Mothers have long argued that judges in custody proceedings donât place enough weight on allegations of domestic abuse. The BBC reported 18 months ago that dozens of children had been forced by the courts into contact with fathers accused of hurting them.
That is the context of yesterday’s publication of the names of three judges involved in care proceedings relating to Sara Sharif, the 10-year-old girl tortured and murdered by her father and stepmother. Urfan Sharif and Beinash Batool are now serving life sentences for killing Sara in August 2023, yet they had somehow persuaded Alison Raeside, the judge most involved in the lengthy care proceedings, that they posed no danger to the child.
A 2016 Women’s Aid report listed 19 children who had been killed by a father who was also a perpetrator of domestic abuse. Womenâs organisations have repeatedly called for child protection to be placed first and foremost in custody disputes, warning that abusive fathers will make counter-claims to discredit mothers with entirely justified concerns.
Sara was placed in the care of her father in October 2019, even though a report prepared for the court listed Sharifâs four arrests for suspected violence against three Polish women, including Saraâs mother. He was accused of holding them against their will and threatening them with a knife. Previous reports documented unexplained bruises, bites and burns on Saraâs siblings.
The details of the case are horrifyingly familiar. Like many abusers of women and children, Sharif claimed to have âanger issuesâ but said heâd addressed them. Perpetrators frequently use this excuse, knowing itâs exactly what social workers and judges want to hear, and itâs highly likely that theyâll be taken at their word without evidence. Saraâs mother was accused of assault and accepted a caution after a bite mark was found on the arm of one of the children, but there must now be questions asked about whether Sharif was using his ex-partner to hide his own violence.
Last week, when one of the countryâs most senior judges, Sir Geoffrey Vos, overturned an earlier ban on naming Raeside, he observed that the judges involved in the Sharif custody proceedings had âthe difficult task of assessing the risk of future harm which could only be done against the background of the evidence before themâ.
Precisely. And thatâs why mothers and campaigners believe that judges in civil proceedings are far too likely to overlook or minimise reports of even the most severe abuse. Men commit the vast majority of violence towards women and children, with official figures showing that women are âdisproportionately representedâ among survivors of domestic abuse, making up 72.5% of victims.
Almost a decade ago, Womenâs Aid lamented that even the existence of severe abuse had not prevented a ârelentless push to maintain as close a bond between father and child as possibleâ. The organisation also suggested that the continuing impact of abuse, including the effect of coercive control after a relationship has ended, was poorly understood by the civil courts.
In 2020, a Ministry of Justice report uncovered âan alarming series of barriers to the Family Courtâs ability to protect victims of abuse from future harmâ. In 2023, a survey of legal practitioners found that more than 80% of respondents felt that the Family Courts were âlikely to re-traumatise victims and survivors of domestic abuseâ.
The same could be said today. On any rational analysis, itâs hard to see how a man accused of assaulting three different women could be considered a suitable guardian for a defenceless little girl. Time after time, the civil courts have given violent men the benefit of the doubt. How many children have to die before it stops?
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI think Joan misses the broader problem. It isn’t just courts handing kids into the custody of violent men. No, routinely the courts take the most naive and favourable view of the abuser no matter their sex or gender.
The younger UK judiciary has for 2 decades viewed criminality through the lens of woke restorative justice principles. Restorative justice naively claims “bringing all parties together” is always preferable to separation and punishment. In schools we see this nonsense forcing the bullied to sign behavioural contracts with their bullies. In the courts we see abusers being given access rights to the abused.
And for years this had been done with zero scrutiny thanks to the reporting ban on family courts. Recently this ban has been eased and hopefully woke family court judges will now face public opprobrium and sanction for such grotesque decisions.
I saw this happening in my kids’ primary school twenty years ago. No accountability. And we wonder why there are so many feral young people on the streets.
The problem is that most middle class people cannot defeat physical and verbal violence. The days when middle class boys boxed, played rugby and either served in combat or had undertaken national service are long gone. Once an average sized is year or so past puberty they are much tougher than most women teachers. Also many girls are tougher than the women teacher who do not play sport. A former teacher mentioned how when he put boys in detention , the Fathers turned up to attack him. He had boxed cruiserweight and played rugby, he won all fights. Speaking to a former head he once described how he had a large sixteen year old girl, the Mother and Grandmother screaming at him. Many social workers are scared of the physical violence meted out by their clients. One lady was thrown across a room by her client. A former girlfriend who a social worker had a client pull a knife on her: she punched the woman across the room. She had been taught to box by her a Father, a professional. On another occasion she was threatened with murder by the father of a child she had had taken into care.
We now have the problem of people being called phobic.Phobic comes from the Greek phobus meaning fear: an irrational fear. As Orwell said the Left has changed the meaning from irrational fear to lying.
We now have the problem not only of middle class being intimidate into acquiescence by the threat of violence but also the threat of being called phobic- homosexual. Muslim, transgender , etc when people can lose their job.
The Left since the time of Lenin have been masters of subversion which involves being excellent at deceit and the perverting of meaning. The Left have mocked gentility since the French Revolution. Napoleon re-invented total war which had not been part of European affairs for hundred of years.
We are all mammals and can detect fear. Bullies detect fear in their victims and intimidate them into acquiescence . Many of the problem discussed in Unherd are because of a feral and a privileged population use the threat of violence and of accusing people of being racist, islamophic , Transgender,etc to break the rules of civilised conduct and even the law.
Be an MP. Our country needs your commonsense
Thank you. Common sense comes down to a wide range of experience, reading widely and listening to people with a wide range of experience. An important aspect is dealing with nasty people in dirty dangerous situations.
Wouldn’t it be great to have some type of social organisation to “police” people’s behaviour and restrain the violent and the criminal? You could have people specially trained and devoted to doing it. They could be given the right to stop or “arrest” people who are threatening others in any way. Just an idle dream, I suppose.
If one looks at Britain it was incredibly law abiding pre WW2. Orwell said a newspaper seller could leave his money at his stand, go for a pint an it would be there on his return. Pre 1917 one could buy firearms from hardware shops.
What one had were physically tough men who had boxed, many had been in combat, who would intervene to stop criminal behaviour. Violence was largely confined to docks and a few industrial areas. A few criminal carried knives.
Most Police were ex armed forces( at least 5 ft 10 in height ) and had boxed and Chief Constable were former colonels. Air Chief Marshall Trenchard became Commissioner of the Met.
The old fashioned working class Labour Party which emerged from the slums realised one needed tough men to impose law and order. Crime effects largely the honest hardworking poor living in slums; not the wealthy in plush suburbs. Post WW2 many of the Labour Party were middle class and had never encountered violent people. Post 1960s the Trotskyist influence resulted in the development of the dogma that criminals were the victims of an unjust society and criminal behaviour was justified – post Modernists.
The present day wokeism is just the latest evolution of Cultural Marxism started by the Frankfurt School in 1919.
If a tough white man arrested a criminal from the ethnic minorities by making a citizens arrest, what chance they would be accused of racism ?
Apart from the Glasgow and Sheffield street gangs of course.
Very small part of the country. The Methodist/Baptist areas of heavy industry where rugby Union(Cornwall, South Wales) and League ( M62 corridor from St Helens via Wigan to Hull ) was very law abiding even in the Depression-read Orwell’s essays.
And then thereâs Liverpool of course, and Birmingham (peaky blinders) and Manchester, and London. In fact yeah – gang violence pretty much everywhere.
Do you really think she “misses the broader problem”? Or, since the focus is on this particular case, her article seeks to maintain that focus?
I’ve no doubt she’s at least as aware of the wider issues as you are, but that might be for another article.
She âmissesâ what Nell thinks is the broader problem because she has her own agenda to serve – her own âbroader problemâ if you like. It is not because she is focussed on this case. Indeed she omits and includes detail, and introduces information external to the case to make it fit her own particular narrative.
She doesn’t “miss” anything. It’s a short-form article, and therefore needs to be concise. That’s the point you’re missing, blinded by your own agenda.
Agreed. Add to that the almost always bright prospects of the perpetrators of violence, while the impact of violence on victims is ignored. I never even dated the stalker ex-worker freely committing a dazzling array of crimes against me since 2009 mostly in the home I have owned in a leafy Melbourne (Australia) suburb since 2001. The stalker is aided by criminal Victoria Police officers flashing their uniforms & marked vehicles in the process of committing crimes. Crime capabilities have included since 2019 remotely induced physical harm capabilities akin to what Unherd presented in their Havana Syndrome article.
This is such a terrible piece,I donât know where to begin. Unherd, can we have some balance on pieces like this rather than the feminist party line. Are there no mothers who gain custody who turn out to be violent or abusive?
One point just to keep it short:
This should be no surprise to anyone. Anyone who is capable of killing a child will likely be capable of lesser acts of violence. But the reverse does not follow. Even less so for men simply accused of domestic violence by their ex partner in a custody case.
ï»żIs it inconceivable that a (perhaps pretty unsuitable, perhaps aggrieved) mother might want to swing such a case by upping the ante and making such an accusation. Especially in a climate of âbelieve all womenâ.
The numbers of men and women committing fillicide seem to be pretty much equal. Perhaps unsurprisingly a third of male, and more than half female, perpetrators were mentally ill.
You really don’t like women at all, do you?
‘This should be no surprise to anyone.’ it seems to have been a surprise to this court, however. the gist of this article is that the court did not take sufficient diligence in assessing the father’s testimony and was willing to take a parroted cliche as ‘evidence’ of a change of character.
The problem goes deeper, as others have commented on: a naive shift from punishment of the perpetrator and protection for the victim, as seen, e.g. in schools. Also, does the state have the resources and the will to protect these young victims?
Joan Smith has rightly highlighted a huge failing in our society.
Youâve missed my point Iâm afraid.
Your “point” rarely rises above the level of a knee jerk reaction when the very obvious imbalance between male and female physical violence brings yet another tragedy to our attention.
It seems to be about 50/50 between those who get my point, and those who donât. JB seemed to get it immediately. You seem to have struggled. Check out âaffirming the consequentâ link below.
This is a particularly horrible, but completely atypical and exceptional, case and we should be careful in connecting it to any sort of general theory of how society works. That goes both for the author, and for some of the commenters, who are just using this case to bolster their own pet theories about what is wrong with society.
You appear to have received 12 down votes but no actual criticism of your post. You donât dispute that men capable of killing a child are also likely to be guilty of other violence you merely raise the rather obvious points that men guilty of one sort of violence may not go on to felicity and that sometimes unsuitable and aggrieved women will falsely allege violence against a partner.
Unfortunately, I suspect it is this latter suggestion that attracts the disapproval of those who do not wish to accept this obvious truth. A rational approach to such tricky issues will not prevail while there is such widespread a priori rejection of obvious truths in relation to some women. A rational argument can be advanced regarding the frequency of such lies but a blanket down tick is evidence of irrational bias.
a blanket down tick is evidence of irrational bias: no, it’s not. maybe we don’t like looking a pictures of motorcycles and believe the points the author has made are more valid and pressing than the commentator’s ‘whataboutery’ . . .
OK not compelling evidence. There may be all sorts of motives for a down tick but the lack of argued response does not encourage the idea that it was a considered reaction rather than a reaction to David Mosleyâs questioning of a rather one sided feminist article that failed to take into account that sometimes judges ( including female judges) canât be convinced by unsupported claims of violence. Nell Cloverâs criticism is nevertheless the more popular comment on the article.
Yes, if someone had made an argued response to my points, Iâd have been more than happy to respond. Ditto if they had simply misunderstood.
Since youâve made the effort, why not make a worthwhile comment?
I think the downticks are largely tribal.
The logical statistical point is obvious – I point it out because I object to authors using specious arguments to make their case, and feel attention should be drawn to it.
On the false allegation side: itâs odd that we should believe men capable of domestic violence, child killing etc but seem incapable of believing women are capable of lying in their own self interest.
In fact of course both men and women are capable of all of these.
“I think the downticks are largely tribal”. what tribe’s that?
to be clear: you copied and pasted some statistics and made some ad hoc comment about ‘feminists’ — so we know your tribe; Joan Smith took the care to look at how some — one in particular — of these statistics came about.
In other words she’s trying to draw attention to serious failings and lacuna, ones that if addressed could save lives . . .
Who is this ‘we’ “who believe men capable of domestic violence, etc but seem incapable of believing women are capable of lying?” Why should anyone here engage with such an asinine accusation?
In brief, the article was a serious contribution to avoiding more tragedy. But you want to count your downticks.
I can only suggest you relook at the statistical point (itâs actually more a logical point) that I made. To be fair quite a lot of people trip up over it, and less scrupulous people exploit the blind spot.
Its a kind of causal and statistical variant of the fallacy of affirming the consequent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent
Tribal: people taking sides by instinct rather than looking at argument and evidence. If they donât like the conclusion they dismiss the argument.
Thanks for understanding what Iâm saying.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd9qzn70nn8o
Misogyny or just incompetence?
Thanks for this. Clearly with hindsight the children should have been taken into care. The behaviour of all the adults concerned was off the rails – the biological mother included:
Similar stuff about the father. The family was a concern to social services before Sara was even born!