The judges have been named after several media organisations successfully challenged a court ban on identifying them. Three judges who oversaw Sara Sharif’s family court cases before she was murdered by her father and stepmother have now been named by a court. Judge Alison Raeside, Judge Peter Nathan and Judge Sally Williams were named on Friday as three judges who were all involved in family court proceedings related to the care of the 10-year-old between 2013 and 2019 after a Court of Appeal ruling overturned a ban on the media identifying them.

Sara’s father, Urfan Sharif, and stepmother, Beinash Batool, were jailed for life for her murder in December, with minimum terms of 40 years and 33 years, while her uncle, Faisal Malik, was jailed for 16 years after being convicted of causing or allowing her death. In 2019, a judge had approved Sara moving to live with her father at the family home in Woking, where she later died after a campaign of abuse in which she suffered a catalogue of 70 injuries, including 25 fractures, human bite marks and burns.

In a controversial ruling in December, Mr Justice Williams said that the media could not identify three judges who presided over a string of historical court cases before the schoolgirl’s death, as well as others including social workers and guardians, because of a “real risk” of harm to them from a “virtual lynch mob”. But after several media organisations challenged the ban, three Court of Appeal judges ruled last Friday that the three unnamed judges could be identified in seven days, allowing time for HMCTS to put protective measures in place.

Sir Geoffrey Vos said: “In the circumstances of this case, the judge had no jurisdiction to anonymise the historic judges either on December 9 2024 or thereafter. He was wrong to do so.”. The media were previously allowed to report that Surrey County Council had concerns about Sara’s father as early as 2010 and that Sara was involved in three sets of family court proceedings before she was murdered by Sharif and her stepmother at their home in Woking, Surrey.

Documents released to the media showed that Surrey County Council first had contact with Urfan Sharif and Sara’s mother, Olga Sharif, in 2010 – more than two years before Sara was born – having received “referrals indicative of neglect” relating to her two older siblings, known only as Z and U. The authority began care proceedings concerning Z and U in January 2013, involving Sara within a week of her birth.