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 may have been some authenticity in the video but if so it was purely out of pity for himself.

I think he realised he’d gone too far, killed him and his life was over. So agree yes. Pity for himself.

Let's hope his life is over. I think about this little boy all the time, it's so terrible. I hope those two monsters never have a minutes peace for the rest of their lives.

That poor baby. Heartbreaking that this was allowed to happen when rheee were huge ref flags.
To the person who said foster carers are often in it for the money. I get £220 a week for caring for a baby. 24/7 np sick pay, no holiday pay and no pension. It's less than £2 an hour. I love it but it's the difficult thing I've ever done and there are much easier ways of making money.

I think part of why his hospital admissions were overlooked is that other than the broken arm, ostensibly they were there with him for illness and not injury. He had a hospital visit for seizures and another where he had a chest X ray where he had a chest infection and I think was admitted for a few days while that cleared up. Doctors and social workers could and should have been more curious about bruising that was seen, but given the time pressures and caseload that both of those professions face, I can see why an unwell (not injured baby in the case of the earlier admissions) who is brought to hospital by their prospective adoptive parent and has a reasonable explanation for how the bruising observed occurred didn’t trigger a further investigation. I brought my 13mo boy to hospital a few weeks ago and it was so busy that I can see why ‘how did the baby bruise his face’ ‘he pulled his toy box down over his face like this video’ closes the conversation. The broken arm should have been investigated further, especially with Varley’s friends being alarmed at the discordant explanations.

I should stop reading about this story because it’s way too close to home as a mother to a 13mo poor sleeping baby boy but I can’t look away. I just can’t fathom that level of cruelty and I know we’ve only had the prosecution case so far but I can’t see anything other than a murder conviction for Jamie Varley. I think he thought with the bath story he would get away with it.

I don’t want to say any more than this as I guess we’d be getting into legal territory but I think it’s very odd that he thought the bath story would be believable. I mean if you understand how drowning works and all that.

That poor little boy, I can’t bear to think about it.

Probably panicked (as he should) and blurted out the first thing.

Even if it is manslaughter it will be a thirty year stretch with child abuse and cruelty factors taken into account. I doubt he’ll be released tbh.

The other inmates will make sure of that!

Well one can but hope...

The government will doubtless spend millions on safeguarding these monsters. There seems to be something wrong about that.

Not to derail, but I actually don’t wish for any extra-judicial punishment and I think that prisons should be safe for inmates and prison workers. More violence doesn’t help anyone here (not least those who work in prisons and have to put themselves in harm’s way dealing with the fighting).

Yes of course yours is the rational compassionate view but with this case it is so enormously unsettling. I don't envy the prison officers and wish CSA weren't so widespread in our society. Apart from kneejerk reactions which we can all be guilty of (sorry) I wonder how we as a society can work to prevent these cases from ever occurring. There needs to be a massive inquiry about what went wrong with this placement.

This is one of the very worst cases in British history if the allegations are true.
Just imagine if the alleged perps were nonwhite.
GB News & the other shit stirrers would be gloating big time. But as they are white there won't be any weaponisation. I wonder what far right homosexuals in the media [you know who I mean] feel about this case. They're very happy to collectively smear entire communities.
I don't give a shit if anyone finds my opinions offensive it needs saying

... there'll be some kind of witch hunt anyway with the right wing media pretending they care about kids when they're very happy to let millions of kids rot in poverty
F**d up & nasty country

This case shocked me profoundly too and had a weird impact on me in that I had my first homophobic thought.
For context.. My best friend for 50 years is gay. We’ve been friends since school, then have other very close gay friends from uni - so my social life is highly dependent on those friends. As a result I’ve always been very LGBTQ + supportive. My BGF was named in our wills as guardian of our DDs if something happened to DH and me.

So reading this news story, as well as the acute sadness, I had all the politically correct thoughts that these guys were criminal paedophiles and that’s nothing to do with their sexuality. That there any many brilliant gay Dads out there. Also wanted to understand what in their nature (or nurture?) led them to be like that and how did they find each other etc. Aghast that any creature living can be sexually aroused in the presence of a baby.

Now here is the part that I haven’t felt able to say in real life. If I ’m really honest, reading about this baby, for the first time ever a small part of my thoughts were homophobic.I thought that with most ( but not all) of my gay friends, there’s an element I struggle to articulate, a sort of selfishness, egocentricity, endless dominance of the importance of sex even into their 60s, promiscuity on gay cruises and the like, disproportionate focus on appearance and youth. Am I saying they are all paedophiles, absolutely not. Am I saying gay couples shouldn’t be allowed to adopt- no. But there’s something about the gay couples that I happen know that seems incompatible with the self sacrifices of parenting, actually with one exception. Although, the same goes for many straight men too.
Again I struggle to articulate it, but this case just made be react in a prejudiced way I suppose which was alien to me.

I think it would be tragic if what comes out of this case and this thread is more violence and more hatred and more prejudice.

I read [[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx21q2d2y3ro?app-referrer=deep-link#:~:text=A%20two%2Dyear%2Dold%20boy's,in%20Northumberland%20in%20November%202025. www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx21q2d2y3ro?app-referrer=deep-link#:~:text=A%20two%2Dyear%2Dold%20boy's,in%20Northumberland%20in%20November%202025.]] yesterday. I think that perhaps our system of adoption needs examining very closely.

They’ve released a long clip of some of his police interviews. I’m surprised at how much has been released in a live trial because I’m sure normally evidence like this is only released if a person is convicted because normally they don’t want to prejudice a trial. I don’t want to say anything that could prejudice a trial myself, but I will say he comes across very unlikable.
https://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/watch-blackpool-teacher-acccused-of-murder-explain-away-babys-fractured-arm-8542423

True

It's such a disgusting case.

We need to find a better way to root out child abusers. Would it be possible for the police to be required to do a very thorough check of peoples hard drives and internet history and if they'd been on the dark web before they were allowed to adopt? If so, would that be able to show if they had ever viewed any child abuse images? If so I wonder if that would help, as I would think it would be very common for abusers to view child abuse images before they moved on to abuse children in person?

Even if the police have the resourcing for that, it would depend on that person handing over the devices to the police, not a search and seizure. So if there was anything compromising on a device, they just wouldn’t hand that over to be searched and the police and adoption services would have no way of knowing there’s another laptop or phone at the property. In this case, I don’t think there’s been a suggestion that either defendant owned or viewed CSAM prior to adoption. All the abuse charges relate to Preston, so even if this were in place it wouldn’t have helped Preston. Just basing that on my assumption that the police would put considerably more effort into finding and thoroughly scrutinising devices for a murder investigation than a pre-adoption screening, and that they would have wanted to add as many charges as possible if there was any CSAM found before the adoption.

We would also need to consider if it is too much to ask of adopters. Theres a constant balance of the tightrope of adoption checks and the "flow" of the system.

Too soft and children are at risk with adopters, too harsh and children at best get stuck in foster care with all the risks that go with that, and at worst stay in bad home situations because theres no resource to get them out.

Ideally you'd have all the foster care space, social work time and money to throw at it. Our checks felt very intrusive which felt right but does decrease the number of candidates willing to have their bank records checked, exes contacted etc.

I don't know what the answer is, and am not sure if I would have consented to having all my electronics seized.

Sorry I don't mean that to sound blasé about the risk. Simply theres also risk involved in leaving children in foster care, having less foster spaces/social work time for children (both by keeping more kids in foster but also reducing the number of foster carers in first place)

There was a specific incidence where I was being grilled about my lottery spend at a few points (in charge of a work syndicate!) By a social worker then by a pannel of people where i wondered how anyone makes it through, and if this time could have been better spent helping children at risk.

Tbh I wonder sometimes at the adoption process.

I know of a woman who decided she wanted to adopt a child as a single parent. Everyone who knew her, knew she was totally unsuitable and that she just wanted an accessory. Even one of the people who wrote a personal letter vouching for her (she’d known her for years and years) openly said to other people that it was a bad idea.

Two days into what was supposed to be the final week long visit before everything was made official, she was parking this poor child (I think she was 7 or 8) in front of the TV while she played on her phone.

The girl had mild behavioural challenges that this woman was aware of, and during interviews had all the right answers regarding how she’d handle things. When it came to it, she ended up on the phone to SS telling them to come and get the child “Or I won’t be responsible for my actions”.

Vile woman - but very good at saying what SS wanted to hear.

This must happen all the time.

Im sure it does happen but without a crystal ball it's hard to ever be certain especially if the references are lying! Lots of people with bio children who blithly talk about "just adopt" would get nowhere near the criteria.

We had to have people that signed off on how we interacted with children, including having to do seperate volunteer work with children (on top of having a child facing job), as well as spending time with family kids

All our finances (hence lottery questions), medical records (including wanting to see if I could get records from a counsellor i saw at university twice)

Loads of references from all sorts of places and people including from the police of a country i spent a gap year in, interviews from our exs (I had to really fight to not have an ex who had a conviction against me not contacted!), family, even our vet 😄

We had endless meetings upon meetings where we were asked about everything from our sex life, all sorts of scenarios to if we would rehome our dog.

Home checks where they opened our cupboards. You can't have done fertility treatments in x amount of time, must have therapy for certain things but not too much that they think you are unstable, have to have strict home set ups, kids be of a certain age etc.

Im not saying that its not for a good reason but it's really hard to see what more they could have added prior (other than the seizing of all electronics)

We also had lots of visits after placement, had to keep a log of every mark etc. This is clearly where there was a big gap in this case

You obviously can blag a certain amount but it's really not as easy as a few lies. It would take months if not years of living a completely different life and answering millions of hypotheticals, references as someone else

The thing is, you can never really know. I think I’ve said this before on here but there’s a thread knocking around from about November 2020, a month or so before ds (first baby) was due. I think I’d seen a job I was considering applying for (the start date wasn’t until the following September.) I have read it more than once since because I’m so blithe and confident about everything. DH and I were going to be equal parents, of course babies are tiring, I can handle it.

And then my children happened and … well, please don’t think I’m saying I’d change them as I wouldn’t (although have thought it in darker moments!) but although I think my children are for the most part lovely children and they don’t have any additional needs I am aware of, but equally I will admit I had no real idea of what parenting them involved, and I have completely left behind what life I had before them. And sometimes I do resent that and feel frustrated and angry at being pulled every which way, and constantly meeting myself coming back - even if I do get a couple of hours to myself it’s snatched and rushed.

I gained my children of course, and I feel I have a place in society where before maybe I didn’t (I don’t mean everyone, I just mean me - I was a bit nomadic before; would spend a few years in a job then move on, that sort of thing.)

I have often cried in the last few years, from tiredness mostly and frustration, have never felt as insecure in any role I’ve had than this one. I’ve also had moments of real anger and fury where I’ve felt like I hate my children. Then I’ve always been shocked and upset with myself afterwards. I know in an adoption scenario I’d say the right things but honestly when it came to it I wouldn’t have coped.

This case is of course different because the defendants don’t appear to have been people who wanted a child but didn’t really know what that involved. But I have been taken aback at how quickly it can get to you, how when you’ve had hardly any sleep and a baby’s cries and you just can’t seem to comfort them or a toddler having a tantrum and it feels like it’s lasted hours and you’re doing all the right things but it enrages them more … I don’t know what the answer is. And of course we don’t know why little Preston was removed in the first place, but certainly I will admit on here to probably patronising replies about it always being a last resort I’ve never felt comfortable with forced adoption.