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The judge who decided that Sara Sharif should live with her father who went on to kill her can be named after a court of appeal ruling.
Sara was murdered by Urfan Sharif and his wife, Beinash Batool, in August 2023, less than four years after the designated family judge for Surrey made the decision.
In a victory for open justice, that judge can be named as Alison Raeside, 66, who was a tutor for the judicial college for more than 10 years.
The ruling came after Sir Geoffrey Vos, the second most senior judge in England and Wales, had said a high court judge had got “carried away” and made “inappropriate and unfair remarks” about the press when he banned the media from naming three judges who oversaw family court proceedings related to Sara.
Raeside presided over hearings related to the Sharif family from January 2013, when Sara was born and made the subject of a child protection plan. Her involvement with the case continued until October 2019 when Sharif, 43, and Batool, 30, applied for Sara to live with them.
The senior judge relied on a report prepared by a social worker, which detailed that Sharif had been accused of assaulting Sara’s siblings and mother, Olga Domin, 38, in the past but concluded: “I do not have any concerns for the children remaining in the care of their father.”
The social worker made home visits to Sharif and Domin and reported that Sara had disclosed recent physical assaults by Domin, and concluded that the mother had a low capacity to meet Sara’s needs.
Raeside accepted the inexperienced social worker’s recommendations that Sara and her sibling should live with her father and Batool with Domin getting supervised contact, according to documents from the 2019 hearing. The judge said it was “amazing” that Batool could supervise the visits between Domin and the children, according to a transcript.
Within months of Raeside’s final order, a gruesome campaign of violence against Sara began, which included her being tied up, hooded with a plastic bag, beaten, bitten, and burned with an iron and hot water.
The other two judges involved in the historical proceedings relating to Sara can also be named on Friday as Peter Nathan and Sally Williams, who are both retired circuit judges.
Nathan, who was appointed a deputy high court judge and the designated family judge for Surrey in 2011, made a single protective order removing Sara and her two siblings into care on an emergency basis in November 2014. Williams, who was a tutor for the judicial college, made an interim care order for Sara and her sibling in July 2015.
Raeside was the primary judge across three sets of family court proceedings, presiding over several hearings in 2013, 2014-2015 and 2019.
Her involvement began on 17 January 2013 – just six days after Sara was born – when Surrey county council applied for a care order for Sara and her two siblings, who can only be identified as Z and U.
It came after concerns that Z and U had suffered and were likely to suffer “significant harm” relating to neglect, physical harm and domestic abuse.
The three siblings remained living with their parents throughout the proceedings, which ended in September 2013 with Raeside granting the local authority’s request for the children to be placed under a 12-month supervision order.
Sara was taken into foster care for the first time for a short period in November 2014 after Z complained that Domin had bitten them “hard”.
In an application for an emergency protection order on 17 November 2014, a social worker noted: “There would be significant concerns if the children returned to the independent care of Mr Sharif given the history of allegations of physical abuse of the children and domestic abuse with Mr Sharif as the perpetrator.”
Nathan granted the application until the following day when the case was to be heard by Raeside. She extended the application for Z, who remained in foster care, but not for Sara and U, who were returned to the care of Sharif while Domin agreed to reside elsewhere.
Surrey council later issued care proceedings for Sara and her two siblings. But on the second day of the final hearing in May 2015, again presided over by Raeside, Domin disclosed that Sharif had abused her.
Sara and U were briefly placed in foster care before being moved to a refuge with their mother. Those proceedings ended in November 2015 with Z remaining in foster care and Raeside placing Sara and U with Domin while Sharif was allowed supervised visits.
But Sara began living with Batool and Sharif in March 2019 after allegedly reporting being abused by her mother. As with other claims against both parents, the allegations were not tested in court.
Sharif and Batool began private law proceedings and applied, with Domin’s consent, for Sara and her sibling to live with them. At the end of the 2019 hearing, Raeside concluded: “It is ordered that the children do live with the father and Ms Batool.”
The court of appeal judgment states that Raeside was not prepared to approve the changes before Surrey social services prepared its report. The judgment states: “That report concluded that the children were being given stability and appropriate guidance by the father and step-mother and recommended that a child arrangements order should be made in the father’s favour. Having considered the evidence and the report and with the consents of the parties, that order was made in late 2019.
“It is not for this court to evaluate the course of the historic proceedings. But it should be noted that the historic judges had, as in all cases of this type, the difficult task of assessing the risk of future harm, which could only be done against the background of the evidence before them.”
The three judges can be named after the court of appeal ruled that a high court judge, Mr Justice Williams, was misguided and wrong to anonymise them.
Williams had ruled in December that the media could not name the judges over concerns of a “real risk” of harm to them from a “virtual lynch mob”. He also said he did not believe the media could be trusted to report matters in a fair, accurate and responsible way.
Williams, who also ruled that the media could access documents from the historic proceedings, said he believed that the judges and professionals involved in the case “acted within the parameters that law and social work practice set for them” and that none of the decisions they reached 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,” he said.
Several media organisations, including the Guardian, appealed against Williams’ decision to anonymise the judges and the court of appeal lifted the order on Friday 24 January.
Vos, sitting with Lady Justice King and Lord Justice Warby, said he did not minimise the legitimate fears the three judges, who had not sought anonymity, had about being identified now, which were outlined in submissions to the court.
Although it was not detailed in the proceedings, Raeside had previously been stalked online by a man who she had barred from contacting his daughters.
Raeside was educated at Godolphin and Latymer, an £11,000-per-term independent school for girls in Hammersmith, before graduating from the University of Manchester. She was the designated family judge for Surrey from 2019 until 2024 and also served two terms on the family procedure rules committee.
