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. 😭

we’ve had some diabolical child murders over the last 50 years. I remember being pregnant and someone told me the full extent of what Peter Connolly had endured and I remember having a really unexpected reaction. The back of my face hurt because I couldn’t cry enough tears, similar to when a toddler falls over and then processes the shock, the tears that come after the silence.
Im a pretty tough old bird usually so I was very embarrassed and shocked by my reaction.
Prestons death has absolutely broken people. I’m devastated but I’ve got a lot of anger. They sought a child that would have been loved by the majority of people given that opportunity to care for him and they used him for the worst possible gratification. I can’t see either of them making it out alive. And fucking good.
I don’t know what the solution is but in the north west we’ve had baby Preston and Leyland James die at the hands of their adoptive parents and I’m not sure hearing “lessons have been learned” is going to make things better for anyone.

Bollocks. His grandmother wanted to adopt him so he could grow up with blood family.
So why deprive him of that?

Or social services could have done their jobs properly and saved him.

RIP baby Preston

Just a wonder. If you were gravely ill and going to die and had to give your children to total strangers. Would you choose a woman and a man or a man and a man. Truthfully. answers from your deepest maternal instinct. If it’s a woman and a man, why should the state choose any different? Why are children’s needs, rights, protections not put first?

I've said this before on a thread about a bed bound elderly woman being raped to death in hospital but worth saying again - what happened to that poor, innocent child makes me glad that the human race is hurtling towards extinction.

Which leads us to the question of safeguarding. This child was taken to hospital multiple times with suspicious injuries, yet no-one thought to take things any further. The couple were gay men, and I’m sorry but it’s obvious that safeguarding procedures weren’t followed for fear of causing offence or being labelled a bigot. This baby wasn’t just failed by these two monsters, he was failed by the authorities charged with protecting him.

And I simply don’t believe that adequate checks were carried out on either of these two men. One of them was a teacher FFS !! How can you be of good character with a clean record when your sole intention for adopting a baby is to abuse them for your own perverted and monstrous gratification ? Someone, somewhere, isn’t being honest.

This. Children are most at risk in a household with an unrelated male. They sent this vulnerable baby to a home with two of them, and no woman.

Or a woman and a woman - sorry. This is the safest bet. I’d go for this

Because hurty feelings are prioritised above common sense and safety.

my mother said they had to stop this as well (shes never walked into a prison in her life,this was more a halfway house)

there would be a circle of men,one talking (bragging) about his crimes and the others would sit,listening with massive smirks and each one had a stonking hard-on (guessing it was 'put away' in their minds for later on)

she ended up leaving as she couldn't listen to anymore

i mean my mother is an abuser herself (shes a narc) but even she couldn't deal with it

thank you to everyone for not having a go at me for admitting what i was like after having my child ( i thought i would be torn apart)

i tried so hard to get help (my family thought it was funny and would laugh at my mental state) but the help was just not there

i knew i was a danger to my darling baby and tried so hard not to be-i was so ill but could see the slope i was on and tried really hard to stop and climb back up

thankfully,that baby (who is now an adult) has forgiven me but i never will

anyway,its not about me,it's about another gorgeous child taken too soon by the people who should have protected him and didn't,another name to add to the baby p's,victorias,stars,arthurs,poppi's and many others

rip preston,sleep tight sweet baby

I have a two year old. It breaks my heart. I've been holding her extra tight the last few days and I can't get it out of my mind. I can't comprehend how anyone would look at these sweet innocent babies and harm them.

I think what really hurts me is that adoption was my first choice to have a child (I'm a lesbian, and we've done IVF now, which I obviously don't regret for one second). I wasn't allowed to adopt due to a history of depression (like 7+ years ago) following a sexual assault I experienced when I was younger, and because at the time I still took and antidepressant and saw my long-term therapist, both things which kept me well (ironic really given I'm a mental health nurse now). I'd give anything for Preston to have gone to someone like me and be loved and cherished. He deserved to be loved and happy.

Sorry, but I don’t think it is a trigger reaction. The NHS and Social Services are all about diversity and I firmly believe that the NHS in particular were reluctant to ask questions on the three occasions that child was taken to hospital, for fear of causing offence or being labelled as bigots. And I simply don’t believe that two men who adopted a baby with the express intention of using and abusing him for their own monstrous and depraved gratification could pass all of the checks and balances and slip under the radar like this. There will be something in their past that someone, somewhere has slipped up and missed, but it’ll probably take the BBC ten years of investigation to find out what really happened.

Poor baby didn’t stand a chance. A murderer for a mother then murdered himself. They won’t last long in prison.

oP here - I am thinking that too 🙈

He was taken to hospital THREE TIMES with suspicious I buried before he finally died. if only our healthcare system was staffed by people who were

1. Fully fluent in English
2. Paid even remotely fairly

And 3. Competent Perhaps this wouldn't have happened..let's just keep underfunding and accepting shit public services though, who gives a toss at the end of the day. Fucking JOKE of a country.

Same here. I can’t bring myself to read the harrowing details about this awful case. That poor, poor little boy.
I’m not a violent person but honestly, I could easily turn my back on evil monsters like that being thrown into a pit with two hungry grizzly bears.

I feel traumatised by it, to the point of feeling constantly like I am on the verge of throwing up. My phone brings up memories of my daughter when she was a baby and I cannot compute how someone could/would want to do that to a baby, it is sickening. It is also the constant torture of the child, not letting him sleep, leaving him in a bath by himself for 15 minutes, spinning him on a piece of playground equipment so quickly that his eyes go to the back of this head, videoing him barely breathing let alone everything else. That an expert in court said the look on the child's face was of resignation. I feel so haunted about baby Preston

I think class is likely to have been a bigger factor in ignoring the red flags. Obviously just speculation at this point. But I’m assuming these men are well-spoken, well-presented, and we know they had professional jobs. Blackpool is such an extremely deprived part of the UK that the staff there will be used to seeing all sorts, even more so in A&E. It’s quite likely these two seemed such a cut above a lot of the usual patients that staff were more amenable to their explanations.

They're not even human these men they are literal chimpanzees. They're everywhere too, maybe not as bad as these two but at least half as bad.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/15/baby-preston-death-verdict-adoptive-father/

Telegraph article - eight opportunities to save Preston, eight times he was failed.

It's too sad for words..After the Baby P case I can't let myself see details such as this. Beggars belief..No doubt there will be a review and the agencies are going to say they will share more information in future or some other flannel. We'll see it again. There is no hope.

They will probably actually be murdered in prison and rightly so, not really a fan of the death penalty but I think we would all turn a blind eye here

I couldn’t agree more.

OP you really aren’t alone in being utterly horrified by this case. It’s incomprehensible. It took them only 16 weeks to abuse him to death. A little bit more than 100 days. You’re not telling me that that abuse did not start pretty much immediately. That poor, poor child.
Can you imagine how the rest of their families feel, their co-workers, neighbours, students? They must all feel sick to their stomach. Nevermind the devastation on the child’s extended family and the foster carers.

This.

The poor baby lived a short and awful life. These 2 men need locking up forever. The pair are evil perverts.