Journalists have won their appeal to be able to name three judges who dealt with schoolgirl Sara Sharif’s case in the family court before she was murdered.
A Court of Appeal ruling said the judge who gave his judicial colleagues anonymity – without it having been requested by any party involved – had shown “unfair treatment” towards the journalists and a Channel 4 Dispatches programme.
Sir Geoffrey Vos in the Court of Appeal wrote that Mr Justice Williams “undoubtedly behaved unfairly towards the journalists and Channel 4 – and that is enough to allow the appeals.
“The judge lost sight of the importance of press scrutiny to the integrity of the justice system.”
Sharif was murdered at her home in Woking, Surrey in August 2023 and her father, Urfan Sharif, and stepmother, Beinash Batool, have been convicted of her murder and jailed for life with minimum terms of 40 years and 33 years. Sara’s uncle, Faisal Malik, was convicted of causing or allowing her death and jailed for 16 years.
The media has been 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, but Mr Justice Williams banned the media from naming the judges involved in those hearings.
Several media organisations, including PA, journalists Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers and the BBC, appealed the anonymity decision.
The Court of Appeal, with a ruling written by Sir Geoffrey Vos, has now decided in favour of the media’s appeal on the grounds that Mr Justice Williams did not have jurisdiction to make the anonymity but also because of “procedural irregularity and unfairness”.
The media will be able to name the historic judges in seven days after they have had time to prepare for the potential scrutiny.
The Court of Appeal ruling noted that the judges’ names have already, “notionally, at least” been in the public domain since the hearings they presided over years ago. Although the cases were held in private, their names would have appeared on the orders they made which are public documents.
Sir Geoffrey Vos said Mr Justice Williams was not required under any law to “trawl through his own experience to see if there were risks that he could imagine facing the historic judges. If, notwithstanding the lack of evidence to that effect, the judge was concerned about their being named, there were other, more appropriate, ways to protect them,” adding that HMCTS could have been warned so it could consider how the judges should be protected.
Mr Justice Williams had said in his judgment last month that “individuals associated with the case will I have no doubt be subject to an exceptional level of attention. That attention will I have little doubt range from measured commentary through to rude and discriminatory slurs, moving onto vilification, abuse and threats.
“That I think is reasonably certain in the online world where a virtual lynch mob will readily be assembled in the current febrile atmosphere engendered online and fanned by the undermining of the rule of law and the judiciary worldwide notably in the USA but in this country also where a headline identifying senior judiciary as ‘Enemies of the People’ was seen as legitimate comment,” he said, referring to an infamous Daily Mail headline about three High Court judges in a Brexit case.
Mr Justice Williams added that beyond online abuse “there is real possibility of some individuals going further – much further” citing a case of a man attacking a firm of solicitors identified in the Daily Mail as one that processed asylum applications.
But the Court of Appeal judgment said: “I would deprecate the judge’s use of anecdotal material and his own experiences to create a case for anonymising the judges.”
Sir Geoffrey Vos said he was not minimising the risks that judges face but that it is their role to sit in public and they frequently do so on cases “in which feelings run high, and where there may be risks to their personal safety”.
Judge ‘got carried away’ with Sara Sharif judgment
The Court of Appeal judge also referred to some of Mr Justice Williams’ comments about the media’s past reporting.
Of The Guardian’s story by Tickle and Summers about this case, Mr Justice Williams wrote: “Accurate – no; fair – no; responsible – I would venture to suggest not.”
Of a Channel 4 programme, he added: “I could make several observations about how fairly, responsibly and accurately the Dispatches programme broadcast on 20th July 2021 depicted a number of decisions of the family courts. Thank goodness that journalists don’t have to operate as the courts do and hear both sides before delivering their verdict! Is reporting which only presents one side of the story fair, responsible and accurate?”
The Court of Appeal said it was “unfair of the judge to say, with such vehemence… that the journalists had been guilty of inaccurate, unfair and irresponsible reporting” and that the “sarcastic remark” about the Dispatches programme was “unwarranted… Such sarcasm has no proper place
in a court judgment.”
“There are other examples in the judgment of the judge taking an excessively strong line
about the quality of reporting in other cases,” the appeal judgment went on, saying this was “inappropriate”.
It added: “In short, the judge’s judgment demonstrates, to put the matter moderately, that he got carried away.”
Journalists ‘immensely grateful’ for judgment
Tickle and Summers said in a statement: “Today’s judgment by the Court of Appeal is an overwhelming endorsement for open justice and the role of the press in holding even the most powerful players in the justice system – judges – to account.
“We are immensely grateful for the unstinting pro bono support over 14 months by our barrister Chris Barnes, and the financial and moral support provided when we came to appeal from the charity Law for Change and news outlet Tortoise Media.
“We are also grateful for the urgency with which the Court of Appeal dealt with this crucial matter of freedom of expression.
“All three grounds of appeal that we put forward were allowed: the Court of Appeal decided that Mr Justice Williams’ ban on the naming of judges in the historic Sara Sharif family court cases was unlawful because first, he had no power to anonymise them, second, he undertook a procedurally defective process, and third, that he made that decision partly on the basis of an unfair approach to both of us as journalists, and the media generally.
“As the family courts open up further on Monday thanks to the rollout of the successful reporting pilot, we hope that this judgment is a watershed moment in driving driving and cementing a real change in approach in the family court to make good on the promises of transparency.
“As two freelancers who made the first applications for disclosure of papers in the Sara Sharif family proceedings over a year ago, our focus has been on fighting for the public interest in necessary scrutiny of a case with profoundly tragic result – the murder of a child by the father and step-mother that a family court had agreed were fit to care for her.
“We recognise and are grateful for the expansive disclosure of documents and publication permissions that were given by Mr Justice Williams to help the press and public understand the process by which Sara came to be living with her father and stepmother who were convicted last month of her murder.
“We feel that any other decision would have set a dangerous precedent going forward and undermined the efforts undertaken over the last two years to open up the family courts to greater transparency.
“There now need to be real efforts to work out what went wrong in this heartbreaking case where a young girl’s life was stolen from her, and what might need to change. Information and scrutiny are vital tools in this endeavour.”
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