Sara Sharif’s mother has branded her daughter’s killers ‘sadistic executioners’ as the schoolgirl’s father and stepmother’s face life in prison for murder.
The 10-year-old schoolgirl was subjected to more than two years of ‘horrific suffering’ by her father Urfan Sharif, 43, and stepmother Beinash Batool, 30.
She was hooded, bitten, burned and eventually beaten to death during a campaign of abuse before her body was found with at least 71 injuries at the family’s home in Woking, Surrey, last year.
Sharif and Batool were found guilty of murder last Wednesday, while her uncle, Faisal Malik, 29, was convicted of causing or allowing a child’s death.
Today, as her abusers are sentenced at the Old Bailey, Sara’s grieving mother Olga Domin said she could not comprehend the level of sadism inflicted on her daughter.
In a moving victim impact statement, she said: ‘Sara was always smiling. She had her own unique character. The only thing I had left to give to my daughter was to give her a beautiful Catholic funeral that she deserves.
‘She is now an angel who looks down on us from heaven, she is no longer experiencing violence. To this day, I can’t understand how someone can be such a sadist to a child.’
Ms Domin said of Sharif, Batool and Malik: ‘You are sadists although even this word is not enough for you. I would say, you are executioners.’
The judge has retired to consider their sentence.
By March 2023 Sara was wearing a hijab but teachers still noticed several bruises
Sara’s stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, wept as she was found guilty of murdering the girl. Her uncle Faisal Malik was found guilty of causing or allowing the death of a child
Sara Sharif’s evil father faces life in prison today for the murder of the schoolgirl (pictured)
Sara Sharif’s mother Olga Domin (right) paid a heartbreaking tribute to her ‘princess’
Ms Domin watched proceedings remotely via a video-link from her native Poland. Sara’s father, stepmother and uncle were led into the dock flanked by security guards as proceedings started.
The court heard how Sara had suffered violence for years with a variety of weapons including being scalded with boiling liquid when she was restrained, being beaten with a cricket bat, being hit with a metal pole broken off from a children’s high chair and being burned with an iron.
Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones KC told the court: ‘The violence used was not just excessive but was sustained.
‘There was an unimaginable level of pain, suffering and anxiety caused to Sara for a long period prior to her death.’
He told the Old Bailey that Sara was hooded and tied up with ropes before being left in a soiled nappy.
The prosecutor said: ‘This is case involving a gross breach of trust because she was the defendant’s child, she suffered this violence in her own home where she was entitled to feel safe and loved and cared for.
‘There were other children in the house and it can only be sensibly assumed that some of those assaults happened in front of other children.
‘The assault with a cricket bat had been carried out in front of her brother. The younger children cannot sensibly have been shielded from the violence that Sara suffered.’
He went on: ‘Throughout that period there had been extensive steps taken to cover up the violence.’
‘Sara Sharif’s death is a case that ‘bristles with aggravating features’, he continued.
The 10-year-old suffered an ‘unimaginable level of pain’ over a ‘long period’ before her death and that the violence had included a ‘use of weapons’.
‘This is a case involving a gross breach of trust because the deceased was the defendant’s own little child.
‘In their care, she suffered this violence in her own home where she ought to have been entitled to feel safe and loved and cared for,’ he added.
Mr Jones suggested that Sara’s uncle Malik should face a determinate term for causing or allowing the death of a child as he knew what was going on.
Sharif’s lawyer Naeem Mian KC said the case had evoked ‘disgust’ but he said a determinate sentence was appropriate.
‘Nothing I say is intended to diminish the horror that this child was put through,’ he said.
‘There was no intention to kill that is the primary mitigating feature we can rely on.’
He said of his client: ‘He accepts responsibility for that which he did.’
But Mr Mian said Batool was equally culpable.
‘We share the view expressed by the crown they are equally as culpable therefore your lordship ought not to draw any distinction between them, no explanation has been advanced on behalf of the second defendant [Batool] for multiple bite marks, no explanation has been advanced for the horrific burn on Sara.’
Mr Mian said of Sharif: ‘He accepts at last that for which he is responsible for. There is precious little else one can advance [on his behalf].’
Caroline Carberry KC, defending Batool, said her client had ‘lesser culpability’ than her husband.
She said Sharif was the ‘instigator of violence towards Sara and the long-term inflictor of violence on her.’
Ms Carberry said Sharif was ‘threatening and menacing’ towards Batool and the ‘balance of power certainly did not lie with her.’
The defendants stared at the floor throughout the sentencing this morning.
Ms Carberry said Batool’s messages to her sister indicated that she tried to help Sara and felt sorry for her.
She said Batool had made efforts to try to leave Sharif and take all the children away from the ‘coercive relationship’.
Little Sara had suffered violence for years with a variety of weapons
The only clue as to what happened here is found in the garden: where a plastic children’s slide sits abandoned by the fence
She sought legal advice but did not go through with it.
The court can be sure that Batool was an ‘isolated and vulnerable young woman’, Ms Carberry said.
She told the Old Bailey that Batool’s role was ‘subordinate’ to her husband and that should be reflected in their sentences.
Ms Carberry said Batool was an exhausted mother looking after six children: ‘Exhaustion and extreme stress and strain played a part in her offending.’
She added: ‘Her will must have been broken by her circumstances. Her determination which she clearly held to fight against what was happening to Sara and to do the right thing morphed into something else.’
Sharif shook his head in the dock as Batool’s barrister said she played a lesser role in the murder.
Ms Carberry said of Batool: ‘She has expressed genuine remorse, deep personal regret for remaining in her relationship with Sharif and is truly sorry she did not remove the children from harm.’
She added: ‘She is unlikely ever to see or speak to her four young children who are likely to remain in Pakistan.’
Even as Sara lay dying in Batool’s lap last August 8, taxi driver Sharif had come home and whacked her in the stomach for ‘pretending’.
Batool had told her sister that Sharif would ‘beat the c**p’ out of his daughter but failed to do anything to stop it, even calling him home from work to dish out punishments, the court was told.
The abuse had become so ‘normalised’ that university student Malik failed to act after moving in with the family in December 2022.
By January 2023, Sara began wearing a hijab to cover up the bruises at school.
Sara suffered broken bones from being hit with a cricket bat, pictured above in evidence
Sara suffered an unimaginable ordeal at the hands of her father and stepmother
A Surrey Police photo of a white pole shown in court as evidence during the murder trial
Teachers had twice noticed marks on her face and referred her to social services last March, but the case was dropped within days and the following month Sara was taken out of school.
Within hours of Sara’s death, Sharif and Batool had booked flights to Pakistan for the whole family, including her siblings and half siblings.
The defendants returned to the UK on September 13 2023 – leaving the children behind – and were detained within minutes of a flight touching down at Gatwick airport.
In his trial, Sharif initially blamed Batool for the violence before dramatically accepting ‘full responsibility’, leaving jurors open mouthed and tearful.
He later appeared to backtrack, denying he had bitten or burned Sara or covered her head in a hood.
Jurors heard that bite marks on Sara’s arm and thigh did not match either Sharif or Malik and only Batool had refused to give impressions of her teeth.
They heard that Sharif had been granted custody in 2019, despite earlier allegations of child abuse and arrests for alleged controlling behaviour towards ex-girlfriends.
Sharif and Malik provided dental samples to the police to prove they did not leave the bite marks but Batool refused to do so.
The abusive father spent his first six days of evidence denying abusing Sara and blaming his ‘psycho wife’ for causing her injuries.
He pointed at his wife and called her an ‘animal’ for abusing and biting his daughter.
But on his seventh day in the witness box Sharif dramatically told the court he had something to say before admitting responsibility for Sara’s death.
Jurors wept as he confessed to beating her repeatedly with the cricket bat and metal pole when she was tied up. He admitted to beating Sara as far back as 2021.
In documents later released by the family court, it emerged that concerns were raised about Sara’s care within a week of her birth in 2013, with her parents known to social services as early as 2010.
A photo from Surrey Police of a room inside the family house in Woking, Surrey
A grab from a video issued by Surrey Police of Sara Sharif singing and playing a guitar
Surrey County Council repeatedly raised ‘significant concerns’ that Sara was likely to suffer physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her parents.
There were three sets of family court proceedings, but allegations that Sharif was physically abusing Sara and her siblings were never tested in court.
Sara was repeatedly returned to her parents’ care before finally being placed with her father and stepmother, four years before she was murdered.
Sharif came to the UK on a student visa in 2003 and dated three Polish women in an effort to find a wife to get an EU passport so he could remain in the UK.
All three women went to the police to accuse him of domestic abuse, saying they had been assaulted by him and held against their will.
He married the third woman, Sara’s mother Olga. He met Batool in 2015 and split from Olga around the same time.
While married to Olga around 2011, Urfan went to Pakistan and had an Islamic marriage to his first cousin but he insisted the marriage was never consummated.
Various relatives were crammed into his house in Hammond Road, and neighbours often heard the distressed screams of a child coming from the home.
One neighbour said she had never seen Sara smile on the occasions she was allowed out of the house.
Despite her Muslim background, Sara had attended St Mary’s Church of England school in Byfleet where teachers had noticed bruises on her.
The referrals were made to social services after Sara gave different stories about the injuries, but tragically nothing was done.
Sara Sharif had suffered more than 25 broken bones from being hit repeatedly
Sara had never worn a hijab but in the last eight months of her life Urfan and Batool began making her wear one to hide the bruises they were causing.
In April 2023 her injuries forced them to take her out of school entirely and she was not monitored at all the final desperate months of her life.
At home she was treated as a ‘skivvy’ and made do all the family’s laundry and take out the rubbish in between beatings and abuse.
Sir Keir Starmer described the case as ‘awful’ and stressed the importance of safeguards for children being home-schooled.
Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said the case highlighted ‘profound weaknesses in our child protection system’.
Maria Neophytou, acting chief executive of the NSPCC, said it was an ‘absolutely shocking case’ raising ‘crucial questions’ about child protection.
Rachael Wardell, from Surrey County Council, said that until an independent safeguarding review has concluded, a ‘complete picture cannot be understood or commented upon’.
Sara’s mother, Olga, said in a statement: ‘My dear Sara, I ask God to please take care of my little girl, she was taken too soon.
‘She will always be in our hearts, her laughter will bring warmth to our lives. We miss Sara very much. Love you Princess.’
Sara’s siblings and half-siblings who were taken to Pakistan following her murder remain in the city of Jhelum, with their paternal grandfather. Efforts to return them to the UK are still ongoing.