To think the BBC just mispresented baby Preston's killer (and in way that was favourable to the killer) ?

[lyarlyarpantsonfire]

Really odd reporting on Baby Preston's killer just now on the one o'clock news. Despite the baby being sexually abused and indecent images of him taken and shared, the BBC presented him as a Dad who had found parenting really overwhelming and hard and had come to resent his baby.

Stressed out parents who can't cope with babies don't sexually abuse them because they are stressed. Or take indecent images of them because they are stressed.

The killer was a paedophile. That is why he abused that baby.

As his interest in having a child was to abuse it, not to care for it, it may also have been that he had no the tolerance for hard work of looking after a young child and that did overwhelm him which resulted in him physically assaulting the child.

It was such a bizarre narrative to present him as a man who had desperately wanted children but found parenting too hard and could not cope.

Instead of a paedophile.

No, people who are pedophiles have sexual desires towards children.

Anyway, i dont wish to waste anymore time on his motivations or what was said.

He is a murder and a pedophile.

But yes he did tell people close to him various comments. I dont care if my sister or best friend told me stuff like.. id report to social services and I would move mountains to be there each day to make sure nothing was going on. Its crazy. Honestly, I keep thinking about this little boy and then giving my little girl the biggest hug. I cant imagine ever hurting her. I cant believe people have it in them, evil people I may add.

From all of this it shows we desperately need to change the system. If i ever went to hospital with my little girl, altho stressful, I would bloody hope it would be investigated if something didn't look right.

Agreed.

YABU. I watched the 1o'clock news and I thought the reporter was barely holding it together.

Far from trying to excuse the perpetrators they reported that the details were so obscene, so cruel that they couldn't be reported at that time. He had to report what the defence said.

It's the judges job to do the summing up and sentencing. In this case the judge imposed a Whole Life Sentence with no parole and a 25 year sentence.👏👏👏

I hope the witnesses, jury and others get support after this. It is a truly harrowing case.😢🙏

What is this bizarre narrative that you are pushing @lyarlyarpantsonfire ?😵‍💫

I’m assuming the judge’s report was a lot longer than the couple of sentences that were quoted from it on WATO. So the BBC editorial team chose to select those and not others. For all we know, maybe the judge followed up that sentence with a comment about that being an implausible explanation and evidence of his bad faith. But the BBC didn’t quote the whole report so I’ve no idea.

The journalist asked the person he was interviewing ( I think a former minister) if statutory services hadn’t been sufficiently forward in investigating the perpetrator because he was gay. The minister agreed that was a possibility.

Do you mean the bit here on Racio 4 News from 9 mins and 10 secs to 10 mins and 20 secs? World at One - Baby murderer to spend whole life in prison - BBC Sounds

I think it's a paraphrase of comments made by the judge.

I don't know if it's an accurate paraphrase or not, but it does sound a bit "off".

This is not known ..sadists are different to paedophiles …having sex to dominate is different to paedophilia, pleasure from torture is a different thing…I’m not sure why having this label matters so much to people ..these 2 are murderers

Preston had injuries ignored ..this is being investigated..it’s appalling and people are raging about labels

Well, whatever the judge said, he gave Varley a whole-life sentence, which reflects the exceptional seriousness of the crime.

It is scary to think that such perverted people even exist, let alone could adopt. I think people trusted him too much because he was a teacher.

And if that were true why did he become a secondary school teacher and not a nursery worker with access to babies and small children. Paedophiles generally have a type and dont’t abuse everyone under the age of sixteen. E.g Michael Jackson was in to prepubescent boys and cast them aside when they got too old. Your post makes no sense.

You rape a baby, you are a paedophile. Trying to rebrand them as murderers is….abhorrent.

From all of this it shows we desperately need to change the system. If i ever went to hospital with my little girl, altho stressful, I would bloody hope it would be investigated if something didn't look right.

I think maybe the only way is to investigate every parent who brings a child into hospital. Basically assume bad intent until proven otherwise. However this eventually might deter abusers from seeking medical help.

People may wish to sign this petition.

Petition · Introduce 'Preston's Law': Mandatory Safeguarding for Every Adopted Child - United Kingdom · Change.org

This is my point (and the OP’s too, I think: the BBC selected what they wanted to quote from the judge’s remarks, and that link above gives a very strange impression of the judge’s comments - to the extent that I suspect it’s an editorial choice, not a true reflection of the judge’s opinion.

This is important …really think …you don’t know if he is sexually attracted to a baby OR excited by power and torture and sadism and that baby was his opportunity..the 2 things are different.

I take it you aren’t a forensic psychologist / have examined the perpetrators so you really can’t say? Why do you need him / them to have that label?

All of these things sound sensible but do you know I’d they were in place in this case? Some of them seem to have been, so this might be a petition asking for the status quo.

I don’t agree with this. The BBC article published today says:

Passing sentence, Mr Justice Turner said Preston had faced "unremitting abuse" and neglect before being killed by Varley during a sex attack.
Turning to Varley, he said: "It was you who did this. You murdered him.
"A whole life order is a sentence of last resort for cases of the most extreme gravity.
"This is a case of the most extreme gravity. You must stay in prison for the rest of your life. You will never be eligible for parole."

The article then goes on to detail the extent of the abuse, in horrifying detail. Same with the previous bbc article, both are very hard reads.

The judge passed a whole life order meaning he can never be released from prison. Posters saying that the judge was lenient, and the press are overlooking things, because they were gay just don’t tally with what I’m seeing.

Saying 'they categorically definitely did so solely for the purposes of abusing it' is just opinion or speculation.

Perhaps.

But, in light of what we know, it is hard to imagine that they didn't adopt solely for the purposes of abusing.

I think understandably people want to know why this happened.

It doesn't seem that they had a pre existing sexual interest in children. That could be the case of course, but there's no evidence for it.

The alternative is that rage, cruelty and sadism led them to abuse this boy both physically and sexually. I hadn't even considered that that could be a possibility before. If we understand that this can happen it could possibly help prevent it ever happening again.

They are murderers - why would you want to avoid calling them that?

Yes I know one was convicted of allowing the baby’s death, but knowingly leaving a child with someone you know is torturing them is tantamount for me.

I followed the trial and that’s why I care.
Why are you so desperate for them not to have that label?

Because it’s potential reductive and may well be wrong..it’s knee jerk and not well informed.

“A paedophile is an adult or older adolescent who experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children (typically those under the age of 13). In psychiatry, pedophilia is classified as a paraphilia or paraphilic disorder”

Primary and exclusive..so his marriage was celibate? Or he / they are something different?? Delighted in hurting someone under their control…that’s different

Saying that, anyone who sexually abuses children is a paedophile full stop. So they are definitely now paedophiles.

I guess the question is whether they always were, or just sadists beforehand.

Okay, so in your initial quote post you said
"They just selected a couple of bits they found relevant".

Which implies they left out something significant.

But you don't actually know whether they did or not.

So for all we know, the judge might have found it plausible.

The BBC have limited time, of course they can't report everything & have to select the parts they find most pertinent. That's what journalism is, so unless you're going to read all the original reports yourself & suggest that everyone else does the same that is a pointless comment.

Why are people so quick to conclude bias when something the BBC says contradicts their own personal feelings, as if they are beacons of objectivity.

And in all this hoo ha about the reporting and the motives of the killer what is lost is is the life of that little boy, his grieving parents and foster parents and whether this could have been prevented - not by a knee jerk response or jumping to conclusions but by careful consideration of what happened.

So a man who’s married but who rapes a prepubescent child is not a paedophile??
That seems hard to believe. Plenty of paedophiles seem to marry to get access to children (their own or from the woman’s previous relationship) - by your definition what are they then?

Exactly, search on here and you'l find dozens and dozens of post from parents of non sleeping young children, I bet none of them went on to sexually abuse them, it shouldn't have been mentioned by the judge imo, it has fuck all to to with it....