Baby Preston Davey - Content warning concerns CSA (added by MNHQ)

[Sadmamma35]

I’ve just read about baby Preston Davey and I cannot stop thinking about him. I have a 13-month-old of my own, which is probably why this has hit me so hard — I can really relate and my baby is my everything.
I’m crying as I write this. Why does it hurt so much for a baby I’ve never even met? Has anyone else felt this way?
How do you cope with the negative thoughts that follow when you read something like this? 💙

There's a shortfall of adopters for older children. NOT babies. Babies are the most 'in-demand' adoptees.

Identity is a funny one. Isn’t it? I think that the issue for me is a sense of belonging. If a name is going to hinder that for whatever reason I can understand wanting it changed.

Also, I don't think it's unreasonable to find some sort of way to check devices for CSA "porn' access. At all. Sorry. I think child safety (and remember, these are looked-after children who are already in the system, so the system does have a responsibility here) is infinitely more important than the feelings of would-be parents. Same with surrogacy.

The question is whether or not it would be feasible and if it would work because of burner devices etc but it seems insane to shrug our shoulders and say, oh well, it'll have to be after the event then. So, as a non-techy person I wonder if instead there'd be a way of checking backwards from known porn sites (say) or sources of CSA material for links back to, for example, IP addresses etc. FFS, something must be better than leaving it until after a child is SAd or even killed like Preston, which is FAR too late.

Prospective adoptive parents are not criminals and should not be treated as such. There have been three cases (including this one) where an adoptive parent has killed the child they have adopted / want to adopt and apart from this one there wasn’t a sexual element.

Extreme cases make bad laws.

Of course they're not criminals; nobody said they were. But safeguarding and screening processes, as well as ongoing monitoring of a vulnerable child clearly failed in a big way here. We cannot just shrug our shoulders and 'leave it as is'. One murdered or abused child is one murdered or abused child too many.

Safeguarding, remember, is ALWAYS about the outliers. It has to be, that's how it works. That does not make it 'bad law'.

What would you suggest they do instead?

I don’t think there’s a thing anybody could have done to have either predicted or avoided this, unfortunately.

Sorry, I disagree.

Right, so how would your suggestion have saved Preston? I’m genuinely asking, because I’m stumped as to how!

No evidence has been presented that points to a prior sexual interest in children. Even if the assessing local authority had the ability to check devices prior to placement, it’s likely that if anything existed they would have got rid of it much like they will have done if anything existed prior to them being investigated for killing Preston.

There are also much easier ways to gain access to children, with less scrutiny, than going through the adoption process.

But by reducing the pool of adoptive parents, that means that there will be more pressure on already stretched foster carer placements, and so children who would have been removed from their parents for safety reasons won’t be able to be removed because there’s nowhere for them to go. That’s a risk in itself. Several adopters on this thread have said that a full device search would have been a step too far.

And all for a device search which could be easily foiled by not handing over a device which has questionable content on it, and that wouldn’t have helped to save Preston because despite thoroughly device searches and recovery of deleted content on JV’s phone, no such content was found so even with this step, they’d still have been approved to adopt Preston.

That is one aspect that I found incredible in this case - unlike most abusers they didn't hide Preston away - on the contrary Varley especially seemed to consult everyone about Preston's every illness - every bump, rash or fever Varley seemed to consult with doctors, social workers and family etc.

I think this may have made Varley seem more credible as the "concerned dad". Rather than hiding bruises he was showing them and talking about the eyesight diagnosis causing him to "bump into things". I think a lot of people deferred to Varley as the "experienced" teacher - ffs he was the safeguarding lead at the school he worked at.

The point is that (from the information we have) there was no CSAM found on either defendant’s hardware. The police have the power to view hidden and deleted material, so in no way would checking their hardware prior to adoption approval (which unlike being under arrest would be totally unenforceable) have made a single difference in this case.

Yet Varley was safeguarding lead at the school he worked at - it is difficult to detect people like him (who frankly appears to be a psychopath) who is convincingly talking the safeguarding talk with confidence.

Checking devices wouldn't have made a difference in this case though would it?

Would you really suggest that searching the homes, cars and workplaces of potential adopters (and presumably foster carers and residential childcare workers) for hidden devices and then seizing and searching all those devices is proportionate and reasonable?

@Lundeexactly , JM basically groomed everyone involved.

CSA images/videos are already illegal and police already look for people making and downloading it.

Whenever there is the death of a child known to social services of course there is lots of blame and I'm sure maybe mistakes were made and processes could have been better.
But ultimately if a parent/carer is determined to kill a child, it is extremely difficult to prevent it.
Social services can never have the full picture of what happens inside a family without 24/7 CCTV. And most families would not want increased surveillance by the state.

This is not just "my suggestion" nor would digital screening for for CSA be my only suggestion, ffs. It's about better screening in general plus more vigorous monitoring and joined up safeguarding processes which have seriously failed here. A baby is dead, raped and murdered, It really isn't good enough to just go 'oh well, it's a one off, pervs and killers are gonna perv and kill' , it really isn't. There are always things that could have been done better. Both in this case and going forward.

It looks to me in particular that there were multiple red flags,and a lack of joined up thinking or being able to put the pattern together showing up here (as has happened before, see Baby P and others) that appear to have been missed; and I'm sure there will be more here that come out after the trial. Safeguarding always needs to take precedence, I'm afraid. The question is in what ways.

• It is HIGHLY unlikely that one or both of them didn't have any 'prior sexual interest in children'. You do not escalate to this kind of abuse within four months out of nowhere, and it is very, very naive to imagine anyone does. The question is if any material evidence exists or COULD have been found if things had been different (I am talking about tech companies too here going forward, and not just this case. Snapchat, for example, allows users to delete images and appears to have been heavily used by JV to take images of Preston. And might there be some kind of reverse-monitoring of the kind I suggested possible in future which might put some individuals on a kind of watch-list that could then be checked? This would be way less intrusive than taking prospective parents' devices. It was just ONE thought and consideration, before everyone jumps on me further. What would others suggest might be possible?

• Given that men are in general many more times a risk for CSA than women, it does seem curious to me and to others that two men who had been together for a relatively short time appear to have been fast-tracked through the process in comparison, even, to how quickly a straight couple or single woman, or two women would have been. Is this just a perception or is this correct? That is again something that may well need looking at.

• The first rule of safeguarding is you do NOT ever have 'sacred castes' of people who get treated as if they are above suspicion. There absolutely does appear to be evidence of this from the behaviour of the social worker, even if there wasn't in the placement process, as evidenced by the sending kiss emojis etc and a failure of checks even when the hospital reported their concerns. I believe in previous cases it's been termed 'professional lack of curiosity' from those whose job it was to ensure Preston was safe.

• I also feel that because of the potential for this, such decisions when there should have been serious concerns should not be down to one person to decide, either, which it appears happened in this case. Human beings are fallible. And yes, the reality, as we know, is that social work is chronically underfunded and stressful. So again, what needs to change in the wider political system to stop that happening?

• The avoidance of meetings with the foster mother suddenly was a big red flag, as were multiple other issues, mainly about things JV had said and obviously, Preston's numerous injuries/hospital visits. Which ONLY happened once he was with them, and within four months he was dead. The hospital did report to police, who flagged with SW, who again reported she saw nothing wrong.

I'm sorry but are those of you jumping down my throat here SERIOUSLY saying that nothing could have been done better to stop this happening to Preston? That there are no steps to be taken that would help mitigate this or prevent it happening to another child? Good grief. Oh well, we'll just have to look forward to many more of these cases being reported then, won't we. Nothing we can do...

Would you really suggest that searching the homes, cars and workplaces of potential adopters (and presumably foster carers and residential childcare workers) for hidden devices and then seizing and searching all those devices is proportionate and reasonable?

Lucky I didn't actually suggest that, then, isn't it?

The process can be quick or slow. My experience is that if people are fairly ready then the time frame is fairly normal. Often what delays it, is people getting sent away to complete something eg lose weight, have counselling or sort things in house. The process is designed to take 6-9 months if I remember correctly. Sometimes there's holds up because the stars don't align but sometimes they do. Eg we had a panel that was delayed because of sickness, our social worker submitted the day after the deadline etc. One of our stages took a lot longer than it should, but the next stage was really smooth.

I don't think anyone is saying "oh well" I think people are just talking about not making knee jerk reactions that don't actually protect anyone.

The way things work in services is often on a cycle. Something awful happens, everything gets really tight, that then causes other issues, and then it lossens and then it starts again

That's often what happens to birth mums too, people on one side of the system think babies should be taken away earlier, people on the other side feel that babies are stolen to order and that the threshold is too low and innocent people lose their kids.

The avoidance of foster parents isnt uncommon. They aren't always great, the transition time is often tricky. I know of more than one family that made complaints about foster carers who struggled to let go during transitions, undermined adoptive parents. My own had to stop seeing foster carers for a bit because it was doing more harm than good, my plan had never been what ended up happening. Its Especially common in cases like this where i think in this case she had applied to adopt him, and been declined?

Of course there’ll be lessons learned, there’ll be a serious case review after the trial. Until we know the level of scrutiny and decision making taken at each step by each agency I think it’s difficult to say just now what, if anything, could have prevented the harm in this case. I agree it’s unlikely for the level of abuse alleged in this case to have come out of nowhere but it’s not been a feature at all of the trial.

I think they also delayed part of the process so JV could see his year 11s out or something like that.

@hihelenhiI don’t think anyone was jumping down your throat or saying that there was nothing at all that could have been done because they stated that in this instance a check of hardware prior to adoption would have received the all clear.

Your suggestion about monitoring wouldn’t really work though because the person would know that what they were engaging with was being monitored.

I agree with your other points and think that your sacred caste point hits the nail on the head in this tragic case.

Just to mention as well that the multiple hospital visits actually gave the opposite impression - that they were anxious and over protective parents.
There was only one suspicious injury, the elbow fracture.

I'm surprised that the multiple bruises weren't more scrutinised. Preston wasn't mobile (as apparently they were encouraging him to crawl) yet nobody seemed alarmed that he had bruises. They seemed satisfied with JV's blaming his squint and clumsiness but surely there was a duty to question whether Preston was being adequately supervised at least?