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? 💙

That would surely lead to fewer children being taken to A & E!

I mean, I have nothing to hide - no horrible images on my phone or so much as a sex toy in the house but JFC I would not be happy for a full device search and house search because one of my children breaks their leg or something. I really think introducing that in the name of ‘keeping children safe’ would actually keep children away from the very places purporting to protect them.

And also what if the child is taken to A&E ill rather than injured (as was the case with Preston for his first two of three visits before he died). In a lot of places if your child gets sick outside of GP hours your have to go to A&E. This system would mean that if my child becomes unwell at 9:00am on a Tuesday and we could visit the GP, no action required but if he got sick at 7:00pm on a Friday we’d be having a full device search, home search and he’d need regular full body checks. That just seems like a system that would encourage parents to avoid A&E.

I also don’t know if the poster who has suggested this has been to a children’s A&E recently but ours ranges from very busy to absolute bedlam. Who is doing these checks. If there are home checks before coming home, who are the spare officers or social workers at a loose end at 3am to search my home, because that was when we were discharged at our last visit. Social workers and police are already stretched to the limit and I don’t think there’s any spare capacity for these searches to be don’t in anything resembling a timely manner. Would we have to block the bed in hospital before discharge to be allowed home? Because if I can’t go home, where can I go at 3am with a sick baby and no phone to contact anyone I know to help, or book an Uber back from the hospital?

It isn’t remotely practical or dare I say sensible.

Most things being suggested are meant to be standard practice already. A lot is to do with "professional curiosity" or agencies doing the joined up thinking (and acting on) they are meant to when concerns are flagged. I can already see quite. few instances where people 'lower down' as it were have tried to flag things and no action has been taken.

So I'm not sure what's apparently not "practical or sensible" about basic longstanding safeguarding. But love the way it's all about how those of us suggesting it is adhered to apparently having no practical experience or awareness.

Again. I suspect some of you are going to be quite surprised by the findings of the reviews that will be coming out of this.

What’s not practical or sensible about accessing all parental electronic devices and full house searches after a routine visit to a & e for all under 18s? Are you kidding?

I don’t think the review will have many surprises, because the lessons from SCRs are so often the same thing.

Nobody suggested that, did they?

Perhaps instead of making false and hyperbolic claims over things that haven't been suggested, or prioritising adult adopters feelings over child safety and what happened here, or wilfully misunderstanding really basic safeguarding protocols,. some people could focus on what's actually happened here and what and who the thread is supposed to be about.

A vulnerable adopted baby who appears to have started to be deliberately abused within a day or two of his adopted parents getting access to him and who was dead four months later, having been raped to death. Seriously suggest some people need to get their priorities straight.

They are, but are apparently a complete mystery to some of the people on this thread.

That was literally what the discussion above was about. I’m sorry if you missed it, but please don’t suggest I am ‘making false and hyperbolic claims over things that haven't been suggested.’

*kscarpetta · Today 16:39
'One vulnerable child being saved' is no good if there are no foster homes or adoptive families to move the child too because the vast majority of people would not accept the amount of scrutiny that has been suggested on this thread.
In terms of saving children it would be more effective to have more checks on all families - if children are taken to a&e then parents have to hand over their phones or have their homes searched before getting them back. All children having full body examinations every few months to check for signs of abuse. CCTV installed in the homes of children where anyone has raised safeguarding concerns

Sorry @kscarpetta i am not trying to single you out; I’m just a bit put out that it’s being suggested I am inventing things for the sake of exaggeration.

@hihelenhi if you were talking about something specific then you need to clarify that. There was a discussion for several pages relating to the post I quoted and then you came in with Most things being suggested are meant to be standard practice already and expected me to be a mind reader that you didn’t mean the previous discussion. Don’t make out this is my poor comprehension skills.

The birth mother is active on TikTok posting pictures of Preston. She’s not hiding herself.

Nobody needs to be a "mind reader". They just need to understand basic safeguarding protocols. And to have bothered to follow the details of this incredibly serious and horrific case and used critical thinking skills.

This isn't about your personal ego or you or whatever weird gripe you seem to have with others' posts. It is about a murdered, sexually abused baby who has been utterly failed by the system that was meant to protect him.

Perhaps you might consider focusing on both him and that instead of me or others. Because that is what is important here.

And perhaps you need to stop being insulting because you didn’t read the previous exchange properly.

No apology for claiming followtheswallow was "making false and hyperbolic claims over things that haven't been suggested" then?

I don’t know why you are assuming that a poster who has fairly defended herself against you saying that she was making false claims doesn’t care about the child at the centre of the case here. Seems a massive deflection on your part because I haven’t seen a single poster on this thread express anything other than horror at what has (allegedly) happened to Preston. People can simultaneously care about what happened and also correct another poster who says they’re talking crap when they’ve just been replying to suggestions other posters have put on the thread.

They’re back in court today. Probably the prosecutors will start their closing remarks. With such a long case against two defendants it wouldn’t surprise me if it lasted until tomorrow.

One can't help but wonder if this sort of thing in the past informed the parents decision to re-name Preston - fully appreciate she must be highly distressed atm

Nope. She (and others) did. Who has suggested "accessing all parental electronic devices and full house searches after a routine visit to a & e for all under 18s" ? as claimed? Nobody, as far as I can see. That was therefore a false and hyperbolic statement. It came from a couple of others too, claiming we were suggesting "CCTV in homes" and other such rubbish. Again, false and hyperbolic. Nobody has suggested it. And I can read, thanks.

What I will say is the details of this case are clearly deeply upsetting and infuriating for us all and like a great many people, I'm finding the failures that left Preston dead infuriating too. So yes, like many I find it irritating when people suggest that agencies being able to follow basic safeguarding protocol for looked after children is optional and/or somehow "impossible". It really isn't.

It's not personal. I am not trying to hurt anyone's feelings and i'm certainly not "massively deflecting" (weird accusation in any case, why on earth would I?) but like many, I am bloody angry about the whole case and the institutional failures it points to that I know from my own experience and what current protocols are s did not have to happen and that MUST be fixed in future. But I'm getting beyond tired of being accused of saying things I haven't on here. It's becoming really, really silly with people taking things personally and distracting from the case itself, so I'll leave you all to it.

In terms of the trial. I'm not sure how long the verdicts will take. They're on a break til this afternoon. I reckon it will go well into tomorrow and then maybe the jury has the rest of the week to deliberate. There are a lot of charges to get through so I would think so, but who knows? I feel incredibly sorry for the jury and all they will have been forced to see.

I think the problem is that some want to believe if we do the right things and check enough times and are intrusive enough we can stop these things happening. It might be true increased checks would have saved Preston, but if these checks meant that twenty other children weren’t taken to A & E when they should have and therefore suffered, that’s not helping anybody, it’s swapping one problem for another.

It’’s OK to feel passionately about safeguarding; it’s not OK to suggest those who express doubts about the effectiveness of a particular method do not care about children.

The prosecution closing speech is a hard read 💔 💔

There doesn’t seem to be a lot about it on the BBC or guardian, etc, but of course they have to be careful in their reporting.

I’ve been reading about the trial on the MEN.

It really is.

They have got to be found guilty, the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about 😞

I am not sure about the partner, although I haven’t followed awfully closely.

I also have doubts about the partner. I said this earlier in the thread and I still feel this way after the prosecution’s case has closed.

”I think of Leiland James Corkhill whose case I looked up again after seeing Preston’s because they seem so similar and his adoptive father was cleared of allowing his death even though the evidence against him seemed far more damning. His partner would say in texts to him that she was leathering him, called him a fat shit and a dickhead, and he knew she smacking a literal baby and he was still found not guilty of knowing his partner was a risk to their baby and not protecting Leiland from her. I know it’s a different jury but there’s far less evidence that we’ve heard against JMF. Maybe that jury was very lenient and he was very lucky to escape conviction, but if it is anything to go by, JMF may well not be convicted. I’d be absolutely shocked if JV were acquitted though.”

I wonder sometimes about Leiland-James’ adoptive father and their birth child. I wonder if she still lives with him.

I remember reading something at the time of Leiland-James’ trial where someone who had been at school with the father expressed absolute shock; that he was a very quiet, timid and passive man. I think he was very much in the thrall of his wife, not that that makes any of it OK.

That case was tragic, as from what I I read and understood , I don’t think leiland should ever have been removed in the first place.