Sara Sharif family court judges named after appeal

In July 2015, another judge, Judge Sally Williams, had Sara and her sibling taken into temporary foster care after reports that Urfan Sharif had been secretly seeing them while they were still at the refuge.

That September, Judge Raeside agreed an interim care order that meant Sara and her sibling stayed for a while in foster care. But in November, she ordered that the children could live with their mother Olga Sharif, with Urfan Sharif getting supervised access.

For the next few years the family courts were not involved with the family, and on 1 February 2019 Judge Raeside was promoted. She was appointed as the designated family judge for Surrey. But a few months after that the family were back in front of her again.

By now Urfan Sharif had a new wife Beinash Batool. He was asking the court to sanction arrangements for Sara and her sibling to live with them with Olga Sharif getting some supervised contact. The court was told Olga Sharif had already agreed to this.

Judge Raeside heard that Sara and her sibling had complained that Olga had mistreated them, and they had already started living with their father and stepmother. Sara had apparently said her mother had slapped her and pulled her hair, and had tried to burn her with a lighter and drown her in the bath. It had been Urfan Sharif who first raised the allegations.

A social worker who was asked to prepare a report for the court also recommended that Sara and her sibling should live with their father and step-mother with supervised contact with Olga Sharif.

On 9 July 2019, Judge Raeside, who by now had been involved in hearings involving the family for more than six and a half years, agreed that Sara and her sibling should live with their father Urfan Sharif and stepmother Beinash Batool – the two people who would kill her five years later – “it is ordered that the children do live with the father and Ms Batool”, she said.

They were both convicted in December 2024 of murdering Sara Sharif.

The judge who ordered the anonymity of the judges said that if anything it was the system rather than individuals that should be held up to public scrutiny.

In a judgment Mr Justice Williams said: “In this case the evidence suggests that social workers, guardians, lawyers and judiciary acted within the parameters that law and social work practice set for them.

“Certainly to my reasonably well-trained eye there is nothing (save the benefit of hindsight) which indicates that the decisions reached in 2013, 2015 or 2019 were unusual or unexpected.”

“Based on what was known at the time and applying the law at the time I don’t see the judge or anyone else having any real alternative option.”