Sara Sharif death: A failing system stuck on repeat with devastating consequences
Sara Sharif was subjected to cruelty on a scale that is hard to imagine, but could others have done more to protect her? ITV News Social Affairs Correspondent Sarah Corker reports
Sara Sharif was a ten-year-old girl subjected to years of serious and repeated violence in her own home.
Her treatment in the last few weeks of her life had been brutal.
Only Sara’s father, Urfan Sharif and her step-mother are responsible for her brutal death, and her uncle was found guilty of allowing her death, but could - and should, others have done more to protect her?
Her school, social services, police and even the family courts all have questions to answer.
Warning signs
As early as 2018, neighbours heard screaming, crying and sounds of someone being hit or smacked at the family home.
One neighbour described hearing the "gut wrenching screams" of a young female child in September 2020.
In May 2021, text messages from Sara’s step-mother, Banish Batool, to her sisters allege that “Urfan beat the cr*p out of Sara ... literally beaten black”, and added that the “poor girl can’t walk”.
This shows that Sara was being seriously injured more than two years before her death.
Contact with authorities
As soon as Sara was born in 2013 she was made the subject of a child protection plan, and was at the centre of an acrimonious custody battle between her father and her birth mother, Olga Sharif.
In 2014, she was placed into foster care. The court heard that both parents accused the other of child abuse.
In 2019, the family courts awarded Urfan Sharif custody of Sara.
In 2022, teachers at St Mary’s Primary School in Byfleet first noticed Sara had a bruise under her left eye. When asked about it, she said that it was caused by her little brother hitting her.
Six months later, she started wearing a hijab to school to conceal injuries to her face and head.
In March 2023, teachers again noticed bruises on Sara’s cheek and eye, only visible when her head scarf was removed.
At this point the school made a referral to social services. But just six days later, social services made the decision to take no further action into the family.
On March 28, 2023, Batool was asked by teachers about another bruise, she claimed it was caused by a pen. A teacher later described her conversation with Sara’s step-mother as "strange".
Three weeks later, the first day back after the Easter holidays, the ten-year-old was withdrawn from class to be home schooled. By August 2023, Sara was dead.
History of violence
Urfan Sharif was previously arrested for domestic violence and threats to kill his ex-girlfriends.
In June 2016 he was ordered by a judge at Guildford family court to undertake a domestic violence perpetrator programme. Despite his past, he was granted custody of Sara.
One of the major questions for the authorities is whether crucial information was shared between agencies, such as social services and the police, and whether they were fully aware of the risks he posed to Sara.
When ITV News asked if Surrey Police were aware of the Sharif family before Sara’s death, they pointed to a "future safeguarding review, an inquest in relation to her death, and at that point the full circumstances will be examined".
Speaking to ITV News, Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children's Commissioner for England, said Sara Sharif was 'totally failed by the system'
The purpose of a Child Safeguarding Practice review, which is carried out when a child has been harmed or dies due to neglect or abuse, is for agencies - including social services and police - to learn lessons and improve the way they work together to protect vulnerable children.
Rachael Wardell, Executive Director for Children, Families and Lifelong Learning at Surrey County Council, said: “Sara’s death is incredibly distressing and we share in the profound horror at the terrible details that have emerged during the trial.
"We are resolute in our commitment to protecting children, and we are determined to play a full and active part in the forthcoming review alongside partner agencies, to thoroughly understand the wider circumstances surrounding Sara’s tragic death."
Surrey County Council Children’s services is rated by Ofsted as "requires improvement to be good" after an inspection in 2022.
One area of concern raised by inspectors included that "some children exposed to domestic abuse do not receive the support that they need soon enough" due to the way police submit "lower risk notifications in batches".
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It also called for improvements in the proportion of permanent staff, to reduce turnover and reliance on agency staff.
Nearly 30% of posts within Surrey County Council’s children’s services department were unfilled, according to data ITV News has seen relating to the summer of 2022.
Across England, resourcing has been a problem over the last decade due to government funding cuts, rising costs and low morale.
Latest government statistics show a 19% vacancy rate nationally - with 7,700 child and family social worker vacancies on September 30, 2023. The vast majority of vacancies (74%) were covered by agency workers.
Child protection is difficult job, and despite all the good work that is done to protect thousands of children every year, social work is often only covered in the media when there is a catastrophic failure.
History repeats
There are chilling parallels between this tragedy and child protection failures dating back nearly a quarter of a century.
In 2000, the extent of the abuse inflicted on eight-year-old Victoria Climbie by her guardians shocked the country. Change was promised.
Then in 2007, 17-month-old baby Peter Connolly’s brutal murder by his mother, stepdad and his stepdad’s brother again led to a national outcry. A serious case review found Peter’s “horrifying death could and should have been prevented”.
More recently in 2020, six-year-old Arthur Labinjo Hughes, Star Hobson, who was one, and 10-month-old Finley Boden were all killed in their family homes.
The child protection system was highly criticised for missed opportunities to save them.
Lord Herbert Laming, a former chief inspector of social services, chaired the public inquiry into Victoria Climbie’s death nearly a quarter of a century ago.
While there have been positive reforms to the child protection system over that time, he said he’s "not feeling optimistic" that enough has been done.
He told ITV News: “In the early days after the Victoria Climbie inquiry there was a great deal of progress, about local safeguarding teams working together across the local services, but sadly in the last decade because of financial cut backs in all of the services, I’m afraid that services have withdrawn into themselves.
"That has led in my view to a crisis driven service, where services don’t really become involved until the crisis, and sometimes frankly it’s too late."
After each tragic case, reports and recommendations follow. Promises that lessons will be learned.
Each time, the failings are depressingly similar: poor information sharing between agencies, poor decision making, over-worked and under-resourced staff. The same problems come up again and again.
In 2022, an independent review of children’s services again found high vacancy rates and excess workloads.
The review chair Josh McAlister, a former teacher and now a Labour MP, called for a radical overhaul of a "rigid system stuck in crisis mode and disconnected from the needs of families and children they support".
Maria Neophytou, from the children's charity the NSPCC, spoke to ITV News about what needs to change following Sara Sharif's death
The NSPCC say that at least one child is killed or murdered each week in the UK at the hands of a parent or carer, and this has changed little over the last five years.
Maria Neophytou, acting chief executive of the NSPCC, said it was an “absolutely shocking case” raising “crucial questions” about child protection.
She said: “It is disturbing that Urfan Sharif believed – and told police – that he did legally punish Sara for being naughty.
“Politicians at Westminster must move swiftly to abolish the defence of reasonable chastisement and give children the same protection from assault as adults.”
The Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, called Sara’s death a “heartbreaking reminder of the profound weaknesses in our child protection.”
She called for a change in the law so that the “outdated defence in assault law that permits ‘reasonable chastisement’” is removed.
“What haunts me the most about Sara’s death is that her father used the words ‘I legally punished my child’, believing this to be a defence to murder.
“It is unthinkable that any parent or carer could hide behind our legal system to justify such cruelty – and yet, children living in England today have less protection from assault than adults."
The latest government figures show the number of reported incidents of children dying increased in 2024, compared to the previous year, with 205 "serious incident notifications relating to child death".
How do you fix a failing system stuck on repeat with devastating consequences? Significant investment and political will is needed to drive change and save lives.
Sara Sharif was subjected to cruelty on a scale hard to imagine, and a child protection system that missed the warning signs and failed to protect her.
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