Irish Examiner view: Insidious creep of anonymous justice

Ten-year-old Sara Sharif singing and playing a guitar. Within months, she was dead. Sara's father Urfan Sharif, 42, and stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, were found guilty at the Old Bailey of her murder. Her uncle Faisal Malik, 29, was found guilty of causing or allowing her death.

A regular contributor to the Irish Examiner’s letters column on Friday drew a comparison between the harrowing case of Sara Sharif, the young child in England tortured to death, and Kyran Durnin, from Co Louth.

Kyran, who would now be eight, was reported missing from his home in Drogheda in August although he had allegedly not been seen for two years. 

Gardaí are treating the case as murder and arrested a man on Thursday while they searched two properties.

Given the complexities of the investigation and the fact of an arrest, it would be unwise to speculate further. 

However, the point made by the writer addresses failures of inter-departmental coordination between state agencies empowered to oversee the wellbeing of vulnerable children.

In the Sharif case in 2019, six-year-old Sara was placed into the custody of her father, Urfan, and Beinash Batool, her stepmother, after a private hearing at a family court in Surrey.

Four years later, she was discovered dead on a bunk bed, alone at her home in Woking. 

She had suffered months of torture including beatings with a cricket bat, burnings, and restraint. 

Sharif and Batool were convicted on Wednesday of Sara’s murder following an eight-week trial at the Old Bailey.

The court heard that her father was “a lying, manipulative, controlling man”. 

In a subsequent legal application, it emerged that the family court was aware that Sharif had been abusing Sara’s siblings for years — and had been arrested for domestic abuse — but still gave him joint custody.

The Surrey County Council social workers who agreed that Sara Sharif’s father could have custody have been granted anonymity. 

While that raises its issues of transparency and accountability, there is an even more worrying dimension of a restriction which impedes the public’s route to knowledge and understanding.

And that is that the judge who heard the case has also been granted anonymity, a decision that many people may find astonishing, as are the reasons for providing it.

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The order was made by a fellow Family Court judge, Mr Justice Williams, who was concerned that there could be a “social media pile on”.

In his order, which he is now reviewing, Mr Justice Williams said: “The name of any third parties referred to in the historic proceedings for the avoidance of doubt including social worker, guardian, other named professionals and experts instructed in the proceedings and any judge who heard the historic proceedings.”

The insidious creep of anonymous justice is something to be resisted and runs counter to principles which have been established for more than a century. 

Openness is an important safeguard because it sustains public confidence in the impartial administration of the law.

Everyone has a right to know by whom they are judged and discuss how judges are interpreting the rules. 

Social media should not have the ability to change that. 

It will be a bad day for society if this ruling stands.

Britons are enjoying the dark side

We commented recently on the fast-expanding demand for Guinness in Britain and America, driven — at least in the US — by the persuasive (to some people) qualities of online influencers.

Since Diageo has limited its supplies to Britain during the Christmas run-in, thirsty drinkers have been seeking alternatives.

Covetous eyes have fallen on the pride of Cork, Murphy’s.

This week, British media has expended thousands of words extolling its virtues.

Murphy’s has always been available over the border, but is rapidly establishing itself among cognoscenti as the stout of choice in the world’s largest market for the dark stuff where sales have grown by 12% in the past year.

While Guinness has the lion’s share of demand, Murphy’s is increasing its foothold in pubs across the country, helped by a price advantage and better margins for landlords.

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A Heineken spokesman told The Daily Telegraph it hasn’t increased marketing for its product, but is “seeing that more licensees are looking for an alternative to the market leader”. 

In some pubs, Guinness has become the most expensive pint on offer, with increases of up to 8% year-on-year. 

Some London pub chains have been bringing their managers to Cork to sample the alternatives.

Murphy's Stout brewery was founded in Cork in 1856.

One co-owner, Neil Watson, is quoted: “We realised Murphy’s was definitely different, but wasn’t inferior.

“It’s authentic, tastes good, and has a bit more flavour than Guinness,” he says. 

Now, one in four pints sold across his seven sites is Murphy’s.

Authenticity is an important brand value.

Given that Murphy’s has been brewed in Cork since 1856, it has plenty to go round. 

Let’s hope its rise continues into the new year and beyond.

Knowing which way wind blows

When the weather experts of northern Europe agreed to collaboratively name and categorise storms, they had highly laudable objectives.

Principal among those was to raise public awareness of severe weather so that precautions could be taken and could review plans based on risk.

The system has worked pretty well. 

During the very high winds at the start of this month, nobody was killed on the island of Ireland.

Taoiseach Simon Harris urged the public on the west coast to take extraordinary caution. 

His message was blunt. “It’s very rare to have a status red weather warning, and I’d really like to encourage everybody in the six counties in the West ... take it extraordinarily seriously,” Mr Harris said.

“A red weather warning does mean do not travel during that period of time and, even though it is a Friday night coming up to the Christmas season, I’d really encourage people to heed that advice.” 

The West of Ireland bore the brunt of the blast, with wind speeds reaching 140km/h.

Storm Darragh hit earlier this month.

 There has been detritus and parked container lorries over at the port of Holyhead in Wales after damage to infrastructure seriously disrupted the delivery of up to 500,000 Christmas packages bound for Ireland.

The rest of the country and Britain laboured under the burden of orange warnings, less strong but still serious enough to cause widespread damage and kill people in Birmingham and Manchester.

Whatever the colour of the alert, we could all agree that there was a substantial impact and that it was a storm. 

The scientists and various government agencies said so.

But not so, it seems, insurance companies, one of which told a claimant that Storm Darragh wasn’t a storm at all because it didn’t hit the required wind speed of 55m/h (88km/h) in his hometown of Kidderminster. 

There, it was recorded at only 53m/h (85km/h), below the official definition of a storm as declared by the Association of British Insurers.

A storm, they say, is “a period of violent weather defined as wind speeds with gusts of at least 48 knots (55m/h).” 

Happily, a change of mind by the insurance company — faced with the evidence of flying aerials, falling chimneys, and damaged roof tiles —prevents this from being another much-quoted example of actuarial parsimony, but it raises significant issues for the next decade.

With climate change fast bearing down upon us, it highlights a fundamental question about whether our building regulations and financial plans are adequate.

The repercussions and costs of global warming are already being parsed by physicists, scientists, and mathematicians. 

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Calculations have been made by ClimaMeter, an international organisation whose collective brainpower has analysed decades of storm data. 

It says the heavy rain and winds in Storm Darragh locally were “strengthened by human-driven climate change”.

It concludes that this made gales 5% stronger over Atlantic coasts and rainfall up to 10% wetter. 

Its researchers also said it contributed an increase of 15% in last month’s disastrous floods in Spain.

It is something that all home-owners, builders, and politicians will have to face. 

Being in denial is not a good starting point, and hair-splitting by insurance companies will not be a helpful contribution.