Sara Sharif – correction
In a judgment dated 19 December 2024 (“the judgment”) Mr Justice Williams has set out the background facts. In our Law and Disorder podcast released on 14 December 2024 I stated that Sara had been placed with Urban Sharif and Beinash Batool in 2019 under a supervision order. That was not correct. The judgment shows that a final order in public law child protection proceedings had been made on 12 November 2015. On that day public law (child protection) proceedings came to an end and a private law order was made between Sharif and the children’s mother Olga Domin directing that Sara and her siblings U and Z would live with Ms Domin subject to a one-year supervision order in favour of Surrey. That supervision order expired on 12 November 2016 following which there were no protective orders in place in Surrey’s favour.
Three years after the supervision order expired, in 2019, Sara, U and Z were placed with Sharif and Batool in private law proceedings between Sharif and Ms Domin. In those proceedings a welfare report pursuant to section 7 of the Children Act 1989 was written by a Surrey social worker.
The final hearing took place on 8 October 2019. Sharif, Batool and Sara’s mother all attended court in person together with the social worker who wrote the section 7 report and the Surrey social services team manager. The judge heard evidence from the social worker, the team manager and Ms Domin and made an order that the children should live with Mr Sharif and Ms Batool and that they should have such contact with Ms Domin as could be agreed between them, such contact to be supervised either by Ms Batool or another friend or family member, or to take place at a contact centre.
At paragraph [26] Mr Justice Williams said:
“At that point the court involvement with the family concluded. … the work conducted by the social worker (to my judicial eyes at any event) was not obviously flawed but on its face appears appropriate, the recommendation of the social worker was logical and the decision of the judge was what was indicated by faithful application of law and practice mandated.”
That conclusion will no doubt be the subject of intense scrutiny.
Had I known the true facts I would not have stated that a formal supervision order was put in place in 2019 when the order allowing Sara to live with her father and step-mother was made. I would instead have mentioned the power of the court to make an emergency protection order under section 44 of the Children Act 1989 allowing social workers immediately to remove a child at risk to a safe place and also to the power of the police to the same end under section 46.
In his judgment Mr Justice Williams gives his reasons for the continuance of a Reporting Restriction Order preventing the naming of the judge and child protection professionals in the private law proceedings which resulted in the order of 8 October 2019.
As an appeal will be heard on 14 January 2025 it is not appropriate for me to make any observations or predictions as to its outcome. I would only point out that while the judgment mentions in passing the case of R v Felixstowe Justices, Ex parte Leigh [1987] QB 582, DC at para 51 it does not address the opinion of Lord Justice Watkins in that case that anonymising a judge is not lawfully possible:
“So far as I have been able to ascertain, anonymity has never been claimed, other than by the number of justices I have mentioned, by anyone who can be said to be a judicial or quasi-judicial person. This applies as much to High Court judges and circuit judges as to, for example, members of tribunals. An inspector at a planning inquiry is by statutory instrument disentitled from being anonymous. It would, I think, be thought outrageous by trade unions and employers' associations if they were not entitled to know the identity of members of industrial tribunals. Many of the persons I have mentioned are subjected to criticism, vilification even at times, and suffer from being pestered by telephone and otherwise by persons who bear some grievance, and, moreover, occasionally by being wrongly approached by the press. But such intrusions into their private lives judges and others have inevitably to put up with as a tiresome if not worse incidence of holding a judicial office …. There is, in my view, no such person known to the law as the anonymous J.P.”
Mr Justice Williams placed reliance on the statement in R (on the application of Mohamed) v Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs [2010] EWCA Civ 65 at 38
“Justice must be done between the parties. The public must be able to enter any court to see that justice is being done in that court, by a tribunal conscientiously doing its best to do justice according to law. For that reason, every judge sitting in is on trial. So it should be, and any exceptions to the principle must be closely limited.”
However, that case was not about anonymising the identity of a judge. It was about whether seven paragraphs in a judgment given in a case with serious national security implications should be redacted. The judgment of the Lord Chief Justice says nothing at all as to the lawfulness of an order anonymising a judge.
The decision to anonymise the original judge who made the 2019 order raises some difficult technical questions:
Can a judge grant him/herself anonymity? Or must s/he apply to another judge for anonymity?
If the Court of Appeal sets aside the order so far as it relates to the original judge, who can appeal to the Supreme Court?
Sir Nicholas Mostyn
23 December 2024