We wrote to the Guardian in response to the safeguarding report released in November; for the second time on this subject, they didn’t publish.

Your report “Council staff visited wrong address day before Sara Sharif’s murder, review finds”, 14 November) highlights how many agencies failed Sara Sharif, but minimises the crucial role of the family court. 

In 2019, Judge Alison Raeside, who had presided over two previous court hearings, gave residence of Sara to her father and stepmother.  As the Child Safeguarding Practice Review by Surrey Council makes clear, there was abundant evidence before the court about the violence of Sara’s father against her mother, Olga Domin, two other women, and his own children.  Ms Domin, who is Polish, was unrepresented in court, and had no interpreter so her voice was “lost” as the Review states.  It also highlights the court’s and professionals “lack of understanding of domestic abuse”: Ms Domin’s “behaviour and responses were not understood through the lens of a domestic abuse survivor… [D]uring and after the private law proceedings [in 2019] she became marginalised, and we believe wrongly negative views of her became entrenched in professional responses”.  

If Sara had stayed with her mother, she would still be alive.  So would Jack and Paul if the court had listened to their mother Claire Throssell rather than order them to see their father. Children will continue to be murdered unless the systemic misogyny, racism, class and disability bias which pervades the whole child welfare system is overhauled.  The government recently announced the repeal of the “presumption of contact”, used by the courts to hand children over to their violent fathers.  Protective mothers like Claire Throssell have campaigned for this for years.  We’ll be watching to ensure it’s implemented.