represented us pro bono for more than a year and whose advocacy had been pivotal in securing the reporting permissions, glanced round at us, his eyebrows raised. No application for anonymity had been made by the judges. No evidence of a threat had been put before the court. Throughout many hearings regarding the media’s wish to scrutinise and publish information relating to a case of high public interest, and at a point when murder convictions in the criminal trial looked almost certain, there had been no mention of anonymising the family court judges. Not that day. Not ever.
In fact, their names could have been lawfully published at any time up to that point. We raised objections. Williams maintained his order. Within hours, we asked for leave to appeal against his decision. He did not grant it, saying instead we had to wait for his judgment with full reasons for him imposing the ban, and giving us no date for when this might land. It was now evening on Friday 13 December. We had no option but to go over his head and ask the court of appeal.
By the Monday, we had lodged our application. By Thursday, we had been granted permission to appeal by the master of the rolls, Sir Geoffrey Vos. And he had grasped the urgency: a hearing was listed to take place on 14 and 15 January. Williams, on holiday, was asked to expedite his judgment, and did. And then the second bombshell dropped. In his judgment, Williams publicly branded our journalism as unfair, inaccurate and irresponsible after we reported in this newspaper that he had “refused” us permission to appeal. Now, as well as the ability to scrutinise the judges at the apex of the child protection processes which had led to Sara Sharif being placed with those who would go on to murder her, our hard-won reputations as responsible reporters on the family justice system were on the line too. As freelancers in respect of our work on this case, we are hugely grateful to Tortoise Media and Law for Change for support with the costs of bringing this challenge to what we believed was an unlawful ban on freedom of expression. On 14 January, we arrived at court hopeful but apprehensive. Ten days later, on Friday, the judgment was handed down. We had won — on all three of the grounds on which we had appealed.
Three court of appeal judges ruled that Williams did not have the power to order that the judges should not be named, and agreed with us that the process he had undertaken in making that decision had been procedurally irregular. Furthermore, they said that he had been “inappropriate” and “unfair” to us personally, and to the media in general.
This is important, not just to us, but because, as our barrister stated, press organisations do not expect to have their reporters’ integrity questioned when they turn up to do their job in court; the negative comments about us and the wider media were not ones Williams was entitled to make. It is an approach that flies in the face of serious and sustained efforts by the senior judiciary to encourage more journalists to attend family courts, and could not sit more uncomfortably with the full rollout of the successful “reporting pilot” to all family courts in England and Wales on Monday. This switches the presumption against journalists being able to report on what takes place in family courts, so that subject to strict anonymity rules, they can.
If Williams’ criticism of us had not been addressed, it could have had a chilling effect on our ability to face down future challenges when seeking disclosure and publication permissions in crucial public interest cases — creating a disservice to the public understanding of the decisions taking place behind closed doors for tens of thousands of families across the land.
In stinging language not often seen in a judgment, Vos went on: “The mistake the judge made was to think that he could properly trawl through his own experiences to create a case for anonymising the judges. He should not have done so. Courts operate on the basis of the law and the evidence, not on the basis of judicial speculation and anecdote… In short, the judge’s judgment demonstrates, to put the matter moderately, that he got carried away.”
The key function of a judge is to be fair, not to speculate, and in particular not to get “carried away”. And it is such a shame he did, because we believe that the permissions Williams gave the media — to publish information in the public interest regarding a vulnerable family where safety concerns were well known to the child protection and family justice system — were an important win for transparency and public accountability, and a credit to him.
Unfortunately, he has arguably increased the intensity of any public reaction to the judges by placing them so firmly in the spotlight. By banning their names from being published, he intensified the media coverage and aroused suspicion about their conduct. Yes, he may have said in his judgment that they did nothing wrong, but that will not have been the takeaway of the general public. The average person is not going to read his lengthy judgment — all they will hear is that he wanted to protect his fellow judges.
Our appeal was never about naming and shaming individual judges; it was about the wider principle that those who exercise state power need to be known. If we anonymise these judges, where does it end? Many state organisations and professionals were involved in the child protection concerns relating to the Sharif children. It is our hope that the judges will be seen as just one element in that broader picture. What is needed now is real effort to work out what went wrong in this heartbreaking case where a young girl’s life was taken, and what might need to change. Information and scrutiny are vital tools in this endeavour.
(The original article can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/26/our-challenge-to-the-ban-on-naming-sara-sharif-judges-was-always-about-scrutiny-not-blame.)
Greater details of the story are here:
Sara Sharif Murder: ‘Sadist’ Father and Stepmother Jailed for Life
Urfan Sharif, 43, and Beinash Batool, 30, sentenced for killing 10-year-old who was found dead in Surrey home
17 Dec 2024
Sara Sharif’s mother called her daughter’s murderers “sadists and executioners” as they were jailed for life.
Olga Domin joined the Old Bailey hearing remotely as Urfan Sharif, 43, and Beinash Batool, 30, were sentenced for killing the schoolgirl.
On Tuesday the judge, Mr Justice Cavanagh, described the campaign of abuse meted out on Sara as “torture” as he condemned the defendants for not showing “a shred of remorse”.
His voice shook as he described some of the injuries suffered by Sara, who was “trussed up” with masking tape and a skipping rope and hooded with plastic bags, saying: “This treatment of a 10-year-old child is nothing short of gruesome.” Had she lived, he said, one of her burns would have caused permanent disfigurement.
Sharif and Batool were found guilty of Sara’s murder last Wednesday after an eight-week trial at the Old Bailey. Sara’s paternal uncle, Faisal Malik, 29, who was living with the family at the time, was found not guilty of murder but was convicted of causing or allowing her death.
Cavanagh sentenced Sharif to a minimum term of 40 years and Batool to a minimum term of 33 years. Malik was jailed for 16 years.
The judge said: “Sara’s death was the culmination of years of neglect, frequent assaults and what can only be described as the torture of this small child, mainly, but not entirely, at the hands of you, her father, Urfan Sharif.
“The degree of cruelty involved is almost inconceivable. This happened in plain sight, in front of the rest of the family, including, for the last eight months of Sara’s life, in front of you, Faisal Malik.
“The courts at the Old Bailey have been witness to many accounts of awful crimes, but few can have been more terrible than the account of the despicable treatment of this poor child that the jury in this case have had to endure.”
The prosecutor, William Emlyn Jones KC, said Sara was subjected to serious violence from at least the age of six, with a variety of weapons such as a cricket bat, a domestic iron and an improvised metal truncheon made from the broken leg of a high chair.
In a victim impact statement read out at the Old Bailey, Domin said she had been under “constant psychological supervision” since her daughter’s death as she called the defendants “cowards”.
She said: “Sara was always smiling. She had her own unique character. The only thing I had left to give to my daughter was to give her a beautiful Catholic funeral that she deserves. She is now an angel who looks down on us from heaven, she is no longer experiencing violence. To this day I can’t understand how someone can be such a sadist to a child.”
Addressing the defendants in the dock, Domin, who joined the hearing from her native Poland, said: “You are sadists, although even this word is not enough for you. I would say you are executioners.”
Sara was found dead in a bunk bed at the family home in Surrey on 10 August 2023. The couple had killed her two days earlier and fled to Pakistan, from where Sharif called police to say he had beaten her up “too much” for being naughty. He had left a handwritten “confession” near her fully clothed body, saying: “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.”
Sara Sharif when she was 4 years old. Photograph: Surrey Police/Reuters
A postmortem examination found Sara had 71 external injuries, including bruises, burns and human bite marks. She also had at least 25 fractures, including 11 to her spine.
The judge said Sharif “plainly derived grim satisfaction” from the sustained violence, and that he had done everything possible to avoid punishment for murder, saying: “You are suffused with self-pity.” He added it was hard to contemplate the “stress, pain and trauma” suffered by Sara, who must have been “in a constant state of terror”.
He said Sara was treated as “a skivvy” in the family from a young age and was made to do the washing, tidy the house and care for her youngest sibling. Cavanagh added he had no doubt that Sharif singled out Sara for abuse because she was a girl, she was not a child of his current marriage and she was prepared to stand up to him.
Addressing Sharif’s motives, the judge said: “Sara was a brave, feisty and spirited child. She was not submissive, as you wanted her to be. She stood up to you.”
The judge said Sara could be seen smiling and dancing in a video taken two days before her death even though her mobility was impaired by that point. He said: “It is clear that Sara stood up for herself and remained positive and cheerful in the most terrible circumstances. She was a very courageous little girl, with an unquenchable spirit.”
He said the assaults on Sara took place in front of other children, which would have had a “brutalising effect” on them, and that “grotesque” punishments were inflicted on her in the weeks before she died.
The judge said: “Sara was tied up and was even hooded, by a grotesque combination of parcel tape, rope, and a plastic bag. She was not even allowed to go to the toilet, but was put in pull-up nappies, and was left to wallow in her own urine and faeces. The torture got worse. She was burned with an iron and boiling water was poured on her ankles.”
He said Batool encouraged and assisted Sharif in the assaults and was “prepared to sacrifice Sara” because she was frightened of losing her own children.
He added: “I can be sure that you took part in the tying up and hooding of Sara: this was not the work of one individual, and Sara was tied up even when Urfan Sharif was not in the house.
“Still further, I have no doubt that you were present at and involved in the burning of Sara with an iron, which led to the terrible burns on her buttocks. This was a two-person job: one to hold Sara and one to press the iron on to her body.”
The judge said Malik had failed to take any steps to protect Sara.
The jail terms will take into account time served on remand, with a minimum term of 38 years and 272 days for Sharif and 31 years and 272 days for Batool.
(The original article can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/17/sara-sharif-father-and-stepmother-jailed-for-her-murder.)
