A deadly thread runs through Sara Sharif case – and the government’s knee-jerk response misses it

Listening to the sentencing in the Sara Sharif trial, it’s hard not to be gripped with anger and disbelief. 

Every detail evokes more horror than the last – the description of her small broken body, the note left by her father, her killer, that said “I lost it”, the lengths her abusers went to cover up their crimes.

What follows is the need to blame, to get answers and to feel that something urgent must be done to ensure this never happens again.

It is this public sentiment that has led, as it always does in these cases, to accusations levelled at the institutions that could have done more – her school, social services, the council, the police.

Their inaction at crucial moments is condemned and the government responds with reassurances that something is being done, that the gaps in the safety net are being closed.

In this case the vehicle is the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, presented to parliament today, which includes measures ministers say apply specifically to this case.

Sara Sharif sentencing as it happened

There will be a new register and a unique identification number to better track absent children and councils will be able to refuse applications for home-schooling made for at-risk pupils.

But it wasn’t the ease of home-schooling or the lack of data sharing that caused Sara’s death, it was the troubling misogyny that runs through this case like a deadly thread.

During the sentencing the judge described how she was forced to take on childcare and cleaning duties, was relentlessly beaten for being spirited instead of submissive, and how her older brother was spared the same fate.

It is also notable that her father’s pattern of aggression against women was all too evident to authorities, with numerous domestic violence allegations made against him, culminating only in him being asked to do a course.

When campaigners call violence against women and girls an epidemic, these are the circumstances they have in mind – women ignored, girls treated like second-class citizens in their own homes, a society watching on but not speaking up and a sense of depressing inevitability about how it all ended.

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This is why the government’s long-term violence against women strategy, which aims to change culture over time and is driven by committed ministers like Jess Phillips, has a better chance than the latest legislation.

The sad reality is that there are so many more Sara Sharifs living in fear of the men in their lives, and many more women being abused and ignored.

A few new powers for councils won’t change that, but dedication to the cause that goes right to the top just might – and that is cause for some hope amid the horror.