Murdered Sara Sharif was less than a week old when concerns were raised about her care, newly-reportable details show, as the Prime Minister said questions must be answered about the “shocking” case.
The 10-year-old girl’s battered body was discovered at her family home in Woking, Surrey in August last year, with members of her family having already fled to Pakistan with her siblings and half-siblings.
Following the conviction of Sara’s father Urfan Sharif, 42, and stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, for her murder, and uncle Faisal Malik, 29, of causing or allowing her death, previously unreportable details about the family’s contact with social services and the courts have been published.
They include:
– Concerns were raised about Sara’s care within a week of her birth in 2013, with her parents Urfan and Olga Sharif known to social services as early as 2010.
– Surrey County Council repeatedly raised “significant concerns” that Sara was likely to suffer physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her parents.
– There were three sets of family court proceedings but allegations that Urfan Sharif was physically abusing Sara and her siblings were never tested in court.
– Sara was repeatedly returned to her parents’ care before finally being placed with her father and stepmother at their home in Woking in 2019, four years before she was murdered there.
– Sara’s siblings and half-siblings were taken to Pakistan following her murder and they remain in the city of Jhelum, Pakistan, with their paternal grandfather, with efforts to return them to the UK still ongoing. Their identities are protected by a court order.
Sir Keir Starmer described the case as “awful” and stressed the importance of safeguards for children being home-schooled in particular – as Sara was in the last months of her life.
The trial of Sara’s killers heard that in January 2023 she had begun wearing a hijab to cover up her bruises at school and while teachers noticed marks on her face and referred her to social services in March, the case was dropped within days.
She was taken out of school by her family in April, with the violence against her intensifying in the weeks before she died.
Sir Keir said the case was one of violence and abuse and described it as “just shocking” to read about, adding: “Obviously, there’s going to be questions that need to be answered in relation to this case”.
He said these related to “making sure that (there are) protecting safeguards for children, particularly those being home-schooled”.
Cabinet minister Lucy Powell indicated on Thursday that details on how these will be made stronger will be announced “imminently”.
As part of previously announced reforms to children’s social care, the Government said it would be introducing a new duty on parents where, if their child is subject to a child protection inquiry or is on a child protection plan – meaning the child is suspected of being at risk of significant harm – they will need local authority consent to home educate them.
The plans, under the Children’s Wellbeing Bill, also include requiring local authorities to have registers of children not in school, in a bid to avoid children slipping under the radar.
The Bill has not yet begun making its way through Parliament, but it is understood it could be introduced in the Commons as early as next week.
England’s Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, has described it as “madness” that an at-risk child could be taken out of school, and called for a change in the law so children who are suspected victims of abuse cannot be home educated.
She called on the Government to bring in its reforms “without delay”.
The Department for Education has said its plans will bring in greater safeguards for children in home education “so this can never be used to conceal abuse”.
Figures published on Thursday showed that local authorities in England reported 111,700 children were in elective home education this autumn term, a rise from an estimated 92,000 in the previous autumn term.
The trial, which concluded on Wednesday, had heard how Sara’s father had created a “culture of violent discipline”, where assaults on her had “become completely routine, completely normalised”.
The new details reported on Thursday came after a High Court ruling that information about ongoing and previous court proceedings relating to Sara and her siblings could be published, following applications from the PA news agency and several other media organisations.
Separately, a report published by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel the day after the verdicts in Sara’s case showed that 485 children in England died or were seriously harmed by abuse or neglect, between April 1 2023 and March 31 2024.
Panel chairwoman Annie Hudson described Sara’s case as “harrowing” as she called for a more joined-up approach to child protection, with a need for teachers, nurses, doctors, social workers, police and other professionals to share information to understand what is happening in a child’s life.
Surrey County Council said an independently-led safeguarding review – known as a Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (LCSPR) – of all professionals who had contact with Sara’s family is under way.
Such reviews are aimed at identifying learning from cases and while no timeframe has been given, it is usually expected reports are published within six months.
