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

[IwantToRetire]

Distressing content
-----

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

OK so you accept you have no evidence that there were multiple competing applicants. You’ve assumed that without evidence.

Adopters are not foster carers.

They are their child’s parents from the designated placement date. They share that parental responsibility with the LA until the adoption order is made and any limitations in the parental role are spelled out in the adoption plan. It includes things like not taking the child abroad without permission or needing agreement for significant medical decisions etc.

So no. It is not ‘almost certainly the case’ that early stage adopters have the same restrictions as foster carers.

I agree with pp before you.

Adoptive parents (or any adult, even a biological relative) bathing naked with a child they have no established relationship with is odd.

That is not how you’d try to bond with a child you’d only know for weeks/months (they won’t feel like your child at that point), you’d play with them and cuddle them to sleep.

And although it’s true in trials that minor/obscure details can be blown up because we know the person is guilty, these men took sexually suggestive videos zooming in on Preston’s body. And sexually abused him It wasn’t innocent.

The evidence is that pretty much every adoption agency warns that there are very few babies available for adoption and that the wait for a healthy baby with no disabilities is likely to be a very long one.

It's a direct result of contraception and the morning after pill.

There can only be multiple interested prospective adopters if the child is advertised. And children are only advertised if social services have not identified a match, which can happen behind the scenes as it were. And many people will be interested who don't match the criteria.

Local authorities hold all the children. Adoption agencies attract and vet adopters and get a fee from the LA when a placement is made. LAs used to attract and vet adopters too, and I think that in some areas they still do, but the use of specialist agencies was thought to be more efficient and safer, due to the concentrated expertise, and a lot of LAs no longer do it. The problem is that these agencies have a vested interests in getting adopters through the system, or they don't get paid. The emphasis these days is on getting interested parties approved. When I adopted you needed to have a very vanilla background. The slightest concerning issue would be a huge red flag and cause at least a hiccup while it was investigated further.

Gov after gov has tried to increase the number of adoptions. There was an adoption tsar at one point, who actually rowed back on a lot of the government of the time's wishes (like pushing for people to take on large sibling groups) once he found out more.

Anyway, a local authority can liaise with adoption agencies to see if they have anyone suitable while they are processing the adoption. They will have a list of criteria. If there is a match, there is no need to advertise.

Btw my children were advertised with their real faces with a sign saying "unexpectedly available".ì

Often people talk about adoption as being when the child is placed with adopters, but that is a matter of placement, where either party can call a halt at any time and the child would go back into foster care.

If only Preston had been able to ‘call a halt’ to his placement. Where was his voice? An independent and assertive advocate for the child, monitoring the placement, liaising with previous foster parents, visiting regularly, flagging up excuses, keeping tabs on hospital visits and injuries, observant of visible bruising, adopters’ interactions with the child, etc. and able to call for increased surveillance from SS if concerned, should be the minimum requirement for a non-verbal child in a new placement. But I’m guessing there’s no money for that.

They do exist and they are involved; they are called independent reviewing officers.

I used to sit at ballet classes with a lady who fostered babies. The babies who were in her care were all “problematic” - products of incest or from an inmate of a secure mental home or a drug-addicted mother. Most prospective adopters did not want these babies so some she had for some time (and she had adopted one herself.)

It’s not the 1950s/60s where there was shame in pregnancy outside marriage and available “quality” babies were ten-a-penny, sadly. A friend of mine was turned down for adoption as it was judged that the type of babies/children available would be a poor match for them. Friend was angry that social worker criticised their walls of books and cultural interests - but I suppose they do try to replicate background and heritage now. (Pros and cons to this, no doubt.)

Ok. Where were they, then?

Of course it wasn't innocent in this situation. But more broadly I am making the point that treating a parent as showing red flags if they bathe with their young children is nonsense.

And I'm afraid your claim about bonding and attachment is also wrong. You are right that a child might not feel like 'your child' right away (but then that can also happen with biological parents) but the advice tends to be to build attachment, you fake it until you make it.

You don't shy away from intimate care, skin to skin contact etc. An adopted child will often have been denied that nurture (for good reasons) when in care. The aim of attachment to adoptive parents is to build that secure and long term attachment. Which means parents acting like any other parents, being the primary caregiver with all that entails, right from the start. It is about sending a clear message to a child that these are your parents - their role in your life is different to anyone else.

That is true.

What is not true is that it follows from that that every baby placed for adoption has multiple applicants wanting to adopt them.

A headline approach of 'baby = high demand' doesn't reflect the reality.

Lots of people go into adoption preferring babies. Then they hit up against the reality that the ideal image of the perfect baby, voluntarily relinquished by a healthy mum, largely doesn't exist.

For any given baby, there is a very high likelihood that they will have been exposed to drugs, alcohol, violence or all three in utero. And unlike with an older child, doctors will usually have no idea what the long term impacts might me.

For any given baby, there will be specific plans in place for direct or (more commonly still) indirect contact with birth family. The more extensive that can be the more offputting it can be to some adopters.

For any given baby there may be questions about inheritable genetic conditions, some with the potential to be life-limiting which can't be tested for at such a young age and which may or may not manifest later in life.

Your assumption that baby = high demand shows a really simplified understanding of the realities of the adoption process.

The independent reviewing role is a statutory one.

Also factor in that at one time many young unmarried women who became pregnant, unless they married quickly, were forced to give up their babies for adoption to save the family from "shame" so more newborn were available for adoption 😒

You obviously have knowledge about the set-up which I don’t. However, my instinct is that there should be an independent person assigned to a non-verbal child, placed for adoption, who can observe what is going on in the adoptive family home, especially in the early months, and liaise with other agencies. A little bit like a Health Visitor ++. Does this routinely happen?

By the way, no one advocating that we prevent gay couples and single men from adopting have explained what their plan is for the hundreds of children each year adopted by those men.

But do they actually ever see the child? When we adopted, the placing authority social workers visited every 6 weeks. We had gone through a local VA and our social worker visited too, I can't remember how often. The placing authority were disinterested tbh and we used to get a frantic call asking if they could come the next day, like they had forgotten about us and had suddenly realised their statutory duties. I hope it's changed.

What?? So if something turns out to have been a mistake, we should keep doing it in the future because we can't go back to the past and repair previous instances of this mistake?

And just to be clear, I haven't said that all single or gay men should be prevented from adopting. But I think there's a huge problem if, out of political correctness we can't even discuss the fact that men are more often abusers than women, and consider whether adopters with no female component may be more likely to abuse.

And that is absolutely the correct approach ONCE we're sure that the selection process has weeded out the unsuitable people.

It turns out that (assuming the procedures were followed in this and other cases where adopted babies were abused and/or murdered) that this isn't the case. So surely telling adoptive parents to "fake it till they make it" is reckless, and it would be a lot better to consider adoption as a more gradual process, and to advise parents to take their time before exposing the child to, eg, adult nudity.

That society has been over optimistic in the past about this is not a reason to consider doing it when the consequences for the child can be so disastrous.

It is very true that men are more likely to abuse children, but then what do we do? Ban dads, stepdads, uncles, grandads, from family homes until the child is verbal? I know you’re not suggesting this but actually it would save a lot more children than the two named on this thread. We don’t do this because we recognise the rights of men to be fathers and that they bring positive things to the lives of children. I guess it’s similar here.

Whether there is an argument for men not being given non verbal children I cannot say, but the case of Elsie / Shayla wasn’t one with a sexual element AFAIK; he had a very nasty temper.

This is a case from 2000. An adoptive father had abused his twin adopted babies, and one was killed.

A report into the death of a Romanian baby boy who was legally adopted by a County Armagh man has strongly criticised a Northern Ireland health trust.

The boy, who suffered multiple fractures, was buried without the injuries ever being explained.
It is understood the couple who adopted the boy and his twin brother have been questioned by police in connection with the death.
Former overseas missionary Geoffrey Briggs from Portadown, the boy's adoptive father, was later jailed for fracturing the skull of the child's twin brother.
The 45-page Department of Heath report published on Thursday, is highly critical of the Craigavon and Banbridge Community Trust, which oversaw the adoption.
One of the key findings said there was a failure to visit and support the children along with poor record-keeping.
Briggs adopted the nine-month-old twin boys under Romanian law in July 2000.
Less than four months later, one was dead and the other had a fractured skull.

Mr Briggs admitted having punched the child, and was later convicted of grievous bodily harm, and sentenced to two years in prison.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northernireland/3079348.stm

No we don't do it because the state does not have that level of control over people's private lives. The state doesn't choose to place a child witha family, and by default it assumes that the biological parents are generally best placed to look after the child's interests.

Adoption is completely different: the parents are NOT the biological parents, and the state DOES choose to place the child there. The degree of responsibility for that child's wellbeing that the state assumes is doing so is therefore FAR higher.

ETA: your point about the "rights" of fathers is both concerning (because we shouldn't put a father's right over the child's interests, but also proves my point. It's because of the biological link that the father automatically has those rights.

When a child is adopted, the state undertakes to eliminate potential adopters who would be a danger to the child. This may not be foolproof, but when it goes so catastrophically wrong as it has this time, surely it's reasonable to query the selection process, instead of saying "Ah well, sure biological parents also abuse children too"? That's no excuse!

That's horrendous. Of course, being a missionalry, he probably was seen as "god fearing" and bla bla bla, when in fact he probably became a missionary in the first place because that meant vulnerable children to abuse. 😡

I think if we treat prospective adoptive parents like potential criminals we won’t have many prospective parents wanting to adopt.

There is also a big problem with abuse within the American missionary/ Evangelical Christian adoption culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Hana_Grace-Rose_Williams

To the point that many countries have banned international adoption, as so many adoptees ended up being abused or murdered.

International adoptees are very vulnerable as the adoptions are done through private agencies.

The autopsy also revealed that the boy had 80 total external injuries, 20 of which were injuries to his head.[6] The prosecution argued that a pattern of neglect and abuse was evident due to Nathaniel's low weight, failure to consistently access therapeutic care, and the injuries evident from his autopsy

According to Russian officials, it is one of many instances of Russian children's abuse and neglect at the hands of American adopters.[6][8] Russian authorities alleged that, at the time of Nathaniel's death, no fewer than 17 Russian children had died under the care of American adopters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Craver

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deceased_children_adopted_from_Russia_in_the_United_States

VIKTOR MATTHEY, born Viktor Sergeivich Tulimov age 6, Hunterdon County, New Jersey. Died October 31, 2000 of cardiac arrest due to hypothermia after adoptive parents Robert and Brenda Matthey locked him overnight in a damp unheated pump room; also suffered over 40 cuts, scrapes, bruises and untreated fractures. Robert Matthey admitted beating Viktor with an aluminum baseball bat, a belt, 2 whips, and his open hand.

There is already a massive shortfall of prospective adopters. There are in excess of three thousand babies and children waiting for forever homes currently.