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?

I imagine, eventually, there will be a (female) scapegoat from social services that blame can be attached to.

And the usual "lessons will be learned" trotted out. Except they aren't because as long ago as Victoria Climbie, Baby P, the pattern keeps happening.

This isn't to say social services have no responsibilities, but we can't say lessons will be learned but then expect things to be different when nothing changes from an institutional, social, or legal point of view. Social services are underfunded and there appears limited sharing of information, between emergency services or safeguarding agencies, so that a full picture can be seen. Teachers have safeguarding training and reported bruises to SS.....but what else are they realistically expected to do? Like pp say, often people are told to butt out or MYOB if they are concerned about a child.

At the beginning of the year a toddler tragically starved to death after his father passed away. A social worker twice went to the family home and reported to the police that there was no answer, police were not concerned and it was several days later that the boy was discovered.

The school did report bruises

I understand, legally, why the defendants have pleaded not guilty, but if these people had an ounce of humanity they would plead guilty. I feel the same about several recent cases mentioned on this thread, one of which upset me so much I had trouble sleeping. I cannot imagine the pain and grief suffered by those people who loved and cared about these poor children.

The contempt I feel for defendants like these , who put others to the time, expense and trauma of a public trial in the hope of being convicted of a lesser offence is hard to put into words. They will all be sorry now, because their heinous actions are affecting them, and self-pity is an emotion they are capable of feeling.

So these fucking people put hoods on a kid, to torture her while beating her and the beating instruments with her blood on were found in an outhouse, a storage place for torture objects. This was systematic, premeditated, planned, torture. That tape was ordered by that bitch. No-one can say she wasn’t involved. I hate them all so much. I am so angry. and so sad and sick to my stomach at the same time.

Listen government bots, you have to fucking do something instead of talking. Your voters are sick, physically, mentally getting sick, of hearing these cases. No homeschooling unchecked, properly checked, no homeschooling for vulnerable children, no taking children away from school who are suspected of being abused, give more power more funding to social services, invest in a fucking centralised IT system, no giving children to parents who are accused of abuse, listen carefully to schools concerns, dont wipe your butts with calls from neighbours and schools. Dont give these people a cushiony prison experience, they should rot in jail until the end of their disgusting waste of space of an existence. Better death penalty if it was up to me for child abusers...Do something!

this is it. WHEN will something happen. EVERY SINGLE TIME a child is failed and tortured to death, every single time people (usually the local authority) wring their hands and say lessons have been learnt.

NO they fucking haven’t. When are we going to stop failing our children?

so many children.

I feel physically sick and I’m raging

The neighbours heard screaming, beating, swearing at the children and nobody did anything. How awful. I live close to where this happened (a few miles away not super close) and it’s all so horrendous. Poor girl

On the tape he said she was naughty and he was sorting her out.
Under what planet does he think that sorting out a child by extreme torture and beating is OK.

What are the laws in Pakistan on this? I know it's still legal to smack yours child in UK

Apart from anything else who takes a cricket bat to a child? It’s beyond belief. It’s just sadism.

When are parents going to stop torturing and murdering their children? I think your anger is misplaced

This as well. You will never be able to catch every child murder and abuse. Even with unlimited resources, unless every parent is monitored 24/7.
Personally SS should focus on those high categories which consist most abuse - under 1yo, those living with step parents and whichever else it was.

The problem is we seem to be missing pretty obvious signs.
The fact the teacher took it upon themselves to question the dad is appalling.
There should have been more than urgency about it.

Oh that is horrific, I really feel for the jury having to hear all this horrendous evidence. I have been in tears listening to the news report and the woman covering the trial for the ITV news looked visibly upset recounting it. Then I think of that little girl whose life must have been a living hell of pain and terror and words fail me. Poor, sweet little thing, so defenceless.

"Personally SS should focus on those high categories which consist most abuse - under 1yo, those living with step parents and whichever else it was."

No, that is not good enough. Sara wasn’t under one. Neither were Arthur, Daniel Pelka, Logan Mwangi and countless others... SS should be given enough funding and powers and they should strive to focus on saving as many children as they can. As soon as you start talking about “high priority” that means other cases are free to be ignored. Thats what realistically happens.

No you cant stop abuse of every child, but equally you can not make this an excuse to be compliant and instead try to minimise it by legislation (e.g. no homeschooling, revise of family court shitshows) and a whole lot more funding. Dont let ideal environments where abusers can thrive happen.

@MulinoDarco also we can't hang around for the over stretched wheels of the ss to softly investigate when a small child is covered in bruises.

Police, hospital etc.

Yes in ideal scenario. But LA don't have money even for basic stuff (and it won't improve). For example my then fresh 5yo was off rolled from school (bc he has SEN and they couldn't cater for it). From age 5 and 2 days till age 7 1/2 hewas left without any education. Not a single person checked on him. He wasn't home educated at the time. I went through numerous tribunals to secure his education. I won all. LA should have been paying for his tutors etc but couldn't be a*d. We now home ed. I know tens of parents like that.
So we should be closely supervised but was ok to be left alone for 2.5 yrs? What about holidays, when child isn't seen? What about preschool age whenschool isn't compulsory?
This incidentally is the same LA as SS where Sarah lived.
Arthur was at school and lived with stepmother.
Daniel Pelka the same.
Logan same.
Each were known to SS.

I have a Roma family living near me, in fact, the area I live in now has a lot of Roma families here now and I want to phrase this very carefully but they seem to have no interest in educating the female children and tend to pull them out of school just before or at around the time of puberty. One of my friends teaches in another area where there is also a significant Roma population and says that the way young girls "vanish" from school is a real safeguarding issue. Anyway, some of the people living in the house near me used my address to claim benefits, open a bank account, take out a phone contract and most troubling of all, register a child at one of the local primary schools. I became aware of this when i started to get debt collectors' letters and then the school attendance officer called round looking for this child. I am guessing that the accounts and school registration took place using their original ID and that when they wanted to disappear they used my address (same street and postcode) to say that they had moved as I guess that no proof of address would be needed at this stage. I sometimes wonder where that child is now and hope that they are ok,

Absolutely horrific

I think there needs to be safeguarding adverts like the think driving adverts there used to be that really shocked you

"Safeguarding is everyone's responsibility"
And
"It could happen here"

Need to be in ad breaks, plus some of the early stages of harm.

I've only ever had safeguarding training because I have a school based role. Two neighbours said about hearing smacking/screaming, why didn't they report anything? Was it fear or not knowing what to do?

Obviously children scream but it's the manner of the scream

We see time and time again in these serious cases people who lived nearby commenting after they saw or heard something, there needs to be greater encouragement for people to report concerns, it could just build part of a picture. It doesn't help social services are stretched but I'd imagine some of these families are already on their radar

I hope her abusers get what's coming to them in prison

Yes we had not to ours personally but saw and spoke to the school welfare officer for missing children that where constantly at the neighbours house at one point for a couple of weeks till they realised they had vanished. We told they were in and ignoring the door to start with and then that they had left fled in the night, then watched as the house was emptied of everything. They were Roma seemed lovely when they moved in had great chats and then something clearly changed.

The school pupils in my friends case however where Muslim girls.

Ms Batool had blamed her husband, Urfan, for beating Sara 'black' in a series of WhatsApp messages dating to 2019, the Old Bailey was told.
Sara's stepmother Beinash Batool messaged her sister Qandeela in 2020 complaining that Sharif was 'always shouting and hitting' his child, it was said.
In May 2021 she allegedly messaged her sister claiming: 'Urfan beat the cp out of Sara. She's covered in bruises, literally beaten black.'
Batool claimed that she wanted to report Sharif saying: 'I feel really sorry for Sara' adding 'poor girl can't walk' and 'I really want to report him'.
In February 2022, she allegedly told her other sister Amima that her husband was 'beating Sara up…cos she's being naughty'.
She went on: 'Sara has anxiety, whatever she eats she vomits out…something happens to Sara I will not be able to forgive myself.'
In the summer of 2022, Batool is said to have messaged Qandeela again saying: 'I can't even cover it up. He beat Sara up yesterday and I can't send her to school on Monday looking like that.'

Sara was finally murdered in August 2023 in what would have been the school holidays if she had still been educated at school, having been being severely beaten while at school for at least four years.

Please look at the dates and how long this was going on for and how she was at school while "beaten black" and "poor girl can't walk"* *" I can't send her to school on Monday looking like that." but according to so many being at school during those four years was supposedly this great protective factor...

It wasn't.
It wasn't when I was a battered and neglected child either. I was eventually removed following an incident that exposed the conditions I was in, despite school having repeatedly punished me for what was clearly outside of my control as a child and disparaged me for my visible state and bruises.
I was then seriously abused in 'care', later returned to a still dysfunctional 'home' to be a child carer until parent died, later proceeded to be abused by my guardian, who is the father of most of my children and who I married two days after my 16th birthday, signed off by an approving social services.

No one is learning. From Maria Colwell to Sara Shariff the same communication issues, and supposed incorrect protective factors, failure to follow procedures, focus on abusers 'strengths' and overloaded SW's come up again, and again, and again.

People are trying to blame home education, hijabs, step parents, cultures, men, ... most of it is knee jerk reactions and will do little to stop the next child being tortured and killed. Abusers will exploit every weakness of any system.

Lessons will be learned, but rarely the right ones.
There are procedures that social services are supposed to, and often do, follow, when there are even low level concerns.
A child giving confused explanations of bruising is a major red flag that should alone have brought swift investigation.
Being withdrawn from school to be supposedly home educated or any other reason, following reports of bruising, should have ramped up the urgency of a home visit.
It didn't and we will have to wait for the serious case review to find out why not.

I don't want to hang blame on social services unreasonably, we only hear about what they get wrong most of the time, but there needs to be a massive review of what is going wrong both in failure to communicate clearly and promptly, failure to follow procedures, and in the positive weight so wrongly and willingly assigned by them, to some parents and why. Some things just aren't changing.

A few days ago I put my neck on the line for the 16th time in several years over the same set of children in a very dangerous situation. I spelled out exactly why and how Child Protection and the police where failing these children and what they where falling for, and how the perpetrators where so easily hiding and fudging easily available evidence, and running rings round them. It isn't rocket science but I acknowledge I'm only looking at the obvious behaviors of one family, so considerably easier for me to be focused on patterns and 'co-incidences'.

The incident I was reporting was very serious and very violent in anyone's book, leaving visible injuries and plentiful evidence everywhere.
I intervened at the time despite previous grief, and am now right in the firing line for inevitable revenge.
Lots of witnesses, but no one called the police. Everyone's given up reporting.

Not enough has ever been done. But plenty done to those who spoke up.
Too much stress has been put on the wrong things as being positives, and a lack of curiosity about patterns, evidence and the 'co-incidental' disappearance /un- availability of evidence especially on the children themselves, allowing the abusers playbook to run, and run, and run.

(The person who took my report did listen carefully and agreed it well over the threshold for intervention, but still needed to have words about my politically unacceptable use of 'cocklodger', (I just couldn't think how else to sum up what they did and didn't do within the family) and 'fat' as a physical descriptor, and asked me to find a descriptor other than fat or obese, also over another less offensive descriptor, even having tried and tried to get earlier intervention and now trying to prevent inevitable further extreme violence and threatened death of a child, policing the language of the witness was a part of their job...
I'm generally polite, but not quite PC enough, I'm too LC, not 'Naice', I'm from a tough background, but those are also the qualifications to know exactly what I'm looking at. The focus is in the wrong places.)

Agree with you totally.
Sorry for the tough upbringing you had.
Husband is a Police Officer and says the best thing public can do if they hear what sounds like an abuse is to call police, BUT it's important what they say.. If they say something like.. I'm hearing child screaming and it sounds like they are about to be murdered, will bring them on blue lights and give them power of entry.
Somethling like.. I think the child might have screamed, but children often scream, so I'm not sure what I heard will ensure not much is done.
He was also saying that inexperienced officers sometimes knock on doors of person who called and/or refer to anonymous caller, rather than callers. Simple change of language.

Being in school does not necessarily protect children from torture and abuse. I and my 3 siblings were tortured abused and starved - for years. We were at school full-time. Not one teacher stood up and helped or alerted ss - it must have been obvious. No one helped.

I agree. Fear of claims of racism has been showed in the past as a reason that abuse went on so long. Rotherham, white girls abused by Asian men. People feared being called racists so abusers use that to hide behind.

@Lifeomars this is where the un rights of the child and UK rights V cultural sensitivity.

We expect certain standards for our children, we should expect that for all children.

@Elleherd

Powerful post 💐🌷I've been in a situation with a vulnerable adult trying to get some really crucial emotionally charged points out and I too was hung up because I used the wrong wording.
It was beyond dreadful.