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

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No judge initiated the decision to remove Preston from his foster mother and made them pursue a placement with this couple. They applied to court to cement their decision.

The court’s ultimate decision will be based on sw reports.

Social workers most definitely have biases as well. It can be towards age, class, career and social standing race, religion whatever at the expresse of the child’s safety and well-being. The fact that they weren’t suspicious of repeated breathing difficulties and a broken elbow. A birth family would never be given the same leniency, they’d be having a child protection medical and seeking for the baby to be removed.

I can't stop thinking about this poor baby 😢 how anyone could do even half the things they did to him is unimaginable. Just so cruel and cold.

These are depraved men who hopefully will be experiencing all their wildest fantasies in prison….

I expect we’ll hear “lessons will be learned” and “full review” etc etc. It has occurred to me after a recent experience in which I was given this very line, that how on earth do we know that lessons have been learned? Is there any audit of this? It’s the biggest and most meaningless brush-off.

Yep. Over 99% of sexual abusers are male. That's a pretty damning statistic.

It doesn't mean women never abuse, as we know, so we can never assume that, but the most likely scenario for CSA will be a male in the picture (and most of the women who abuse are involved with one). Unrelated males are, I believe, even more risk statistically. Here, we have two.

I’m really surprised how few people on here understand the role of social workers. They don’t decide to take children - that’s the courts role. And (ime) courts are very reluctant to remove children from a home. They give awful parents way more chances than I would!

There is just no way social workers decided they’d rather give Preston to a gay couple than have him stay with the birth family. “Wokery” had nothing to do with the decision to put him up for adoption.

I do, however, completely agree about middle class bias with most professions. I’ve personally seen it in doctors, nurses, teachers, police. In addition, somebody with DSL training will know exactly what will cause red flags and will know exactly what to say to deflect suspicion.

Sexual abuse and murder aside, their “parenting” was openly horrific. The aggression was there to see if anyone had looked, the violent spinning in public, the filming him alone in (a stone cold considering the timings) bath “to encourage independence”, sharing videos of his sleep deprivation - shouting “BOO” as he tried to fall into exhausted sleep. On the day he died they “didn't notice” his anal injury as they didn’t change his nappy before taking him out, JV propped him up in bed with a bottle without changing his nappy or washing the vomit off him, or changing him out of his vommitty clothes, he left him alone in the bath. This is their own explanation given to explain what happened - they think this is an ok chain of events to tell the police.

Quite. Preston was only in the earliest stages of adoption here, and there should have been close monitoring as a matter of course. They are GLARINGLY bad at parenting this little baby and nobody notices anything wrong? Or when they do, it doesn't go anywhere?

Why? Because of Varley's "sass"? Please.

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

This case is unbelievably horrific and Preston’s murder was entirely preventable. Attending A&E with a baby his age is not unusual, and very few clinicians would immediately think “asphyxiation” when a child presents with a chest infection. Some of the bruising could be explained by normal pre walking injuries but the head bruising pattern is a red flag and the inability to explain the broken arm is ridiculous. I’ve seen many children with elbow fractures in my time and they and inconsolable. It’s not a normal injury at his age (normal in an older child falling off a climbing frame, bike or trampoline) and it would have had to have happened with a very obvious mechanism of injury at a very obvious time. Normal parents couldn’t have missed it. Preston should have been removed at that point.

Social services have a very obvious “scared caste“ issue. “Not all men” etc. but if men can adopt babies then paedophiles will adopt babies and it needs to be a consideration. Pre-verbal infants should not be placed in households without a woman. I find it very unlikely that a woman of any orientation or a straight man could self describe or be described as “a sassy drama queen” and be thought a suitable person to adopt an infant. His head of y11 status and safeguarding role probably helped, but again, he may have been put there by the school because of his sacred caste. There is a sub-set of society absolutely in thrall to sassy drama queens.

Sexual abuse and murder aside, their “parenting” was openly horrific. The aggression was there to see if anyone had looked, the violent spinning in public, the filming him alone in (a stone cold considering the timings) bath “to encourage independence”, sharing videos of his sleep deprivation - shouting “BOO” as he tried to fall into exhausted sleep. On the day he died they “didn't notice” his anal injury as they didn’t change his nappy before taking him out, JV propped him up in bed with a bottle without changing his nappy or washing the vomit off him, or changing him out of his vommitty clothes, he left him alone in the bath. This is their own explanation given to explain what happened - they think this is an ok chain of events to tell the police.

It’s unbelievable that they pleaded not guilty. The pathologist on the defence team even said that Preston had been sexually abused. JMF may have had an outside chance if JV had fallen on his sword - he arrived home only minutes before they left the house for the hospital - Preston was already critically injured before he was home and the only possible perpetrator was JV - but traces JMF semen were found on the cot and the videos shared between them show cruelty and in the context, at least one video in which both men are present seems to show the aftermath of rape.

Baby murderers have got off lightly in the past, but with the mitigation of having “snapped” and shaken - Preston’s murder was almost planned - plan to adopt, plan to abuse. The pathologist said one video prior to his murder, Preston was clearly on the edge of respiratory arrest with a compressed trachea and blue lips - they had asphyxiated him before - they knew what was coming and they did it anyway. JV deserves whole life imo.

I'm not sure what I feel about women having to be in a family who adopt. My mother was a child abuser who abused 3 of her 4 children and I've sought out lots of information about female abusers and fellow survivors. I am talking about sex abuse, violence, mental cruelty and neglect here.

It's often said that women don't abuse alone and always have male abusers they offend along with or have male partners who are facilitators. That's certainly true of my mother and other women abusers I am aware of. However, the woman deputy warden of a psychiatric hostel I was in abused some of the kids and she operated alone. It's hard to get good data.

Do women act as a deterrent to male abusers in a family or will they inform on their male partner or father, son etc to the police? Difficult to know but there's a lot of denial in families and marriages and some women don't want to accept that their partner or relative is cruel to a child.

I agree. Some people adopt a baby or have their own biological child precisely, and only, because they want to abuse them.

And @hihelenhi
No, opportunities to adopt newborns are scarce because the newborns aren't available to adopt- care proceedings take 6 months minimum before a Placement Order is made.
They are telling prospective adopters not to expect to get a newborn.

6 months of care proceedings, the matching process, adoption panel and transitions, another 10 weeks min with adopters before they can apply to adopt the child, the second court process for the adoption (which parents can contest) - very unusual to get all that done in under a year.

Very occasionally a baby will be placed straight from hospital on foster to adopt regs but that is not the norm. There are not enough of those type of placements either.

Power does attract people to social work as it does in similar jobs like mental health services. They have massive unaccountable power over totally powerless people. I write as someone who was an abused child - social services took the abusers' side and wouldn't even hear me out. That went on for years. Later, the cover-up was something to behold.

Like some others here, I have concerns about some adoptions and think it isn't always the best consequence. I know quite a lot of adults who were adopted and their lives have been terrible and there are those 'looked after' children I met in the mental health system who died very young.

I know a woman who was taken from her allegedly neglectful mother at the age of 2 and put in a children's home where she was sexually abused by a teenage boy when she was 6 and saw staff violently assault children. As a teenager in the home she was abducted by some men, taken to a house and abused for days. Men like this prey on children in children's homes and watch them in preparation of their crimes. My friend was fond of her mother and bonded with her and misses her.

I 100% agree with you.

I can't read that paywalled article, but I don't think "two gay dads must be able to adopt" WAS the "agenda" or motive for social services taking Preston away from foster care initially and into the adoption process so that isn't actually clear from the evidence at all. As has been posted earlier in the thread, that isn't how adoption orders work I do think "it is better for a child to be adopted" (by anyone) was the agenda at that point though.

It's only once the adoption order is made that they start matching with potential adopters, not the other way round .Obviously a massive mistake here in who was chosen at that point, we don't know why these two horrors were among the only 2% deemed suitable to adopt a baby, and yes, there could be an "agenda" at that point around who they chose and why , but don't yet know for sure what the thinking was. Them being in the picture wouldn't have pre-empted the decision to put Preston forward for adoption though; they weren't in the picture at all then.

I still think it seems horribly rushed from once they were approved for adoption to placing them with a baby they'd only met a month or so before though. And then basically left to it, it seems.

May poor little Preston rest in peace. May the bastard murderer suffer nothing but pain for the rest of his life....and may the people who should have protected little Preston hang their heads in shame.

Something I’ve woken up horrified by today, is the lack of self management of these men. I mean, 4 months. They didn’t manage to keep it under any kind of threshold so they wouldn’t get caught, they lost all continence in just 100 days. Gratification above all else including the survival of that poor little boy and their own safety.

Sick, sick animals.

@Fillies4DeclanRice but they had been approved for adoption. If Preston hadn’t been given to them they would have had another child. There was nothing to indicate that this would happen.

As for men being permitted to adopt, I don’t know how I feel about that. I understand why people say it but I also think two horrendous cases aren’t indicative of a deep rooted problem that justifies an overall ban, especially when a woman was convicted of the same crime in a similar timeframe.

Perhaps there is an argument for children over a certain age. I must admit I don’t feel girls should be placed with a single man or two men, but then I don’t feel the same about boys placed with women. It’s a tough one.

Yes I agree. I don't believe any household without a female as part of a longstanding partnership should be able to adopt children who are non verbal as their first child. I'm sorry for all the decent gay guys out there who want a baby instead of a 3 or 4 year old, but it's simply too risky.

Reading about the grandmother/foster situation today, it screams off the page that that baby died, and died horribly after months of abuse, because of wokery that favoured a gay couple over him being with his sister and his Granny.

I'm still gobsmacked how the BBC didn't think this was headline news for last night's 6 o'clock bulletin.

This is the MN comment I mentioned up thread. It's in response to a post about a Guardian article in which a woman stays with her husband who is guilty of watching child porn. The woman works in safeguarding, the family's middle class and social workers are apparently okay with this. There is some relevance to this case I think.

MargotEmin · 01/08/2024 10:48

I applaud the Guardian for shining a light on how nicely spoken, polite middle class families get away with stuff that other families wouldn't.

I work in the field and have seen first hand how parents like these minimise and intellectualise online abuse. They know to be nice and compliant with professionals, professionals who let out a sigh of relief because it's so much nicer working with softly spoken Matthew than it is working with that yob over there who will chuck a chair across the room if you say something he doesn't like.

They exploit the class-based affinity bias they have with the workers around them, convincing the workers that they're just like them really. They will use well meaning research papers and data about the importance of support networks to recidivism rates so that they can all pretend the mother, grandparents, employer etc are doing something honourable when all they are doing is sweeping child abuse under the carpet and maintaining their nice middle class status quo with impunity.

I couldn't. That was headline news at 6 o'clock last night.

@Keroppi

"I'd also be wondering how these two met,"

Abusers are very good at finding partners who will do nothing whilst they torture a child and/or who will get vicarious pleasure from watching the cruelty. The more dominant, often active abuser/killer will go looking for a partner who will not challenge them and may be submissive. The prospective partner may also be very emotionally needy, dependent and someone who puts their own needs over those of a defenceless child.

Or, as you say, if both partners are abusers there are lots of ways of finding each other.

Adoption were there are no women involved should not be allowed. Before anyone jumps on me with "women abuse as well", I know they do, but not on the same scale as men.

It's apparent now that:

a) This baby should NEVER have been given to these men. Everything was in place for the foster mum and then the grandmother to take the child on, but social workers intervened as they had their own agenda

and

b) There were numerous and overwhelming signs that abuse had started immediately. But again the social workers opted not to do anything about it.

It looks very much like they had an agenda that two gay men must be allowed to have a baby and if any evidence suggests otherwise then that's homophobic.

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15894639/Furious-grandmother-baby-murdered-abused-teacher-calls-social-workers-sacked-missed-chances-save-infant.html

Rest in Peace dear Preston.

Indeed you're right. Social Services work on the basis that it's poor and working class people who abuse children and claim that this is evidence based: same as claiming those who abuse become abusers. Of course they're very selective in which research they use for these claims and a lot of research is carried out with convicted offenders who of course tell lies and say what researchers want to hear. Apart from not protecting children of middle class and/or wealthy parents this is incredibly stigmatising to poor parents who often do the best they can. It's lazy thinking to claim it's only financially poor parents who injure and kill children and avoid looking at painful issues such as the intense pleasure some adults get from torturing children and that they choose to do it.

A child protection social worker said of my family: "If that had been a working class family we'd have been in there years ago". This abuse was violence, sexual abuse, neglect and psychological cruelty, some of it happened in front of others. We lived in a cold, dirty council house but my father had a good job and my parents were well-spoken and we went to good schools via the 11 plus.

Someone wrote an excellent comment here about how middle class abusers are treated differently and more leniently by social workers and I will link to it when I can.

It’s well worth listening to The Trial podcast, particularly the most recent episodes from last week and this. Much of the process, including the training, seems to have taken place online. I don’t see how this could possibly be as effective as it would be in person and in their home.