MURDERED 10-year-old Sara Sharif was failed by the safeguarding system as even professionals appeared to be “groomed and manipulated” by her killer father Urfan Sharif, a review found today.

Surrey social services missed numerous opportunities and a “great deal of information” before Urfan was charged with murdering his daughter at the family home in Woking in August 2023.

She suffered what was described as “horrific abuse” at the hands of Urfan and her stepmother, Beinash Batool, who were both jailed for life after being found guilty of her murder last year.

Authorities must remain able to “think the unthinkable” and be “alert to the possibility that some parents will deliberately harm their children” when it comes to safeguarding children, the report into her murder warned.

Sharif and Batool undoubtedly “used home education to keep her hidden from view in the last weeks of her life,” it said, highlighting delays that led to a social worker visiting an out-of-date home address two days before she was killed.

There was also no evidence in the children’s services or health records that race, culture, religion or heritage were “properly considered,” despite Sara’s mixed background with a Polish mother and Pakistani father, it said.

Sara was placed on a child protection plan before she was even born. Family court hearings that followed soon after saw her moved from the care of both parents, to living with her mother, Olga, and having only supervised contact with her father after his domestic abuse.

In 2019, she was placed with her father and stepmother after Sharif alleged Sara had been abused in her birth mother’s care. Texts showed that Sara had begun being assaulted by her father “soon after she moved in with him.”

The report said the overall process of court proceedings had not maintained sufficient focus on Sara’s needs, cultural heritage and the ability of Sharif and Batool “to provide safe care” amid multiple occasions when “more robust safeguarding processes were needed to properly investigate the possibility that she was experiencing significant harm.”

Surrey County Council said it was “deeply sorry” and that it will continue to work to implement all of the review’s recommendations.

Downing Street said that a review into her “heartbreaking” death had exposed serious failings which ministers would consider.