Judge Who Gave Sara Sharif’s Father Custody Before He Killed Her

The judge who gave custody of Sara Sharif to her father before he beat the 10-year-old to death can today be named in a landmark victory for open justice.

Last month a High Court judge sparked outrage after ordering that none of the professionals involved in the appalling case of the 10-year-old murdered by her father and stepmother could be named because the media cannot be ‘trusted to report fairly.’

The judge was given anonymity for the first time in British legal history.

The Court of Appeal overturned the gagging order after the Daily Mail and other media organisations argued that judges are the ‘face of justice itself’, they make ‘life-and-death decisions’ and keeping their names secret would have a ‘corrosive impact’ on public confidence in the judicial system.

Now, it can be revealed that the judge at the centre of Sara’s case is a well-known lawyer who has backed the right of judges to work from home, including for court hearings, because she believes commuting is a ‘complete waste of time’.

The first active judge in the United Kingdom to take maternity leave was Judge Alison Raeside.

The 66-year-old is married to a fellow circuit judge and has four children, all of whom have joined the legal profession.

In a revealing ‘Women Who Work’ podcast (in Nov 2023), she talked about the necessity for judges to have the flexibility to work from home and presented tips on how to be a ‘submarine parent’, providing insight into her own parenting style.

Neither the local government nor Judge Raeside applied for the anonymity order.

Despite no requests to the court to consider anonymity, Mr. Justice Williams issued the order.

Called to the Bar in 1982, Judge Raeside has acted as a district judge since 2000 and was appointed as the designated family court judge for Surrey in 2019, serving until 2024 when she was appointed as the Lady Chief Justice’s nominated representative on the HMCTS Board.

Within months of starting her job at Guildford Family Court, the judge was forced to issue a five-year restraining order against a parent who, throughout a nine-month online stalking campaign, called her a “vile monster” in a string of threatening communications.

Nyron Warmington, 42, was jailed for a year in 2019 after he targeted Judge Raeside because she had banned him from contacting his daughters during family court proceedings.

Using the pseudonym ‘Equality for Fathers’, Warmington posted on Instagram and Facebook about ‘monsters working in the UK courts’.

Just three months after the stalking case, Judge Raeside was asked to consider whether to hand custody of Sara Sharif to her father in October 2019.

Urfan Sharif, 42, had earlier been accused of violence against three ex-partners and two children, including his own, who were burned, bitten and bruised in a catalogue of brutality dating back 16 years.

However, the police did not file charges, and after he was able to avoid responsibility, social workers suggested that Sara be placed in his care.

Court records tell how Judge Raeside was deceived by Sharif and his wife Beinash Batool, 30, into blaming Sara’s mother Olga Domin for the abuse.

The judge even praised Batool for taking on Sara and her siblings, saying it was a ‘it is a big ask, it’s amazing to be frank’.

She recommended Ms Domin get help for ‘anger management’, adding: ‘It would be good if you could at least be courteous to her (Batool), be polite to her, be slightly grateful even to her….It’s only thanks to Ms Batool that you’re able to really see them.’

As long as Batool oversaw Sara’s biweekly visits with Ms. Domin, the judge mandated that Sara live with Sharif.

She told the two women to shake hands: ‘Maybe you could see if you could shake hands, say hello and see if things could go forward a bit differently.’

Social workers claimed Sara had ‘a really good relationship’ with her stepmother, which was ‘a point of safety’ for her.

It was an erroneous assumption that would prove catastrophic in the schoolgirl’s case, with her father starting to dole out day-to-day beatings within weeks of acquiring custody.

In addition to hooding her in a plastic bag with parcel tape around her head and binding her arms and legs, Sara endured an unthinkable ordeal at the hands of her father and stepmother, who also beat her with a rolling pin, metal pole, and cricket bat, strangled her until her neck broke, burned her with an iron, and bit her.

When police discovered her broken little body left under the pink covers of her bunk bed by her fleeing family last August, she had suffered more than 100 injuries before her death.

Leaving aside this particular case just for a moment – it’s about time we had a proper media investigation into how judges get to be judges, and how about publishing statistics on convictions and sentencing by each judge.

Circumstances vary, but trends and sweeping discrepancies could be underlined, and judges should have to declare interests, financial and political. It may we be that judges get criticised for indulgent sentences, not because of their own bias, but because governments, past and present, push for lenient sentences to save money on prisons.

If judges are taking the flack for politicians, this needs to be exposed – let’s shed some light on our judges because I believe an awful lot of us just don’t trust judges to apply justice.

The truth is that our government is the first to let down all British citizens, instead giving billions of pounds to foreign countries for spurious reasons.