Can’t get over poor baby Preston

[Doximama2]

Not sure this is an AIBU, I never post on here but just feel I want to today. I am a 59 year old nana of 3 gourgous grandchildren including a one year old boy, the whole story in the need the last few weeks and especially this week about poor baby Preston that was tortured, abused and ultimately murdered by his 2 adoptive “fathers” has completely traumatized me. I am recovering from a big surgery 2 weeks ago so feeling emotional but this has really upset me so much that this was able to happen and that no one, not any social services, medics on visits to the hospital - one even with a broken elbow ffs - friends and family of these monsters realised what was happening and that Preston wasn’t a happy one year old. My grandson is always happy and smiling unless he is poorly so how did this go unnoticed? I had to turn the news off Monday when they showed this poor baby trying to sleep and this monster kept making him wake up.

im not naive, I have worked in public service including health and social services which I think is why I can’t comprehend how this was allowed to happen. It just feels like there is so many awful things in the world, and has made me so sad. 😭

Can only hope so. If they are scared a fraction of the amount that poor Preston must have been then I’m so so glad

I know unbelievable

That’s a very good point actually and I pray they get a fraction of what they deserve

I hope they’re sent to the most dangerous and terrifying prisons. Fingers crossed it’s hell on earth for them both.

Totally agree; I hope they suffer at the hands of others for months and months!

I often wonder with cases so horrendous as this what happens to the perpetrators wider family members? How on earth do you carry on with your life knowing what your son/grandson/brother/nephew/friend did to this poor little baby? That the person you raised is an evil monster.

I would have to leave the country and I don't know if I would want to carry on. This little innocent child would, surely have become an adored grandson/nephew and would have brought so much light and joy to the family.

The ripple effects from such an unthinkable crime will stretch so far and wreck so many lives and how can the jury members live their lives as before with details and images they will never be able to erase from their memories?

my cousin is one

he likes girls aged 13-15 before losing interest

he got 4 girls pregnant before someone stood up and said something

the police did come down on him like a ton of bricks and arrested him (i'm not in touch with any of my family so don't know what happened as its never come up on any news pages,i check his name at least once a week)

his wife,(now) adult dds and mother stood by him as 'anyone can make a mistake' (!!) his father and sister died before it all came out

i know they've been through hell for standing by him,hes been beaten up,had his flat broken into,taken abuse online and is too scared to step outside

i haven't seen him since i was a young child but i've taken abuse whenever i've gone back to my home town (i moved away years ago) and on the internet simply because i am related to this cretin by blood

god knows how much abuse their familes will take-evil acts spread far and wide

Of course this is true. But all of the stats show that when looking at the sexual abuse of children these crimes are overwhelmingly committed by men.
A male only household is a far higher risk. That’s a fact.

Let’s hope he gets a WLO. For JV it is possible.
Then we need to see a thorough, transparent investigation. Not to apportion blame but to facilitate lasting change. Children are being failed far too often, let down by social services and the apportion agencies.

I've been thinking about his sister as well. Wonder what it's going to do to her as she grows up and finds out how he died and knowing that she was safe with her nan while he wasn't.

I've been crying so much I've made myself feel ill. I hope they throw the book at them. It always amazes me people aren't made to be in court when they're sentenced. They should be, even if they have to be dragged in kicking and screaming.

Meanwhile I'm sure there's a sizeable chunk of Mumsnet who'd like to do a Handmaid's Tale style beatdown on these cretins.

@LondonMumo23 That's a beautiful thought. I lit a candle last night and said a prayer because I felt I needed to do something to commemorate that little boy. I wish he could have felt the love he deserved.

I keep thinking about them waking him up and he starts trying to smile and then his face crumples. It makes me think of my DS who smiles when I go to get him out of bed in the morning, and his face when I've shouted at him and he's cried. He's only little, and it makes me feel awful, so I give him a big cuddle. But that's the difference. I feel guilty if I upset DS, they didn't care. In fact I saw someone say Preston crying after they hurt him made them angry. What the fuck did they think he was going to do it they hurt him? Babies cry when they're in pain. I cry when I'm in pain and I'm an adult who knows why I'm hurting.

I hate saying this, but I'm glad he didn't have to suffer their abuse for too long. It was still too long, but if he hadn't died he might have suffered for years and that doesn't bear thinking about.

Jumbled thoughts this morning. I haven't been sleeping well the past couple of nights.

The baby died. How often does this happen and nobody ever finds out. I can’t actually read the details because I get too upset and Baby P haunted me for years. It’s absolutely awful

But not all are. From the long line of abusive nuns in the Magdalen laundries, to shocking cases like Victoria Climbie, Eliza Ngaba, Elijah and Marley Alexander, Kaylani Kalanzi, to rescue cases like that of Chad, Ruby Franke's son who now lives happily with his father. Women like Brandi Cooner and Becky Hamber were allowed to adopt. And I can remember other cases that haunted me at the time. All these are women who killed or systematically abused their children and children in their care.

It is not wise to decide 'men are not safe; women are.' It is reductive and lazy and doesn't identify or resolve the actual problem.

@ThePieceHallit’s in the court report that the partner went away travelling on business fair bit, as JV was sending him abusive messages from home.

i struggle to see how these guys really were the best candidates, unless social services really were dazzled by the child safeguarding teacher angle.

i also find it really hard to understand why it was possible for social services to wait on JV getting his GCSE cohort through, but wouldn’t wait for granny to get through cancer treatment so that siblings could be together when his foster mum was happy to keep him.

It makes my heart ache to think of what could have been for that beautiful little boy.

@Tonissisterit probably doesn’t justify “men are not safe” but I think it would justify enhanced safeguarding, whereas SS seem to have done the exact opposite and been particularly permissive - the reassuring texts from the social worker after the fractured elbow are embarrassing

Have you seen evidence that specifically shows male only households are higher risk? Stepfathers and boyfriends of single mothers are over represented as perpetrators of child abuse/homicide, that holds across multiple data sets and countries, but that’s not the same thing.

Oh for fucks sake. So they could have waited for his nan to recover? If they could wait for a bunch of kids to finish their GCSEs? It's maddening. This child wasn't unwanted and friendless here. It would still have been horrific if that was the case, and another baby would have been their victim, but knowing that there were people who loved him and wanted him and he was handed over to those two vile specimens makes it worse somehow. If he'd have gone to his nan his foster parents and his bio mum would have been able to see him, and he'd still be alive.

Yes. You will note I was very specific in my language and said “sexual abuse”. The data shows that 82% of these crimes are committed by men.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-audit-on-group-based-child-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse/national-audit-on-group-based-child-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-accessible?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Thanks, I’m familiar with the data on sexual abuse. I was asking about your specific claim
that A male only household is a far higher risk. That’s a fact.

This dataset doesn’t show that and I’m not familiar with one that does - if it exists I’m keen to see it.

We don’t really know the full details of why the grandmother wasn’t seen as suitable. Her age and the fact that she had one child already might have been barriers even if she was in good health. From what has been published she was very unwell and the prognosis may have shown she might not recover or not very quickly. I believe she says now that she is well but if that’s a recent development that’s a possible recovery period of a couple of years.

The delay for the school year was before the couple were fully assessed and therefore before they were identified as potential adopters for Preston, so it wasn’t a delay so they could adopt him.

(And I don’t hate men, I’m married to a good one. I don’t sleep with one eye open or worry that my husband would not be able to look after our children if something happened to me. I don’t think that all men lack empathy. I think that there is a case to be made that men (or enough men to be dangerous) are either more easily socialised out of empathy, or that they are subject to more powerful social forces or both. I think that you can see this via violent or illegal porn habits - what percentage of women seek it out or would try to access it or want to choke a partner compared to the percentage of men? It’s more than a few bad apples that no one needs to worry about sadly. No one is saying that women are not capable of being bad apples either, but the statistics both of violence and violence and sexual harm against children do speak for themselves.

Victoria Climbie is a slightly different case, as she came over with her aunt and the authorities failed to act to remove her. Absolutely horrific and should never have happened, but baby was actually put with monsters selected by the state - the state actually made the decision that removed poor Preston from a place of love and safety and put the child in danger. So it is about vetting and not only safeguarding).

I agree that the data I cited doesn’t directly prove that male only households are at higher risk. However, my point is that it's a reasonable inference from what we do know.
We know that the overwhelming majority of identified child sexual abuse perpetrators are male. We also know that elevated abuse risk is associated with the presence of unrelated adult males in a household, and that many intrafamilial abuse cases involve fathers, stepfathers, brothers, uncles, or other male relatives.
So if one demographic is responsible for the large majority of offending, it's not unreasonable to infer that a household composed entirely of members of that demographic would present a higher baseline risk than one composed entirely of members of the demographic responsible for a much smaller share of offending.
Of course, that's an inference, not direct proof. To prove it, we'd need household-level studies comparing abuse rates across household compositions. I haven't seen data that does that conclusively.
But equally, the absence of a direct study doesn't mean the inference is irrational. If 80–95% of offenders in a category are male, it's a fairly straightforward probabilistic observation that the risk pool is not distributed evenly between men and women.

Whole life order for Varley.

Good. Let them rot.

They’re where they belong.

GOOD. I hope neither of them know a second's peace for the rest of their miserable lives. I've never been an eye for an eye person but this is one of the worst fucking things I have ever read.