The father and stepmother of a 10-year-old girl whose body was discovered in her bed after the family had fled to Pakistan have today been jailed for her murder.

A jury found Urfan Sharif and Beinash Batool guilty of murdering Sara Sharif following a ten-week trial where they heard Sara was subjected to a “campaign of abuse”. Today at the Central Criminal Court, both Sharif and Batool were sentenced to life imprisonment, to serve minimum terms of 40 years and 33 years in prison, respectively.

A man described in court as a “Jekyll and Hyde” character who left his victims feeling “helpless and trapped” has been convicted of a series of violent sexual offences against 11 different women and girls. 

Ian Hamilton, 63, from Dover, was found guilty of rapes and indecent assaults over a 23-year period between 1976 and 1999. The women gave strikingly similar accounts of his violent sexual behaviour, some of which took place while the women were asleep.

A care worker who had sex without the consent of a vulnerable young disabled woman in a care home in Maidstone has today been jailed. 

Police were called after a condom wrapper was found in the woman’s room on the morning of 8 May 2024.

Issoop Naguib Lootfun, 69, one of the care workers at the home, originally claimed it had fallen out of his pocket and denied any sexual activity with the woman. He was immediately suspended from the care home.