1 February 2025 - 8:00am
Mothers have long argued that judges in custody proceedings don’t place enough weight on allegations of domestic abuse. The BBC reported 18 months ago that dozens of children had been forced by the courts into contact with fathers accused of hurting them.
That is the context of yesterday’s publication of the names of three judges involved in care proceedings relating to Sara Sharif, the 10-year-old girl tortured and murdered by her father and stepmother. Urfan Sharif and Beinash Batool are now serving life sentences for killing Sara in August 2023, yet they had somehow persuaded Alison Raeside, the judge most involved in the lengthy care proceedings, that they posed no danger to the child.
A 2016 Women’s Aid report listed 19 children who had been killed by a father who was also a perpetrator of domestic abuse. Women’s organisations have repeatedly called for child protection to be placed first and foremost in custody disputes, warning that abusive fathers will make counter-claims to discredit mothers with entirely justified concerns.
Sara was placed in the care of her father in October 2019, even though a report prepared for the court listed Sharif’s four arrests for suspected violence against three Polish women, including Sara’s mother. He was accused of holding them against their will and threatening them with a knife. Previous reports documented unexplained bruises, bites and burns on Sara’s siblings.
The details of the case are horrifyingly familiar. Like many abusers of women and children, Sharif claimed to have “anger issues” but said he’d addressed them. Perpetrators frequently use this excuse, knowing it’s exactly what social workers and judges want to hear, and it’s highly likely that they’ll be taken at their word without evidence. Sara’s mother was accused of assault and accepted a caution after a bite mark was found on the arm of one of the children, but there must now be questions asked about whether Sharif was using his ex-partner to hide his own violence.
Last week, when one of the country’s most senior judges, Sir Geoffrey Vos, overturned an earlier ban on naming Raeside, he observed that the judges involved in the Sharif custody proceedings had “the difficult task of assessing the risk of future harm which could only be done against the background of the evidence before them”.
Precisely. And that’s why mothers and campaigners believe that judges in civil proceedings are far too likely to overlook or minimise reports of even the most severe abuse. Men commit the vast majority of violence towards women and children, with official figures showing that women are “disproportionately represented” among survivors of domestic abuse, making up 72.5% of victims.
Almost a decade ago, Women’s Aid lamented that even the existence of severe abuse had not prevented a “relentless push to maintain as close a bond between father and child as possible”. The organisation also suggested that the continuing impact of abuse, including the effect of coercive control after a relationship has ended, was poorly understood by the civil courts.
In 2020, a Ministry of Justice report uncovered “an alarming series of barriers to the Family Court’s ability to protect victims of abuse from future harm”. In 2023, a survey of legal practitioners found that more than 80% of respondents felt that the Family Courts were “likely to re-traumatise victims and survivors of domestic abuse”.
The same could be said today. On any rational analysis, it’s hard to see how a man accused of assaulting three different women could be considered a suitable guardian for a defenceless little girl. Time after time, the civil courts have given violent men the benefit of the doubt. How many children have to die before it stops?
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.
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