AIBU to question adoption checks after this safeguarding failure?

[User05677229]

I can’t stop thinking about little Preston Davey. That poor baby boy, taken into care as a newborn, seemed happy and healthy in foster care, only to be adopted by a gay male couple and then subjected to months of the most horrific sexual and physical abuse before being murdered. How did this happen? How did red flags get missed?

I’m a mum of two, and like many of you, I’ve always supported loving homes for children who need them. But cases like this shake me to the core. I’m not saying no gay men should ever adopt - that’s not realistic or fair. But we have to be honest: the data and repeated safeguarding failures suggest that male same-sex couples (particularly for very young children) need extra rigorous scrutiny, not less.

Social workers and adoption panels seem terrified of being called homophobic. So they bend over backwards to approve placements that might raise eyebrows in heterosexual couples. Fast-tracked approvals, ignoring instincts about motivation, lack of a female parent for a tiny baby - all while birth mothers are scrutinised to the nth degree. This isn’t kindness to adults; it’s gambling with children’s safety.

Baby Preston had injuries consistent with sexual abuse, multiple hospital visits, concerns raised… and still nothing stopped it. Eight missed opportunities, apparently. That’s not just individual evil - that’s a system that’s lost its nerve.

Can we please have an honest conversation?

Better psychological and background checks specifically for single men and male couples adopting infants.

Mandatory longer observation periods.

No more rushing through to meet diversity targets.

Social workers must be protected from accusations of bias when they flag legitimate concerns about any applicant, including gay men.

Children deserve the best possible chance, not to be experiments in adult validation. Every child in the care system has already been let down once. We owe them robust, evidence-based safeguarding - not ideology.

RIP little Preston. This should never have happened.

What do others think? Am I being unfair?

In context, agreed. On its own could be interpreted in other ways.

It seems babies are already being used for ‘Pride’ propaganda.

Equal opportunities law is one thing, parents using children this way is very misplaced in my opinion. Awful.

I don't think that's likely, the abuse must have started as soon as they adopted him and within a few months they'd killed him. I just do think they were perfectly normal people who suddenly changed after adopting a baby. I don't think of them was a school safeguarding less wasn't he? He'd likely know all the risks of being found out with csam material, maybe before they started the adoption process they made sure to completely remove any traces of anything like that they had, or else they might not have had any because it was too risky. I think the abuse was planned from the start and that was why they adopted him, but the murder was likely not premeditated.

We dont know that people had concerns though. I think until there is a proper review then its naive to hope there was a smoking gun somewhere that someone didn't check
There seems to be a lot of assumptions that proper checks were skipped, or they got special treatment because of their sexuality but no actual evidence this was the case.
There's been lots of suggestions over the many threads on how they could have been caught but many like the suggestion of checking phones etc the court suggestion is that they were clean at point of adoption anyway.

My checks included (and every adopter even the gay ones that I knew)
-Bank statements
-proper home checks (someone in another suggested going through bedroom drawers)
-my online presence inc social media

• employment references

-seperate checks of volunteering with kids we had to do -checks with ex partners (inc one that had police involvement with me) -multiple references from people around me fulfilling certain criteria -db's checks inc from countries we did a gap year in -Gp records (and records from a prior mh team that required me to pay for a new assessment!) -a reference from out vet and dog trainer -the most intrusive interview period you can think of where all sorts of things inc our sex life were put under scrutiny -multiple panels with various people including independent people

The existing checks are extensive and weed out lots of people (often rightly so). Its hard to see what else could be added that would have changed this outcome

Equally post placement In this case there's evidence of lots of processes being followed. There's evidence from the court cases that the hospital visits were deemed as non suspicious by medical staff but they still visited him at home (and thought he looked poorly which was in keeping with the antibiotics he was prescribed and infection he was diagnosed with). He was also visited by a hospital social worker. He was also visited by an independent social worker. The social worker also called the ward who said they didnt have concerns.

I think its really easy to assume that if the right question had been asked, or a phone checked, an extra visit happened etc that this wouldn't have happened

But until its clear where there was a decent chance of actually finding something then it's all just hot air

I don’t know about normal; there’s nothing normal about this case. But whatever their previous proclivities they didn’t indulge them. I am inclined to think it was there, it was dormant, perhaps unrecognised even in themselves, and then it was triggered.

It’s really not unremarkable, at best it shows a lack of care for a child to not allow them to sleep. A child isn’t a toy to be used for the parents entertainment, it’s the parents job to be attuned to the child’s needs and waking, or purposely keeping a small baby awake is a concern.

I understand this is hard for you, knowing one of the people concerned, but trying to defend the indefensible isn’t going to help you process what’s happened. I’d think carefully whether posting on this thread is helpful to you.

People are hoping its an easy fix. People are hoping that people arent good at deceiving others. Everyone wants to think that it wouldn't happen under their watch because they would know and they would be able to tell

For some people the reality that awful unpredictable things happen that we are unable to prevent is too terrifying

Oh wow. That’s quite a leap.

I’ve been through the adoption process, and, honestly, do not understand how this could possibly have happened. I’m flummoxed and devastated for that poor, poor child.
A full inquiry will, I’m sure, be carried out. It has BIG questions to answer.

It could be interpreted as immaturity and stupidity. It isn’t a criminal offence on its own, and it isn’t sexual abuse is the point I suppose.

Social services are to eager to adopt out, his grandmother was only declined due to breast cancer. If he had stayed in foster care till she was well enough this wouldn’t of happened.
social services needs a massive overhaul, the fact he was taken to hostipal three times, why didn’t they remove him at the first time? They should of done.

I could also find loads of worrying shirts about straight couples. Lots of those sites are things where you can print whatever.

I worked in a charity shop and we'd get all kinds of alarming "mummy should have swallowed me", "mummy doesnt only ride horses" type things.

A baby holding a rainbow flag seems the least alarming thing

This does happen on MN a lot. I’ve seen it on ‘have you met a celebrity’ threads and a lot of MNetters met Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris and knew he was a wrongun, apparently.

It’s true, we want to believe we can recognise a monster; we can’t. Acceptance of that is a start.

Yeah, I have no idea what the issue with a baby holding a rainbow flag is!

At those first visits he was diagnosed with physical health complaints, prescribed antibiotics. He was subsequently visited by social workers who confirmed the illness

Babies cant be removed from carers because they got ill. Its clear in hindsight that it wasn't what was going on but at that point he was a baby with a fever and infection. Adopters also are more likely to go to hospitals because they are new parents (just with an older kid!) and because pre adoption order you tend to be very careful about getting everything documented properly.

Again in hindsight obviously its a massive problem but you can see why two cases of illness didnt result in massive concerns, when he broke his arm they ramped up support and had multiple visits from different independent people. Again a single broken arm isn't enough to get a baby removed

That’s really not how statistics work

So the hundreds of children that will be without adopters as a result of what you think? What's the plan for them?

To be fair, it would've been quite easy for them to use burner phones to look at paedophiliac content using Tor, and then dispose of them prior to the adoption process. I don't believe that would leave any traceable evidence.

I don't think they 'should've' been caught prior to the adoption (they do seem to have covered their tracks well) but I wouldn't be surprised if evidence came out that Varley had abused other children.

Then again, if he had a preference for infants it's possible no one will ever know whether he abused other babies he came into contact with. Anyone who has let their non-verbal child alone with him will now have to wonder what might have been done to them. It doesn't bear thinking about.

Many things that point to a lack of parenting capacity aren’t crimes, and honestly sexual abuse is only one of a raft of harms done to children but often considered the most abhorrent.

Adoption is really, really tough, it makes huge demands on adoptive parents, a lack of maturity really isn’t good enough. By the time they reached the point of placement they should have had some idea of what they were taking on. The reality of early placement is a huge shock, but not forcing a baby to stay awake is pretty basic.

I think part of the problem is Insta-culture portraying adoption as a lifestyle choice, an easy way to create a family, where everything is hearts and flowers. People see the doting parents, the family says out in matching outfits and think it’s a walk in the park. No mention of trying to parent a traumatised child, the reality of very dysregulated infants, the lack of sleep, the constant crying etc. It’s really one of the toughest things that can be asked of someone. But social media is full of smiles and baby cuddles. It results in an immature, idealistic view of adoption and by the time folk realise how hard it is it’s too late because they have a child to care for.

You’re probably right, although I don’t follow those sorts of accounts so don’t really see it. I can only imagine how tough it is.

It is possible Varley had a burner phone. It’s also possible he didn’t.

The school he / I worked at was in an extremely deprived part of Blackpool (I am not sure any part of Blackpool isn’t extremely deprived, tbf) lots of extremely challenging behaviour. Sexual abuse is prevalent there. I’m rambling, sorry.

Homosexual couples obviously adopt at a higher rate than heterosexual couples because they cannot have children naturally - not because they are automatically paedophiles who are more likely to be looking for vulnerable infants to abuse.

All adoption placements are put through vigorous checks and in this case it very sadly failed. There are lessons to be learnt of course and the social worker in charge must feel dreadful but ultimately if someone has never been caught then there will be no evidence that they aren’t an appropriate placement. It’s just very sad.

I think this is why I feel passionately about some of the extra things suggested.

Sometimes adopters are seen as these super humans who can jump through higher and higher hoops, or should tolerate different things for their children rather than just normal people

In one of the other threads there was a suggestion that Preston should have been subject to intimate checks at a +e.

It automatically put me back in those pre order days, where i was terrified of every little bump that our new arrival got. I had all the fears of a brand new parent combined with a dare devil kid that liked jumping off stuff, combined with having to keep an accident log that was checked by social services. I remember one incident where dc had hurt themselves and I took them off of to a+e, the dr said something like "and you've only had them how long?!".They entered fine but I was a new parent trying to play by the book, I was terrified of the resulting social work visit and all the reporting i had to do. Social work felt so close behind us that any minor slip was going to whip him away. The insecurity of that early period has never left me and I cant imagine how much more terrified I would have been if I knew that any visit would result in my child being intimately checked.

The idea of in that period where you are tunnelling (sw encourage you to see very few people, not allow anyone to do any childcare tasks etc to begin with) i felt really alone and the idea that a social worker would have been able to read my phone, the only connection I had to the outside world. All those random googles to figure out whats normal, every photo, how long is too long to record a child in the bath? All being scrutinised.

Within our circle we had an adopter who clearly needed help, they had an existing adopted child and a second under foster to adopt. She was so worried about derailing the process she was clearly beginning to crack. She didn't want to see her gp because she knew it would be reported back, didnt want to ask for help or cahms support for the older because she knew it would impact the younger.

In the end I became worried about those kids need being met, so I raised it but the fact she was trying to not do anything like go to a+e etc really really put those kids in harms way.

I think about her a lot.

It took longer than I expected for the entirely predictable 'gays are using their kids' line.

One of my favourite responses on MN was to someone who claimed to have been picked up hitch-hiking by Fred West but got 'bad vibes' so got out.

A common statement/lie seen so often on SM including MN that journalistic articles were written about it as it was such a phenomenon.

The MN poster said 'another one? The amount of people Fred allegedly picked up you'd think he was a bus-driver not a builder'.

FWIW I actually know someone who had a wall built by Fred West. After he was arrested and she mentioned it, people were clamouring to hear how creepy he was, all the red flags and the gut feelings and all she had to say was he turned up on time, cleaned up after himself and was cheap.

Yes, funnelling is the biggest crock of shite perpetrated on adopters by ‘professionals’. It’s right up there with ‘fake it till you make it’.

Social services aren't keen to adopt out, and have to prove in court that the test 'of last resort' is met, if there are any viable routes for a child to stay within their family the judge will prioritise those.
A 66yr old with existing care commitments to another child and no guarantee of if and when they will be fully healthy is not likely to be the best option for a baby. IF they went on to have a healthy life and the cancer didn't return, they're caring for an 18yr old when they're 84.