Open justice prevails with judges in Sara Sharif case to be named
27/01/2025
It is not often that discretionary reporting restrictions are made to protect people without them requesting it, but that is what happened in the historic family case relating to Sara Sharif.
As we all know, Sara was brutally murdered by her father and step-mother after a campaign of abuse. It is therefore only natural that the actions of the authorities in their prior contact and dealings with the family be subject to scrutiny to prevent such a horrific outcome from occurring in the future. With that in mind, following Sara’s murder in August 2023, in September 2023 several media organisations requested disclosure of the documents relating to the historic proceedings.
In considering the applications and handing down his decision in December 2024, just as the criminal proceedings concluded, Mr Justice Williams made an Order which:
- Allowed the press to see and publish numerous documents from the historic proceedings; but
- Prevented the media from reporting the names of the judges and other professionals who had been involved in the historic proceedings relating to Sara and two of her siblings.
As per the Order, the media was not allowed to “publish any information arising from the disclosure of documents” which named any third parties involved in the historic proceedings including “social worker, guardian, other named professionals and experts instructed in the proceedings and any Judge who heard the historic proceedings (save for Mr Justice Williams)”.
At the point of the Order, no party had requested that the judges be anonymised and Mr Justice Williams had not heard any submissions in relation to it. Whilst there is precedent for social workers and other professionals to be the subject of an anonymity order, judges have always been accepted to fall into an all together separate category.
Mr Justice Williams went on to invite and receive written submissions from the media, but his decision remained unchanged.
The media, led by Louise Tickle, appealed the decision on the basis that:
- There was a serious procedural irregularity in granting anonymity to the Judges without first giving reasons;
- The Judge had adopted “an unfair, biased and inappropriate approach to the journalists and the media generally” which encroached on their Article 10 right to freedom of expression;
- Open Justice should always mean that anonymity for the judges could not be justified within the framework of Article 8 and Article 10; and
- The Order could not be justified “in the absence of any specific application or evidential foundation” and was not compatible with open justice.
The appeal judgment has now been handed down, with Mr Justice Williams’ decision being overturned because he did not have jurisdiction to make the part of the Order which granted the judges anonymity, along with there having been “procedural irregularity and unfairness”.
In his Judgment, Sir Geoffrey Vos summarised all of the law which is relevant to the issue of anonymity in these circumstances. He came to the conclusion that judges are in a special position where they are appointed to fulfil “a crucial public office”, and that “it is the duty of judges to sit in public”, concluding that: “In accepting office, all judges will or should be aware that that is the expectation, because public scrutiny of judges and the justice process is essential to the rule of law”.
Sir Geoffrey Vos was at pains to acknowledge that the historic judges faced risks as a result of being named and that they had valid concerns, which had only been sought and voiced in response to the appeal of the Order. However, he also acknowledged that “judges sit on many types of cases in which feelings run high, and there may be risks to their personal safety”, and stated that these concerns can be dealt with through additional security measures.
In relation to the argument that naming the historic judges adds nothing to the coverage of the historic cases involving Sara and her family, Sir Geoffrey noted that “it is not for judges to decide what the press should report or how journalists should do their jobs”. A line which, I am sure, will be quoted in many a reporting restriction challenge in the future.
In this case, open justice and common sense have very much prevailed in the Court of Appeal, with Sir Geoffrey commenting that “to put the matter moderately, [Mr Justice Williams] got carried away”.
The result: in a few days’ time, the historic judges will be named, with HMCTS having had time to put the appropriate security measures in place to protect them. The reality: it seems inevitable that those judges will now receive a lot more scrutiny than they would have had Mr Justice Williams not erroneously granted them anonymity in the first place.
This is an important decision, which reiterates the historic principle that ‘reporters write, editors edit, and judges judge’.