On Friday 15 November 2024, Sara Sharif’s father, Urfan Sharif, admitted to beating his daughter with a metal pole while she lay dying. Jurors at the Old Bailey heard that the 10-year-old was discovered dead in a bunkbed in the family home in Woking, Surrey, on 10 August 2023. On December 11 2024, Sharif, 42, and his wife Beinash Batool, 30, were found guilty at the Central Criminal Court of murdering the schoolgirl after perpetrating a year-long “campaign of abuse” against her. They were both sentenced, on December 17, to life in prison with Urfan Sharif to serve a minimum of 40 years and Beinash Batool to serve a minimum of 33 years.
“This horrifying case exposes the inadequate response of key services in cases involving Black and minoritised children like Sara,” says Aisha K Gill, Professor in Criminology in the School for Policy Studies.
Professor Gill has carried out extensive research in this area. We spoke with her about what can be done to help prevent such a terrible case happening again.
What were the issues in terms of the responses by the key services in the case of Sara Sharif?
“According to information provided in court, a report about bruises Sara had sustained was entered into the school’s child protection monitoring system on 10 March 2023, triggering a referral to social services. Yet six days after receiving this referral, Surrey County Council closed the investigation – why? Similarly, while the Council and the police confirmed that they had contact with the family, the police described their interactions as “limited” and “historic”.
“Shortly after the referral was made, Sara’s father informed her school that she would be withdrawn and home-schooled with immediate effect. Why was there no tracking by social services and the school of the reasons Sara was taken out of school given the “visible cuts and bruises on her face”? Why was there no monitoring of Sara after she was taken out of school?
“Her school, social services and the police failed to protect her by adequately investigating the visible signs of abuse she was experiencing. This underscores the fact that crimes like these involving Black and minoritised children often go under-investigated – at least until the victim has been killed.”
What were the reasons, do you think, why these concerns weren’t investigated further?
“Part of the issue here is that statutory agencies, such as the police and children's social care organisations, are inexperienced and ill-equipped when it comes to tackling such crimes. There has been very little research exploring the response to child abuse in Black and minoritised communities from a multidisciplinary perspective. One reason for this gap is that the recent foregrounding in media and policy discourses of child abuse in racially minoritised communities has taken place through the lens of cultural essentialism, occluding the causes of child abuse by focusing on racialised elements, such as the role of traditional cultural practices. As Black and racially minoritised children are located at the intersection of multiple, overlapping structural inequalities, their specific experiences of victimisation are still largely overlooked in the criminological literature, even though solid progress has been made during the last decade in understanding child abuse in British Black and South Asian communities.
Could other factors also have impacted in this case, do you think?
“My research has also highlighted the role of cultural factors in concealing child abuse, including how notions of ‘honour’ often act as barriers to disclosure. Although honour and its inverse, shame, have been explored in many scholarly discussions of gendered violence in Black and South Asian communities, more work could enable culturally competent responses to child abuse cases, particularly by recognising the unique barriers and difficulties that racially minoritised victims face – these include shame, fear of being disbelieved, and self-blame. Identifying these factors and exploring how they can inhibit and facilitate disclosure would strengthen preventive strategies and improve treatment, support and understanding for all victims.”
In your view, what needs to be done to help prevent anything like this happening in the future?
“All support agencies must work together to implement a more nuanced understanding of child abuse that addresses both the commonalities and particularities of such crimes across and within communities. It is therefore imperative that any review of the institutional failure to protect Sara from her family brings together all relevant partners – the police, family/criminal courts, health, social care and education – to robustly examine their practices to prevent a murder like this from happening again.”