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?

Absolutely true but jurors are told not to do their own research which I guess includes looking at threads like this.
I doubt there's anything said on here which won't be said in that jury room

SHL?

Shit hot lawyer

I go back to the fact that a newly cared for/placed child went to A&e several times over a short period of time. That alone rings alarm bells. I am saying this as a mother of 3 boys who has had my fair share of a&e attendances. I have also adopted and as I keep saying I would have let social services root through whatever they wanted to to adopt the beautiful baby I luckily went on to adopt.

Thought it might be but in all my years on MN I’ve never once seen that. Mind you I might just not remember but that’s the Menopause for you

Varley’s barrister was the prosecution barrister in the Letby case so is no slouch either.

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

didn’t she observe that he was sad and tried to smile but then cried? The timeline is quite confusing in the reporting so this may have been at another visit.

As has been said, so much will and should come out in the serious case review. The trial is about the actions of the adoptive parents, the review will be about the actions (or inactions) of everyone else involved.

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.

There is one charge I think of possessing an extreme pornographic image but again it’s another area where the reporting has been very limited, if non-existent when it comes to the evidence. If found guilty the sentencing remarks will probably fill in the blanks.

Yes, and each visit will have automatically been flagged with children’s social care as Preston was still officially a looked-after child as the adoption order had not yet been granted. Every hospital visit will have prompted contact with a social worker.

But what could children’s social care have rooted through? Their undies drawers? The defendants had been fully vetted and scrutinised. Far, far more than non-adoptive parents. It’s an imperfect system but it is what it is. It would be a gross breach of adopters’ human rights to impose a system where we were subject to unannounced spot checks of our devices. I come back to my question about why adopters should be held to higher standards and greater accountability than non-adopted. I know people are looking for answers but it is simply unattainable to eradicate all risk of harm.

The issue with Preston is that two of three visits were for illness and not injury. It’s not clear what bruises were on Preston for all the visits and maybe staff could have been more curious if there was unusual bruising, but that goes back to staffing. I’ve had a fair few A&E visits with my baby because any out of hours illness goes to A&E for triage where I am, so having a few admissions for illness seems normal to me, as someone who’s baby only ever got sick after 5pm on a Friday. And when there, it’s so stretched that there aren’t enough staff, there aren’t enough beds and there isn’t enough time.

The only injury which was noted at an earlier admission with Preston which I recall was a forehead bruise which is a fairly normal place for a bruise in a 9mo and they had a plausible explanation. I don’t want to make this political but the NHS in its current
state is having to firefight just to deal with the volume of children. There’s no slack to further investigate bruises with a plausible explanation, and I think that applies to social services as well.

The broken arm should have flagged more and I’m a bit concerned about how the treating team has no concerns about the mechanism of the fracture to an extent they didn’t want to X ray or cast it vs the pathologists who said the explanation was not at all plausible.

I believe that was a previous visit after they attended a&e when he had had a rash and been diagnosed with a chest infection.

It's horrible to think he would probably have continued to stay with them despite the non accidental injuries which were being made light of, but the sexual abuse injuries were not survivable. Had they been survivable then no doubt he would have endured more months of misery. I can't believe these evil men wanted him dead, but being stupid and selfish just did it to gratify themselves.

Poor baby.

The broken arm should have flagged more and I’m a bit concerned about how the treating team has no concerns about the mechanism of the fracture to an extent they didn’t want to X ray or cast it vs the pathologists who said the explanation was not at all plausible.

Yes it seems likely that social services will decide the arm injury should have had a lot more scrutiny, but it also seems like it only became clear that it was non-accidental after death.
There's already a non-mobile baby protocol where any injury to a non-mobile baby needs to be referred to social services, but maybe it needs to also go to police investigation.
But then parents who do accidentally injure their baby eg by falling down the stairs with them might then be reluctant to seek treatment if they know it could mean their baby taken into care while a police investigation is carried out.

Not sure if it's been mentioned but Fazackerly said Preston had a squint and when they had a hospital appointment about his eyes it explained why he was bumping into things, so he felt reassured.

The reason one of my children came into care at birth was because of the non-accidental death at 10-weeks-old of a prior sibling. The police and the CPS were unable to take the case to court because they could not prove beyond reasonable doubt who was responsible as the house was overcrowded, multigenerational occupied and chaotic and dysfunctional. After two fact-finding hearings, where a judge sits without a jury, and the evidence is considered on the balance of probability, the judgment was that birth father was responsible for the baby’s death. The man was never prosecuted. There was never even a serious case review. Apparently, according to social workers and health visitors, this type of situation is more common than one would think.

It’s likely that this is true. Exposure to drugs and alcohol in utero can result in permanent damage to a child’s eyes. A significantly higher proportion of looked-after children present with eye conditions such as strabismus (squint) and nystagmus (wobbly eyes) due to their prenatal experiences.

That’s terrifying and sobering