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

I think they were explained fairly easily though (of course being professionals will have helped.)

I really wish there was some way to guarantee the thing that has already happened won’t happen but I’m not sure there is.

@LittleMerrymaid i will continue to post where I see fit and grant you the courtesy of the same.

I’m not sure it’s that gay dads are seen as ‘lovely’, it’s more that it’s assumed that having been through an extensive vetting process for adoption in the first place that any injuries or illness are benign (and they can be.)

It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of misinformation about this case as well: there’s been a lot posted that either isn’t true or could be true but isn’t proven (there was a claim that they’d put photographs on the dark web for example) so it quickly gets complex and confusing.

As I understand it, Preston went to hospital three times. I believe two of these occasions were with illness and one with an injury, which had a plausible explanation. Happy to be corrected if I’m wrong.

My mother manipulated all other five family members against me making them blame me for everything including my two sisters who are both retired now and still deny the abuse. My elder sister who was abused too, stood by and allowed our mother to have access to grandchildren and children in a children's home. She's worked as an art therapist in psychiatry. My younger sister left her daughter with our mother. Women can facilitate abuse if not actively commit the crime.

Yes, the BBC say JV was commenting on Preston not sleeping within days of the boy being placed at their house.

After undergoing an assessment and familiarisation process Preston was adopted and began living with the defendants on 1 April 2023.

But just days later Varley, who took a year off work as head of year at high school to adopt a child, confessed he was struggling with a lack of sleep due to the baby constantly waking in the night, a jury heard.

On 6 April, he texted his sister, a baby sleep trainer: "He's dead meat today. Didn't sleep last night after 11.30. Up every, one and a half hours."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyv2p8ldzlyo

It definitely was on the BBC News at 6, as I said upthread, because dh and I sat through the report in stunned and horrified silence. It rendered us speechless. Someone responded to my post saying it was 20 mins. in, so very much down the running order.

My mother manipulated all other five family members against me making them blame me for everything including my two sisters who are both retired now and still deny the abuse. My elder sister who was abused too, stood by and allowed our mother to have access to grandchildren and children in a children's home. She's worked as an art therapist in psychiatry. My younger sister left her daughter with our mother. Women can facilitate abuse if not actively commit the crime.

The red flags were obvious, and if it had been Preston’s bio mum and som random guy, there’d have been questions asked and things done. But the red flags were dismissed because they were professional men and because the half-witted social workers were falling over themselves to coo over two men looking after a baby. Yes, that sounds harsh of me but I bet it’s true.

There was another case a while ago which shared features with this, and some idiot had written about what a great job ‘dad’ was doing - just before ‘dad’ killed their adopted child.

It’s sickening to look at Preston’s dear little face smiling and to think about what these men did.

@AzureStaffy

The statistics show that over 98% of sexual offences are committed by men. Your mother dsunds like a nightmare but she was far from the norm for women. Women who commit these crimes are outliers statistically.

It was their anger and rage at Preston for behaving like a baby.

They expected a living doll they could sexually abuse and then put to bed for the night, and he cried. Their abuse made him cry more, so they got angrier They didn't form any emotional bond with him, so they didn't empathise with him when he was suffering, no matter how extreme. There was nothing there internally, no conscience, no empathy, to prompt restraint. The only limit they could have had was fear of external intervention, and they already knew they could talk rings around social services. If Preston was still alive, he's probably still be with them now.

I don't intend to idealise biological parents, because biological parents do abuse and kill their children. But any kind of emotional bond towards the child on the abusing adult's part will act as a brake on the adult's most violent impulses. The abuser will take a longer period to reach lethal levels of violence, or never reach that level at all. As we now know, JV had no brake and he exerted no limits on his rage. In fact, he seems to have wallowed in his rage.

It was not on the six o'clock news last night unless I blinked and missed it. I was waiting for it. I hope you are right, though.

It's s about reducing risk, not eliminating it.

@Arran2024 Fazakerley is a suburb of Liverpool, so it's an English place-based surname, originating from Old English.

Yes, that's kind of what I'd always thought. So why would you place a young nonverbal baby like Preston in the care of two very inexperienced men? Did they give THAT good an account of themselves, really? JMF claimed in his testimony (yes, I know quite a bit of it is trying to blame everyone but themselves) that their adoption "training" was mostly online, and didn't mention safeguarding (obvious bollocks, esp as JV was meant to know all about it). But how true is that? What is the 'training' once the supposedly extensive vetting is completed?

It was their anger and rage at Preston for behaving like a baby.

They expected a living doll they could sexually abuse and then put to bed for the night, and he cried. Their abuse made him cry more, so they got angrier They didn't form any emotional bond with him, so they didn't empathise with him when he was suffering, no matter how extreme. There was nothing there internally, no conscience, no empathy, to prompt restraint. The only limit they could have had was fear of external intervention, and they already knew they could talk rings around social services. If Preston was still alive, he's probably still be with them now.

I don't intend to idealise biological parents, because biological parents do abuse and kill their children. But any kind of emotional bond towards the child on the abusing adult's part will act as a brake on the adult's most violent impulses. The abuser will take a longer period to reach lethal levels of violence, or never reach that level at all. As we now know, JV had no brake and he exerted no limits on his rage. In fact, he seems to have wallowed in his rage.

It was not on the six o'clock news last night unless I blinked and missed it. I was waiting for it. I hope you are right, though.

It was on the national news - both the six and ten. Both times approximately two thirds in.

It was on Northwest Tonight at 6.30 because it's in the north west, so they don't get off the hook for not having it on the national news on that one.

Maybe it was considered too disturbing for children to see pre-watershed? But is there even a watershed any more?

It was their anger and rage at Preston for behaving like a baby.

They expected a living doll they could sexually abuse and then put to bed for the night, and he cried. Their abuse made him cry more, so they got angrier They didn't form any emotional bond with him, so they didn't empathise with him when he was suffering, no matter how extreme. There was nothing there internally, no conscience, no empathy, to prompt restraint. The only limit they could have had was fear of external intervention, and they already knew they could talk rings around social services. If Preston was still alive, he's probably still be with them now.

I don't intend to idealise biological parents, because biological parents do abuse and kill their children. But any kind of emotional bond towards the child on the abusing adult's part will act as a brake on the adult's most violent impulses. The abuser will take a longer period to reach lethal levels of violence, or never reach that level at all. As we now know, JV had no brake and he exerted no limits on his rage. In fact, he seems to have wallowed in his rage.

What BBC news?

It wasn't covered at all on the six o'clock news tonight, I waited for it.

It was covered in the regional news Northwest Tonight and I want to know who made the decision that the choking of a baby by a paedophile sex abuser wasn't worth of the main news.

I think the question is men specifically. A single male paedophile could also prey on children this way. A woman being present does dilute the danger at least somewhat. Ban adoption by men alone maybe- whether gay male couples or single men.

But it's very unlikely that the only suitable family they could find were two men.

Plus from some of the videos that have been doing the rounds, one of the men (the teacher) seemed a highly unstable man.

The same thing happened with Pride in Surrey. There were so many red flags with the founder, Stephen Ireland, including him dressing up children in bondage gear, but the authorities, including the police, schools, the BBC and foster care in Surrey, ignored them all because they didn't want to appear to be homophobic. He was allowed to run a phoneline using his own mobile phone for vulnerable children to call him. The result? He kidnapped, drugged and raped a child.

He was sentenced last June. Also during Pride month.

The media largely ignored the story.