Former teacher guilty of sexually abusing and murdering baby boy he wanted to adopt - CPS

I’ve read about social worker’s excess positivity about adoptions before. Essentially, the social worker keeping in touch with the family is the one who has recommended the adoption in the first place and so they have an unconscious bias towards them.

There have been other cases of abuse by married heterosexual adoptive couples.

Some professionals were swayed by "perceptions and assumptions" about the couple's class, professional status, and academic qualifications, the serious case review said.
The review's authors said this led to a "flawed" adoption process undertaken by Stoke social services.
Newcombe-Buley, 45, stamped on one child with a stiletto heel and hit one over the head with a dustbin lid.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-14230584

The review into the death of John Smith in 1999 in England at the hands of his prospective adoptive parents found, not only fundamental flaws in the assessment of John’s adoptive parents (with the result that procedures for assessing prospective adoptive parents subsequently have been strengthened) but also that professionals were too ready to accept the adopters’ explanations of events, with the result that the possibility of an objective assessment of John’s situation became increasingly unlikely.

A key finding was ‘J’s voice was rarely, if ever heard directly’

That transnationally adopted children with a history of orphanage care may be
particularly vulnerable to abuse or neglect by adoptive parent(s), is raised by USA data that 16 children adopted from Russia have been killed by one or both adoptive parents between 1996 and 2009.

The absence of voices of adopted adults who as children were
abused by adoptive family members constitutes a major silence in the research
literature.

Meeting the adoption support needs of adults who have been abused within their adoptive family
research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/10909/1/SUBMITTED%20August%202013%20A%20and%20F%20Post%20Peer%20Review%20-%20Meeting%20the%20adoption%20support%20needs%20of%20adopted%20adults%20who%20have%20been%20abused%20within%20their%20adoptive%20family.pdf

followtheswallow

It's a deep-seated problem prevailing amongst humans, not adoptive parents.
See the case of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, murdered in a matter of months of his father moving in with a new girlfriend. Or don't, because reading what he went through is just as gruelling as following the JV and JMF trial.

However, this deep-seated problem with humans is being paired with a deep-seated institutional blind spot about humans who have applied to be adoptive parents. As illustrated by the extracts from the child protection worker who wrote in the Guardian, quoted upthread, and Child Protection Rsource, an unthinking presumption has developed that the psychological phenomenon doesn't apply in adoptive parents. But it does, because they are human.

None of us know for certain how we will react to the stresses of sleeplessness while looking after the small child causing the sleeplessness until we do it. I personally did fine, but I had all the protective factors a human being can have. Given what I know of myself, I would probably also have coped fine with the tiredness if I'd been given a traumatised toddler evacuated from London during WWII, but there would have still been a greater risk that I could have got angry in my sleep deprivation. That's how being a human works, as opposed to being some kind of angel sent down from on high. It's not nice to think about, but safeguarding necessarily requires considering extremely unpleasant things.

It would thus have been in that evacuated toddler's best interests if someone external checked on the child's welfare and whether I was expressing anger at him or her for engaging in typical toddler behaviour.

We have decades of research identifying the risk factors for child abuse, and it serves no-one to pretend that it doesn't apply to any specific group. We say on MN all the time that there must be no sacred castes to child protection: not priests, not people wearing rainbow badges. Surely obviously not adoptive parents, either.

There's no need to engage in any knee-jerk reaction, as you put it, because that's not what's necessary. We just need Social Services departments to do the job they are already employed to do, which includes
a) remembering that child abusers are found in every single social stratum and,
b) being alert to signs of abuse, particularly when risk factors are already present.

The knowledge is there, so why wasn't it used? The attitude of professional curiosity was lacking, because the professionals had already decided JF and JMF couldn't be abusive. Just as they did in the case of Shayla/Elsie.

Even if the deaths of Shayla/Elsie and Preston were nine years apart, that is still too soon, and it demonstrates that the lessons were not learned from the case review after her death.

Human beings of all shapes, sizes, genders, nationalities, sexual orientation and skin colour are capable of abusing other human beings. Some are more inclined to abuse than others but what will stop them or reduce possibility is getting caught, convicted and stiff penalties. And until recently the Christian concept of sin also held some perps back.
Unfortunately governments everywhere are reducing social service staff and budgets. Christian religion is dead. Also people's willingness to speak out either professionally or personally is reduced due to fear of being labelled homophobic/ far right / Karen / etc. Put those together and abusers can abuse freely like in this case. Sadly poor Preston wont be the last child to die a preventable death.

One of the big problems is that as rigorous as the adoption process is there isn’t any room for ‘this doesn’t feel quite right to me.’

No idea how to address that.

This is interesting. It seems clear there were biases involved in allowing and supervising the adoption, likely at different levels. When Preston was taken to A&E three times in the four months these two had him in their house, including with a broken arm, it triggered an automatic police notification and a review from Preston's and an independent social worker - both of whom noted unease in their write-ups but then decided all was well with Preston and his 'daddies'.

I can quite see the social workers simply not contemplating these men might set out to harm the baby in their care, whereas they might have been more alert to a birth family situation. I also agree as posted upthread that they would have been relieved to be dealing with the 'educated class' they themselves belonged to, so again didn't have enough critical distance.

A key factor throughout seems to have been that all professionals were willing to accept the accounts given by the men, more or less at face value.

How much the 'sassy gay dads' schtick was a factor, I don't know but I'm willing to bet there was an element of allowing them leeway - I think the idea of oppressed gay men has a long cultural tail, and some women are additionally weird about thinking they are lovely.

I didn't realise adoptions could be made by single men. I thought it was strange that JV and JMF were eligible to be in the adoption process having only been together around three years and with no formal commitment to each other. But it seems the bar is lower than I thought. It makes me uneasy - pre-verbal children adopted by single or unrelated males. I know that comment is hard on the nice men, great dads and decent gay men. 'Gay dads' seem to be a solution fallen on eagerly by an overwhelmed service.

I do understand what you’re saying but I don’t think two cases in nine years (as horrific as they are individually) indicate that it’s a deep rooted problem prevailing amongst adoptive parents.

My worry with this case (and a lot of similar ones really) is that knee jerk reactions aren’t benign, they can cause harm. I’m not anti considering a female adopter has to be present for say under 3s (although I’m mindful that wouldn’t have saved Leiland-James) but I do think this case was a difficult one on the basis that Preston wasn’t hidden away, the opposite.

Should we be routinely checking children for internal injuries when admitted to A & E? Possibly, but that is unlikely to be practical on a national level so then we have to decide which children, and then it’s possible to miss some.

I really wish I had answers to this awful situation.

This is from an article written about the inquiry into Shayla's murder and why the injuries were overlooked.

The reason for this is given as that the adoptive parents would inevitably be seen through a positive lens, as adoption is inevitably seen as a positive thing for a child. Thus as the Review concedes there was a ‘lack of professional curiosity’ regarding S’s experiences.

'the child while still legally a child looked after, was considered an adopted child and so this shaped the way professionals shared information.’

I suspect what we are seeing here is the logical conclusion of the mantra that ‘adoption is best’ and that ‘children need to be rescued’.

childprotectionresource.online/if-a-parent-has-parental-responsibility-and-no-one-cares-what-remedies-do-they-have/

I think he really was that panicked and desperate, but obviously he couldn’t tell anyone the real reason why. He acted like it was for Preston.

He was also sick in the dock. Seeing your career and reputation crashing down, knowing you’re about to be discovered, realising your phone will be searched, theres DNA, there will be post-mortem, facing life imprisonment for child sec abuse and murder will do that to you.

I'm proposing that the people who are paid on the presumption they have been trained in identifying risk factors for child abuse actually employ that training.

Yes, biological relatives commit abuse. I do not deny that. I have posted about that in this thread.

However, unrelated adults are statistically higher risk, not lower, and we have two cases here where adoptive fathers seem to have been treated as lower risk, despite the messages they'd sent, and the injuries to the toddlers.

As a result, the adoptive parents' violence was left to escalate until the toddlers were fatally injured. It's not good enough.

I saw a ‘joke’ reel on instagram a few weeks ago; it was one of those ‘turn my texts into an emo song’ ones (if anyone has seen them.) They were exchanges between two (presumably heterosexual) people and they were pretty shocking to me. Things like ‘these fucking kids are a nightmare’ ‘I’m really going to lose my shit’ ‘if these little bastards don’t go to bed.’

I am a long way from a perfect parent and I’ve shouted at mine and said harsh things I don’t mean which I’ve then apologised for (then done again …) but honestly I’ve never spoken about them like that.

I do think there is a swing back from the ‘gentle’ movement to a slightly nastier vibe.

I agree that Preston's case was much more, because Preston was adopted with malign motivations in mind. However, they didn't intend to get caught after four months- they would have intended to sexually abuse him for the whole of his childhood without being caught, and JV's rage interfered with their calculated plans.

That rage alone should have been seen. You should be looking for it with small children. The same applies in Elsie's murder. Those texts should have set off alarm bells. They didn't. Then the leg fracture and bruises should have set off alarm bells. They did not either.

I agree it’s a tricky one because it’s so tempting to go down the route of NAMALT, but of course safety has to come first. I guess my reservations are that in the three cases of murder by an adoptive parent, two were committed by a man and one by a woman. It isn’t as if there was one rogue woman and say twenty men, it’s almost a split down the middle.

On the petitions board, there is a petition for "Preston's Law" to "create an NHS digital safety net for vulnerable children". https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/5543225-need-people-to-sponsor-a-new-parliament-petition-for-prestons-law

I certainly don't want to end adoption. I do think questions should be asked about whether adoption by only males is too risky, at least for children too young to be able to report abuse.

I think similarly about men working in nurseries.

So are we proposing ending adoption, essentially?

I have a lot of problems with the current system but none of this is based on suspicion and hostility towards the proposed adopters on the basis that they aren’t related to the child. Unfortunately, the death count for children murdered by their own parents is too high for that to make sense.

the adult who was designated as the main carer could not cope with the realities of a small child being a small child.

• I feel like the Vardy case was more than that though. Vardy probably couldn't cope with normal small child behaviour but he was clearly set on SA however the poor baby behaved. It was probably a very calculated decision to adopt.

Yes, in particular the Cinderella Effect is relevant to sexual and physical abuse by unrelated men.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_effect#:~:text=In%20evolutionary%20psychology%2C%20the%20Cinderella,by%20her%20stepmother%20and%20stepsisters.

It does raise questions as to whether adoption to men only should be allowed, at least for preverbal children. This would include both gay male couples and single men adopting.

Something else I've wondered is what potential effect the Cinderella Effect has on straight couples who use a sperm donor so have a child who's raised by a man without a biological relationship. There's barely any mention of this possibility at all, at least online.

I had never read about Elsie's case before, and the commonalities to Preston's case are heartbreaking: the adult who was designated as the main carer could not cope with the realities of a small child being a small child. But hey, lessons learned, eh?

The court heard that Scully-Hicks had complained in a series of texts that Elsie was a difficult child, describing her as “Satan dressed in a babygrow” and calling her a “psycho” and “monster”. He once wrote he was “ready to explode”.

For hundreds of years, European fairy tales for children have centred around the knowledge that unrelated adults in the household are a higher risk for abusing children, even when that adult takes good care of their own biological children. The Barnados charity ran afoul of that bit of human psychology in the 1920s, after far too many of the participating families in the boarding out and the child migration scheme abused their foster children and used them as free labour and worse.

During WWII, the same exploitation for labour and abuse occurred with the evacuees.

But in the 21st century, we have social workers who apparently don't know that unrelated adults in the household are more likely to lose their temper with young children, and who assume adults that have made it through the adoption selection process couldn't possibly feel rage and anger once they're taking care of a child for real.

Obviously these naive, idealistic little cherubs don't even know there is an adoption breakdown rate, never mind what the rate is.

Yes, single men can adopt, not only single women. This needs to be questioned too.

https://www.adoptionuk.org/blog/adopting-as-a-single-man

Thank you for this information. Very disturbing, this must be addressed ASAP.

It's terrifying one of them was a teacher...

Sad, both men are vile. His birth mother was an evil cow as well

Absolutely. The drama queen pantomime performance. Fake collapsing onto the floor. Begging the staff to kill him. Screaming for his mother. Wouldn’t he have been numb with shock if he’d just found the baby submerged in the bath? The man is a depraved piece of shit.

It is very interesting to read about there being such a different level of scrutiny (so much less) for adopting parents compared to biological parents.