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Will Jones – The Daily Sceptic Nov 13, 2025

Woke attitudes and worries about being called racist have been blamed in part for the failure to save Sara Sharif from being tortured to death by her father, with officials failing to check under her hijab for injuries and neighbours afraid to report concerns. The Mail has more.

Sara Sharif was tortured to death by her father after a catalogue of blunders by authorities who missed bruises under her hijab as they feared causing offence, a report reveals today.

The 10 year-old was beaten to death by Urfan Sharif after the risk posed by the serial domestic abuser was “overlooked, not acted on and underestimated by almost all professionals” despite his 16-year history of attacking women and children, according to a damning safeguarding review.

In acts of brutality described by a judge as the worst crime he had ever encountered, Sara suffered over 100 injuries when she was tied up and hooded in a plastic bag secured with parcel tape around her head before being battered with a cricket bat, metal pole and a rolling pin, strangled until her neck broke, burnt with an iron and bitten.

Following her death in August 2023, her 43 year-old father fled to his native Pakistan with his accomplice wife Beinash Batool, 30, before phoning 999 to confess to the killing, thinking he had got away with it.

But he was captured and extradited to face trial at the Old Bailey where the murderous pair were jailed for life in December.

Now a safeguarding review has identified a catalogue of missed opportunities to rescue Sara, concluding “different actions could and should have been taken and the system failed to keep her safe”.

Mistakes included failing to probe why the Muslim schoolgirl was suddenly wearing a hijab as professionals feared causing offence.

The blistering report identifies how professionals failed to “join the dots” as evidence of Sharif’s “extensive” domestic abuse was “lost within the system”, inexperienced social workers under pressure to be “speedy” did not carry out basic checks, safeguarding processes were not followed and home visits were delayed with fatal consequences.

There was also confusion about home schooling policies and fears about breaching data protection laws meant evidence of abuse was not shared.

Yet the review concludes that no one should face the sack as Sara’s death was not caused “by one specific malfunction within the safeguarding system”, instead the “blame for these killings lies with the perpetrators”. …

Even before Sara’s birth, Sharif was known for violence after being accused of attacking two children and three women, including Sara’s mother Olga Domin.

But he was never charged with any offence.

After arriving in the UK on a student visa, the taxi driver held one woman at knifepoint, choked another with a belt and imprisoned one girlfriend for five days while he sent her passport off for a marriage application in a bid to secure residency in the UK.

Yet Sharif managed to dodge blame and a child protection plan was closed in 2011 “without any evidence that father had addressed his abusive behaviour”.

Social services were called repeatedly after Sharif was accused of biting, hitting and slapping children but no further action was taken after he blamed Ms Domin.

Sara was taken into foster care in 2014 at the age of two, but despite the local authority believing she should be adopted, only a 12-month supervision order was put in place “without adequate safeguards”.

Meanwhile, her father spent his time drinking and gambling, eventually leaving Ms Domin to fly to Jhelum where he secretly married his cousin in an Islamic ceremony before he returned to embark on a third marriage with Batool.

In 2016 Sharif was ordered to go on a domestic violence perpetrator programme where he “admitted to extensive and wide-ranging domestic abuse”.

But he only attended eight of the 26 sessions and experts said there was “not enough evidence” he had changed his behaviour.

Despite the report making “quite shocking reading”, its significance “became lost within the system” when a social worker failed to complete an analysis and it was not added to Sara’s safeguarding report.

A family court later decided to award Sharif custody in 2019 based on a flawed report by an inexperienced social worker which had critical “gaps” in information about Sharif as they were under “pressure to file the report on time”.

Worth reading in full.

Surely at the very least the social worker who failed to complete the analysis that led to the 2016 domestic abuse report being “lost” and the worker who filed the 2019 report with “gaps” that led to Sharif getting custody – plus the managers responsible for failing to ensure their staff were doing their jobs properly – should be named and fired. How will things improve if there are no consequences for such gross negligence leading directly to such a horrific outcome?

The Telegraph further reports that Sara’s neighbours “did not report concerns that she was being abused to police because they were scared of being called racist”.

Neighbours of the family were scared to report “concerns about what they heard” in the Sharif household.

“They feared being branded as being racist, especially on social media,” the authors of the report wrote.

“While understanding their point of view, this is concerning that race was a bar to reporting possible child abuse and it needs to be overcome.”

Source 

 

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