Former teacher guilty of sexually abusing and murdering baby boy he wanted to adopt - CPS

[IwantToRetire]

Distressing content
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A former teacher has been found guilty of sexually abusing and murdering a baby boy that he planned to adopt.

Jamie Varley, 37, was convicted at Preston Crown Court of murder, child cruelty, sexual offences and indecent images relating to 13-month-old Preston Davey.

John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, was convicted of allowing the death of a child, child cruelty and sexual assault.

Varley was in the process of adopting baby Preston (also known as Elijah) with his partner McGowan-Fazakerley. Just four months after being placed with the couple, Preston was taken to Blackpool Victoria Hospital unconscious and in cardiac arrest. Sadly, Preston could not be saved.

Varley tried falsely claiming that Preston had accidentally drowned in a bath, but prosecutors were able to prove that his injuries were consistent with his airways being obstructed.

The evidence presented by the prosecution proved that in the final months of Preston’s life, he was routinely ill-treated, sexually abused and physically assaulted – suffering more than 40 separate injuries.

CPS statement continues at https://www.cps.gov.uk/north-west/news/former-teacher-guilty-sexually-abusing-and-murdering-baby-boy-he-wanted-adopt

More from a BBC report - also distressing:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyp77l79e9o

I thought there was a thread about this, but cant find one. But sorry if a duplicate.

I really only wanted to post out of respect for this poor baby and the horror of his short life.

RIP

My mother manipulated all other five family members against me making them blame me for everything including my two sisters who are both retired now and still deny the abuse. My elder sister who was abused too, stood by and allowed our mother to have access to grandchildren and children in a children's home. She's worked as an art therapist in psychiatry. My younger sister left her daughter with our mother. Women can facilitate abuse if not actively commit the crime.

Same mentality as with Henry novak's case.

Yes, we know. Nobody is saying women can't be abusive or (particularly, as in your example) enabling of someone else's abuse. Nor that "no" woman could possibly ever be guilty of being involved in CSA.

However, the fact still remains that over 98% of direct perpetrators of CSA (such as what happened to Preston physically, as in sexual assault and rape) are male. It really isn't an equal opportunity crime.

Yes sorry it must have been when I nipped out to check the oven. It wasn't in the headlines and I mistakenly thought it wasn't covered at all. Still surprised it wasn't in the headlines.

Not sure the sister's sleep coaching business will be thriving after this.

The thread is about a baby boy being placed in the care of 2 male paedophiles.

9 similar posts out of 10 will also involve male perpetrators.

Women can and do abuse, but the risks of them doing so is vanishingly small next to men.

Your case is unusual and I am very sorry you have lived it

I know 2 gay men who have adopted children , they are the kindest most caring parents to those children, these other evil men have possibly ruined it for other gay men adopters and that makes me sad . It was horrific what that little boy suffered and its distressing just reading about it . Life sentence is required!

I think you are right about the adoption assessment giving a false assurance. And nothing to do with 'fear of appearing homophobic' etc.

After the Shayla (Elsie Scully-Hicks) inquiry into her murder, they found that the adoption assessment could not have predicted that her AF would be abusive. He had a 'Jekyll and Hyde' personality.

I remember after her case reached the media, there were the same accusations of 'fear of appearing homophobic' being the reason that her injuries were overlooked, as she had been adopted by a gay couple.

This article was written after the inquiry into Shayla's death. It found that the social workers viewed her adoption through a 'positive lens' so didn't even consider that her injuries could be caused by abuse.

Indeed, it should be no surprise to anyone working in the system that one theme of the review was that, with the benefit of hindsight, professionals were excessively positive about Elsie’s adoptive placement.

The implication is that social workers and health professionals were unwilling to consider that adoptive parents might harm their child.

That is inevitable in a system that, despite the complex realities, views adoption as the optimum outcome for children in care.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/aug/23/social-workers-adoption-system-failings

The inquiry recognised that adopted children still need the same level of safeguarding as a child in a bio family.

It is very interesting to read about there being such a different level of scrutiny (so much less) for adopting parents compared to biological parents.

Absolutely. The drama queen pantomime performance. Fake collapsing onto the floor. Begging the staff to kill him. Screaming for his mother. Wouldn’t he have been numb with shock if he’d just found the baby submerged in the bath? The man is a depraved piece of shit.

Sad, both men are vile. His birth mother was an evil cow as well

It's terrifying one of them was a teacher...

Thank you for this information. Very disturbing, this must be addressed ASAP.

Yes, single men can adopt, not only single women. This needs to be questioned too.

https://www.adoptionuk.org/blog/adopting-as-a-single-man

I had never read about Elsie's case before, and the commonalities to Preston's case are heartbreaking: the adult who was designated as the main carer could not cope with the realities of a small child being a small child. But hey, lessons learned, eh?

The court heard that Scully-Hicks had complained in a series of texts that Elsie was a difficult child, describing her as “Satan dressed in a babygrow” and calling her a “psycho” and “monster”. He once wrote he was “ready to explode”.

For hundreds of years, European fairy tales for children have centred around the knowledge that unrelated adults in the household are a higher risk for abusing children, even when that adult takes good care of their own biological children. The Barnados charity ran afoul of that bit of human psychology in the 1920s, after far too many of the participating families in the boarding out and the child migration scheme abused their foster children and used them as free labour and worse.

During WWII, the same exploitation for labour and abuse occurred with the evacuees.

But in the 21st century, we have social workers who apparently don't know that unrelated adults in the household are more likely to lose their temper with young children, and who assume adults that have made it through the adoption selection process couldn't possibly feel rage and anger once they're taking care of a child for real.

Obviously these naive, idealistic little cherubs don't even know there is an adoption breakdown rate, never mind what the rate is.

Yes, in particular the Cinderella Effect is relevant to sexual and physical abuse by unrelated men.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_effect#:~:text=In%20evolutionary%20psychology%2C%20the%20Cinderella,by%20her%20stepmother%20and%20stepsisters.

It does raise questions as to whether adoption to men only should be allowed, at least for preverbal children. This would include both gay male couples and single men adopting.

Something else I've wondered is what potential effect the Cinderella Effect has on straight couples who use a sperm donor so have a child who's raised by a man without a biological relationship. There's barely any mention of this possibility at all, at least online.

the adult who was designated as the main carer could not cope with the realities of a small child being a small child.

• I feel like the Vardy case was more than that though. Vardy probably couldn't cope with normal small child behaviour but he was clearly set on SA however the poor baby behaved. It was probably a very calculated decision to adopt.

So are we proposing ending adoption, essentially?

I have a lot of problems with the current system but none of this is based on suspicion and hostility towards the proposed adopters on the basis that they aren’t related to the child. Unfortunately, the death count for children murdered by their own parents is too high for that to make sense.

I certainly don't want to end adoption. I do think questions should be asked about whether adoption by only males is too risky, at least for children too young to be able to report abuse.

I think similarly about men working in nurseries.

On the petitions board, there is a petition for "Preston's Law" to "create an NHS digital safety net for vulnerable children". https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/5543225-need-people-to-sponsor-a-new-parliament-petition-for-prestons-law

I agree it’s a tricky one because it’s so tempting to go down the route of NAMALT, but of course safety has to come first. I guess my reservations are that in the three cases of murder by an adoptive parent, two were committed by a man and one by a woman. It isn’t as if there was one rogue woman and say twenty men, it’s almost a split down the middle.

I agree that Preston's case was much more, because Preston was adopted with malign motivations in mind. However, they didn't intend to get caught after four months- they would have intended to sexually abuse him for the whole of his childhood without being caught, and JV's rage interfered with their calculated plans.

That rage alone should have been seen. You should be looking for it with small children. The same applies in Elsie's murder. Those texts should have set off alarm bells. They didn't. Then the leg fracture and bruises should have set off alarm bells. They did not either.

I saw a ‘joke’ reel on instagram a few weeks ago; it was one of those ‘turn my texts into an emo song’ ones (if anyone has seen them.) They were exchanges between two (presumably heterosexual) people and they were pretty shocking to me. Things like ‘these fucking kids are a nightmare’ ‘I’m really going to lose my shit’ ‘if these little bastards don’t go to bed.’

I am a long way from a perfect parent and I’ve shouted at mine and said harsh things I don’t mean which I’ve then apologised for (then done again …) but honestly I’ve never spoken about them like that.

I do think there is a swing back from the ‘gentle’ movement to a slightly nastier vibe.

I'm proposing that the people who are paid on the presumption they have been trained in identifying risk factors for child abuse actually employ that training.

Yes, biological relatives commit abuse. I do not deny that. I have posted about that in this thread.

However, unrelated adults are statistically higher risk, not lower, and we have two cases here where adoptive fathers seem to have been treated as lower risk, despite the messages they'd sent, and the injuries to the toddlers.

As a result, the adoptive parents' violence was left to escalate until the toddlers were fatally injured. It's not good enough.

I think he really was that panicked and desperate, but obviously he couldn’t tell anyone the real reason why. He acted like it was for Preston.

He was also sick in the dock. Seeing your career and reputation crashing down, knowing you’re about to be discovered, realising your phone will be searched, theres DNA, there will be post-mortem, facing life imprisonment for child sec abuse and murder will do that to you.