Will lessons really be learnt after this tragic child abuse case?

[Tolkienista]

The horrific case of baby Preston Davey sickeningly abused by his adoptive parents (a teacher and his partner) concluded in a guilty verdict in court yesterday.
The details are too traumatic to contemplate the awful end of this child's life.
Once again the age old phrase "lessons will be learnt" has been quoted and I have to say, will they?

I know life is extremely complicated & I'm in no doubt that the killer of Preston was manipulative, cold hearted and extremely secretive in covering up his abuse of this defenceless little child.
I guess that because abuse generally takes place behind closed doors, child abuse will sadly always be a part of our society.

Utterly utterly tragic.

I agree. Men single or coupled, should not be able to adopt. But id suggest that even if flags were raised over this couple, they were waved away. Because they were a. A gay couple. Lovely box ticked there. And b. the fact that one was a teacher.

Not all men but always in the majority, men.

Well said @FernFaery 🙏

The thing is early weeks and months are very hard in adoption. You don’t have the very natural adjustments that come with pregnancy in terms of the physical adjustments pregnant women often need to make, nor do you have a growing bond with a child as they grow in the womb.

I went from being a completely independent, career focussed woman to needing help to go to the supermarket, my time being my own to having two very dependent, traumatised little people to care for. You’re parenting from a standing start a child (or more) that are complete strangers to you. It places high demands on adoptive parents, and you have limited access to your usual supports.

It’s not unusual for adoptive parents to struggle, to need support, to mourn your previous life, to wonder if you’ve made a mistake. That in itself isn’t a particular red flag - post adoption depression is very real. And you can feel scared to ask for support in case it’s thought you’re not coping.

That isn’t a male or female thing necessarily, it’s an adoption thing.

Heads should roll? Because the child was placed with two gay men who showed no indicators of posing a risk of sexual harm to children? On what basis should 'heads roll' please?

This is just...no

ETA re adoption. I am opposed to surrogacy full stop.

These were two very evil individuals who obviously are not representative of gay couples.

However, what needs to be ascertained is that checks were not relaxed because they were gay. If this baby was endangered - nay murdered - as the result of a policy then indeed heads do not just need to roll but placed on public spikes.

Bet those nasty cowardly bastards will refuse to attend their sentencing on thurs

This is not how adoption assessment works.

Lessons learned..till the next time and there will be a next time
This charade has been playing out for decades unfortunately

This really - lessons are learnt and acted on - practice changes, measures put in place and new training added. SW is always evolving, it changes all the time with new focuses for example on criminal or sexual exploitation, trauma informed working, child focused language, awareness of disguised compliance, early help, adultification etc

There’s no relaxing of the assessment process for same sex couples, no quota to fill or favoured status. It’s much more likely the case that he knew how to present himself throughout the process, hid anything that might throw up questions and said all the right things. As many people do in all kinds of situations. From what I can gather there were no concerns about the adoption assessment process itself.

I’d love to see evidence of EDI quoters in adoption or SW btw

Does that includes incidents where the death was accidental?

Well given parents were charged it’s unlikely the death was deemed accidental.

It absolutely will happen again.
There will unfortunately always be abusive parents, despite safeguarding practices.

More red flags than you could have nightmares about and yet it was allowed to continue. Until the baby was killed.

Horrific vile disturbing abuse was allowed to happen.

Who the fuck is going to take responsibility for each missed opportunity ?

But risk can't be 100 % eliminated. One of the perpetrators was a teacher and safeguarding lead. On paper he looked fantastic and I can see why social services placed that poor baby with him.

The fact that he was a coldhearted predator nobody could anticipate.

He probably only went through the adoption process so that he could sexually assault a child .

It won't bring beautiful Preston back, but I think for cases like this we should have the death penalty. Prison places are very expensive, and the money can be better used.

Yes understandably people will think twice about going into social work. No matter how much it’s a vocation it must be stressful and heartbreaking even if you aren’t overworked and then when something goes wrong, fingers are pointed. Why would you want a job like that? Most people are kind and decent but unfortunately monsters walk amongst and I’m not sure how that can always be detected. This poor little innocent child , that poor baby , if there’s a heaven I hope he is in comforting arms.

They say a child is most endangered when a step-father moves in. I wonder what the statistics are when two men move in. Similarly with Baby P, with the mum moving in her boyfriend and a lodger.

And it seems crazy to me that these men were approved in Jan and had been given a tiny child by early April.

He probably became a teacher to access children too.

Yep, a baby with a damaged arm within two months of adoption should have had every klaxon going.

They should not have had parental right to take baby home so soon,

Why? Approval is the very end of the process. They would have been under assessment for about 9 months before being approved.

Yes, although perhaps it's less a question of policy and more like the Henry Nowak case - is there an atmosphere of pushing down gut feelings due to training about the need to be non-discriminatory, etc?

To be honest, even ignoring the gay aspect for a moment, I think there can sometimes even be a reluctance to cast aspersions on men in general. For example look at threads about women being concerned about men becoming nursery workers - obviously some/many are fine - but there is definitely a vibe from some quarters of "you are being a bad feminist to object to this, we should be encouraging men to work with babies, it's good for equality" etc that I think can cause women to suppress their instincts.

There are many circles I've been in for example where it wouldn't be socially acceptable to say some of the things in this thread about the risks from unrelated men.

It sounds rushed to me. I wonder if there was positive bias due to the nature of Varley’s job.

I think so. He was in a position of trust with children and that made him very attractive as an adopter.

There was another case in America where 2 gay men adopted two young boys (but they were much older than Preston). They sexually assaulted them as well and produced csam with them. Luckily the boys didn't die.