Zara Aleena’s Murder Was Preventable. The System That Failed Her Still Hasn’t Changed.
Today marks three years since Zara Aleena was murdered while walking home in Ilford.
Three years since a 35-year-old woman - a law graduate training to be a solicitor, known for her compassion, ambition, and quiet strength - was attacked by a man with 28 previous convictions, a history of violence against women, and a probation record that should have triggered urgent action.
Three years since a preventable death.
And now, following last year’s inquest and the resulting Prevention of Future Deaths report, we know exactly how it happened.
We know that Zara was not failed by a single mistake. She was failed by every part of the system designed to protect her.
A Pattern of Missed Risk, Ignored Warnings, and Under-Resourcing
The inquest found that multiple state agencies - probation, prison services, police, and local authorities - failed to share information, assess risk, or act on clear red flags.
Jordan McSweeney had a documented 17-year history of violence, including domestic abuse, stalking, and multiple breaches of supervision. He should have been classified as high-risk. He wasn’t.
He missed probation appointments. He was subject to a restraining order. He had reports of violent conduct in prison. Yet the system let him walk out with little oversight.
By the time police attempted to arrest him, he had already begun stalking multiple women. Zara was the one he attacked, sexually assaulted, and killed.
Staffing Crises Are Not Excuses - They’re Warnings
At the time of McSweeney’s supervision, London probation services were operating at just 58–61% staffing capacity. That figure wasn’t an anomaly. It was symptomatic of a justice system battered by austerity, weakened by short-term reforms, and held together by underpaid frontline staff without the tools they need.
Probation officers told the inquest they were managing 100+ cases at once. Critical information about McSweeney’s behaviour was not logged, shared, or acted upon.
In any other setting, this would be considered institutional collapse.
Culture Still Protects Itself First
One of the most chilling aspects of the inquest was this: professional standards officers within the Met initially identified serious failings - but senior officers overruled their own investigators and cleared staff of wrongdoing.
This wasn’t just a lack of resource. It was a conscious act of institutional self-protection. It tells us something many of us already know: when mistakes are made, the priority is often to cover liability, not examine accountability.
The Inconvenient Truth About Prevention
We hear often about harsher sentencing. About building more prisons. But Zara’s case didn’t fall through the cracks because of leniency - it fell through because no one was doing the basic work of risk management.
McSweeney was not invisible. He was seen, flagged, breached, warned about, and known. The problem wasn’t lack of contact. It was failure to act on contact.
“No one wakes up and murders a woman. The signs are always there. We simply choose not to look closely enough.”
– Farah Benis, Founder, CPVAWG
A Legal System That Still Falls Short
In December 2022, McSweeney was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 38 years. He refused to attend the hearing.
Less than a year later, in a deeply painful development, the Court of Appeal reduced his minimum sentence to 33 years, citing an “overly high uplift” in the original sentencing.
This ruling was not about guilt - he admitted the murder and sexual assault. It was about arithmetic. But its timing and effect cannot be ignored. For Zara’s family, it was another act of institutional minimisation - another message that the system is more precise in protecting process than people.
A Legacy Demanding More Than Sympathy
Zara’s family have shown extraordinary strength in turning their grief into action. Her aunt, Farah Naz, called the inquest findings “a devastating catalogue of failure” and demanded a future where Zara’s death truly leads to change.
They’ve been dignified. Patient. Tireless. And they’re still calling for:
Clear accountability
Transparent audit trails
Proper funding and reform across justice services
Public commitment from ministers to act on the Prevention of Future Deaths report
We stand with them.
This Is What Prevention Looks Like
True prevention means:
Fully staffed, trauma-informed probation and prison systems
Cross-agency data sharing and escalation procedures
Serious public education on stalking and coercive behaviour
A justice culture that values safety over institutional self-preservation
It also means listening when families and communities say: we told you this would happen.
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Zara Aleena should be alive today. There is no policy neutral in the face of that reality.
We will not accept a system that treats women's safety as discretionary, that underfunds prevention while investing in punishment, that issues warm words after the fact and remains silent when asked to change course.
Zara’s name deserves more than remembrance. It deserves a country where no woman’s death is written off as inevitable - especially not when so many people saw it coming.
Media contact
pr@cpvawg.org
