The identity of three family court judges who made decisions about the care of 10-year-old Sara Sharif in the years before she was murdered are to be revealed.
Last month after her father, Urfan Sharif and her stepmother, Beinash Batool were found guilty of killing her at their home in Woking in Surrey in 2023, the judge in that case said the media were not allowed to publish the names of the judges who’d dealt with her care proceedings which had been ongoing since 2010.
Mr Justice Williams said there was a ‘real risk’ of harm to them from what he said would be a ‘virtual lynch mob’.
Several media organisations, including ITN which makes this programme, supported two journalists who challenged the ban on naming them in the interests of transparency.
Then today three Court of Appeal judges said the three unnamed judges could be identified in a week’s time.
We spoke to those two journalists, Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers and began by asking if this judgement would erode a long-standing journalistic principle to anonymise those in need of protection.