Jesus Christ will this never end [Content warning: concerns child abuse]

[Hotdogsarevile]

Sorry for the daily mail link but Jesus fucking Christ this is beyond awful

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13958665/sara-sharif-burned-tied-bite-marks-murder-trial.html

when will this ever end?

The thing is, in this instance, I don't for one second she was taken out of school to be home schooled. I believe she was taken out of school for the abuse to be hidden from the authorities and to be the house slave. Why is everyone saying she was home-schooled?

I think people are scared to speak up, even in horrific situations like these

They were not homeschooling. They removed the child from school after they could no longer hide her bruises. It is like saying we should ban the hijab because it can be used to hide abuse. Or we should have mandatory checks on step parents because of the much higher risk that they will be abusive compared to a bio parent.

Exactly this.

I was responding to @NiggleNoggle 's post about what the responsibilities of local authorities are wrt the monitoring of home schooling arrangements i.e. practically zero. Try to comment on posts within the context in which they were made. (Plainly they weren't "home schooling" her - the only thing they were teaching her about was torture and cruelty.)

She wasn't being home schooled, but that's what they told school when they took her out to hide the abuse. In this country it's legal to take a child out of school and say you are home schooling, regardless of whether you are or not.

I think that's naive. When I was 17 I was still in touch with my childhood best friend who had gotten pregnant by a lowlife and gone to live on a rough council estate with him. He wasn't abusive, just useless and thick. I felt sorry for my friend, and concerned, and for a while tried to keep the friendship going. The estate where she lived was a real eye opener. Tiny tots roaming in the street until late, in just nappies - no one watching. Random groups of kids used to just come into my friends house even if she didn't know them, they just roamed everywhere. My friend said the baby next door would scream for hours in the house while the mother sat out in the street boozing (this is what most of the adults did every night in the summer).
All this to say, there was a very strong culture on that estate, practically a rule, that unless it affected you directly then you looked the other way. Plus the standards of behaviour were so low that what they would consider abuse or neglect likely is not what your or I would.

A rule made by the residents that people could have broken if they so wished, you mean?

Look, I understand what you are trying to say and you’re right that there are many reasons why people don’t report, but it sounds like you’re excusing the neighbours not reporting. “They might have been scared of being called racists…it’s a culture…they wouldn’t class it as neglect”. There is a definition of neglect, someone’s interpretation of that definition is neither here nor there. I am not saying that everyone does report, I am saying they SHOULD. Children are literally dying, why are you so keen to explain why people don’t report like it should be acceptable? “Oh it’s just the way it is on that estate” isn’t good enough.

Maybe we do need to look at why people don’t report and address that, but in this case specifically the neighbours heard horrific things coming from a home with children living there. They should have reported.

I wonder this too. Even if the poor girl meant nothing to them, what on earth was going through their minds. Clearly they felt confident they could get away with it. Evil.

But the fact that this country just allows anyone to take their child out of school to be home schooled enabled them to get away with the abuse.

She might have worn a hijab to school to cover her bruises, but she would have been surrounded by safe adults who she could have confided in or who would have been able to pick up that something was wrong with her.

Homeschooling the way it is implemented in this country makes it possible for a child to practically vanish off the face of this earth.

And that can't be right. There need to be more safeguards in place.

Definitely not trying to excuse, I dont believe there are any excuses. Only that I think it would be worth bringing the topic into the media and news more, trying to educate people who perhaps have lived their lives in the pockets of society which don't have the best moral compasses. It doesn't seem like schools and social services alone can protect people, to reduce cases like this there will need to be a cultural shift in neighbours, friends and family.

This case is probably the worst case I have ever witnessed. I am a social worker and poor Sara was known to Surrey, it looks like they are doing a national safeguarding review to look into what happened. Nothing makes sense, poor Sara had bruises, had a hijab to hide, neighbours heard screams and this was going on for two years prior. Sara was home schooled for 4 months, where was social workers checking in.. the depravity of what has happened is so depraved and poor Sara failed at every point, bite marks, iron marks on her buttocks, WTH...

I feel physically sick after reading more today.

those neighbours who heard something. I hope Sara’s screams haunt them to their dying day.

if just one person had called the police or the NSPCC. Just one. Sara might just have been saved.

death must finally be a peace to Sara. She will never feel pain again. She will never feel terror ever again. I feel sick with rage. That poor beautiful girl.

I agree. It astonishes me that a child already known to SS and about whom the school has concerns, is allowed to be withdrawn and 'homeschooled'. Those children are being completely let down.

Not in this case, no. The step mother was just as bad. This disgusting excuse of a human deserves all that she's got coming in jail. And if she doesn't end up in jail, I wouldn't like to know what some randoms might do to her.

The lot of them are depraved and pure evil. Poor girl and her poor mother. The teachers who taught this girl and her school community must be left utterly traumatised. I am fairly hardened but this has got me in pieces.

I feel utterly and totally revengeful thinking of those individuals and what they did. Scum of the universe.

Traces of the murdered 10-year-old's blood were found on the kitchen floor and on objects including a hoover and a cricket bat during a police search of the family home, the court heard.
More than one rolling pin was found with her DNA on as well as a brown leather belt which also had traces of her uncle and father's DNA, the prosecution said.
Jurors were shown images of some of the objects found by officers, including a rolling pin and a white pole.

Now, if social services were doing their job, they would have picked up on this?

I agree.

I truly hope that there wasn't an aspect of not wanting to seem racist involved in how this girls case was handled. Tragic.

I completely agree, but I’m at a loss as to where we would even start.

Home schooling should fall under Ofsted.

I read that she was known to social services. I haven’t read that they were actively involved prior to her death. “Known to” could mean previous involvement and the case was no longer active - can anyone clarify if Sara was under SS at the time of or immediately prior to her death? I admit I’ve found it too upsetting to read all the details.

How the HELL is she allowed to refuse having her teeth examined? She must be a prime suspect, right?

I vaguely remember when this first came into the news the other taxi drivers at the taxi rank where the dad worked had said the dad was a nice guy. Just shows what Jekyll and Hyde characters some people are

My memory is a little bit hazy, but when I was at Junior school there was a girl there who looked thoroughly uncared for. She had brothers who were the same. One day she stopped coming to school. I overheard my parents say that this particular girl had jumped out of a bedroom window (she was less than 10 years old) and it was due to her being abused by her dad.

Social services removed them all and honestly I'm not sure what happened to her, but all these years later I still think about her. We lived in a very small ex mining village, which then became a majority council house village. There was still a very good community in the local working mens club, everyone knew each other. But this girl (and the rest of her siblings probably) still went under the radar. This was 35 years ago and I still think about her now and wonder how her life has turned out 😞