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? 💙

Yes true. I guess if there was anything to find on their devices the police would have found it. But there's been no mention of it in the trial

There was a mention early on in one of the police statements, was it maybe in the information for the first trial (?) of finding extreme images (not csa or they would have said) that would have been found after arrests.

What there was to find, at a point where Preston was still alive, were the many flags of the messaging between the two and the sinister videos taken of Preston. If a pre-verbal child is in a&e three times during the four months of pre-adoption care, triggering two different social worker alerts, you'd think that would lead to more than conversations where the men's words were taken at face value. Ditto the doctors' assessments at the hospital admissions (automatic police notification, automatic SS alert) where again the men's explanations were accepted.

I do think suspicion was justified at several points and I can't help wondering how much of a barrier to suspicion the safeguarding lead, professional jobs, lovely home, fabulous gay Dads stuff was. I wonder what the serious case review will say.

I think Fazackerly is as complicit and warped as Varley and I hope he doesn't squirm out of any of his charges.

I think this is really tricky because most of us, if we took our child to a&e with an injury, would not accept social services seizing are devices and going through all our messages to friends and partner.

If we start saying adoptive parents need to be prepared to have their private messages read by social services at any time before/after a child is placed, then most people would not accept that.

There are enough threads on mumsnet with people getting upset/offended at health visitors even calling them after an a&e visit.

Remember after the hospital raised a concern following the elbow injury, a social worker did visit them at home and question/observe, and saw a happy well cared for baby. I think it would be very difficult at that point to say ok, hand over your phones.

I guess the question for me is; would spot checks of adopters (and foster parents) phones identify where a child was at risk of abuse? Possibly, but would abusive parents just be more careful about how they use their phones.

But would making that a requirement hugely decrease the number of people willing to foster or adopt children? Yes I think it would. And that surely would result in more children being abused.

https://www.lincolnhousechambers.com/members/peter-wright-q-c/

I thought I'd look up the prosecuting barrister. He's what MN would call a SHL it seems

It's always difficult to be subject to scrutiny, yes. It's more bearable if everone's subject to it and it's part of what you sign up to and part of the culture - like in some workplaces.

It's really hard to be completely careful about device use, though. Even if you treat every single search and interaction like you're in an OCG, you're connecting with other people and sites you don't control, also your different digital identities become interconnected as you interact online. Exhausting to keep track of.

The two separate social workers saw a pre-verbal baby being systematically abused and wondered if there was something wrong but dismissed it because in that snapshot if time he seemed OK - as a different perspective, but then again the visit controlled by parents is standard, cases have been missed many times before. Serious case review may or may not decide opportunities were missed.

I just hope the jury convicts the pair of them.

I'm not for one second questioning that what happened to baby Preston isn't utterly horrific, but isn't the trial still very much active? In which case, this thread is highly prejudicial?

I know these cases are inevitably discussed online, but it seems unwise at best surely? Unless I've missed something & a verdict has been given?