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

I think they were explained fairly easily though (of course being professionals will have helped.)

I really wish there was some way to guarantee the thing that has already happened won’t happen but I’m not sure there is.

@LittleMerrymaid i will continue to post where I see fit and grant you the courtesy of the same.

I’m not sure it’s that gay dads are seen as ‘lovely’, it’s more that it’s assumed that having been through an extensive vetting process for adoption in the first place that any injuries or illness are benign (and they can be.)

It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of misinformation about this case as well: there’s been a lot posted that either isn’t true or could be true but isn’t proven (there was a claim that they’d put photographs on the dark web for example) so it quickly gets complex and confusing.

As I understand it, Preston went to hospital three times. I believe two of these occasions were with illness and one with an injury, which had a plausible explanation. Happy to be corrected if I’m wrong.

Presumably with something proportional in size to what was used on the baby. Evil men.

I see, thank you apologies, I didn’t realise.

I've always been a two men should be allowed to adopt children person but not anymore.

There's a lot of evidence that men biologically unrelated to children (step fathers, new boyfriends etc) are often a major risk to children's safety. I don't think there's the same evidence about women. So uncomfortable as it may be, this case and available data might suggest that two men biologically unrelated to a child should be viewed with much greater caution and monitored in more depth than where there's a woman involved?

That's if society prioritises the welfare of children above all other demands of course.

No reason you should. Somehow in my mind using the word obvious in relation to the tread purpose I thought would be "obvious"

I don’t want to read ever increasingly graphic descriptions of what people would like to happen to these men in prison either. Doesn’t mean I’m not appalled at what happened but I think a more useful discussion is about what could have prevented this and what could change.

Personally I’m not sure, I don’t have a lot of knowledge or experience in this area but talking to a friend who is a social worker she thought class was an issue. I want to read mumsnetters thoughts about how we can do more to prevent this happening again not everyone out doing themselves to describe in more and more detail the horrors they’d like to be inflicted on these two individuals in prison. It’s not productive and I’m mindful of the collateral damage that prison assaults cause in terms of those who have to deal with them and the financial burden to the state in investigating and prosecuting.

Don’t worry he won’t last long in prison the screws will turn a blind eye as he is attacked. Let’s hope he’s tortured to death. That poor beautiful little boy. 😢

Class does make a difference. People with money that pay for a cleaner appear to be providing a less chaotic environment than similar people who are struggling for money. Professionals are likely to have more people skills and be more articulate and aBle to manipulate or allay the fears of onlookers.

And I think perhaps the risk of an unrelated man is ameliorated to an extent by a female partner. Two men should perhaps be seen as a multiplied risk rather than a sum risk. Is that logarithmic? Or something. ‘To the power of’, like earthquakes/decibels.

This was after repeated visits to hospital and social workers seeing all sorts of bruises on the baby's body.

The filthy degenerates fractured Preston's arm, and their social worker sent them a message after the hospital visit reassuring them that there were no concerns, ending with a love heart emoji

How the hell was two men breaking a baby's arm after 5 minutes in their ''care'' not concerning?

The broken arm, the constant bruises, a previously healthy baby now suffering seizures, multiple hospital visits...how many more red flags did social services need waving right in their faces before they'd start asking questions?

I don’t disagree but then I don’t know what the statistics are on gay men adopting. There have been two cases of a gay man murdering the child they wanted to adopt, but in a similar timeframe one woman has committed the same crime. So out of three murdered babies (what a horrible sentence to write ) one woman, two men. Not a hugely drastic difference to warrant banning gay men from adopting at all, although I do understand the instinct to want to do something to prevent it happening again.

@LittleMerrymaidBoth myself and @followtheswallowcan post and refer to as many threads as we like. We both happened to be on the other thread, we have both been respectful to each other, even though we have differing opinions and neither of us have forgotten this whole thing is about sweet little Preston Davey. Why do you think this whole discussion is so emotive? because at the heart of it is the totally avoidable, totally needless death of an innocent little boy!

I know it sort of comes down to can we just say that we should treat men as a class as being potential risk to children. We say this about men in relation to women, eg "all men are potential rapists", that it seems strange that given the statistics on who is more likely to sexually abuse a child, that this isn't taken into account. As is the other factor mentioned by a PP. An unrelated man moving into a household with children ie a new partner or husband of the mother, is also shown to be a risk.

Why aren't we allowed to say it.

Campaigns are always about "ending violence against women". Why isn't the campaign about ending violence in men.

And if other men say it isn't fair on them, then let them try and sort out ways that men can be trusted not to be violent or abusive.

What a gracious post, thank you and likewise.

What i think is that children’s adoption teams are not rigorous enough, based on my work with families, often foster placements are not up to scratch.

i think this as a massive safeguarding fail, the fact that the couple were gay/working class/single/older. Is neither here nor there.

I often used to muse that the child in care would better off in the care of very poor parents, than what is on offer.

A poor or even more dangerous environment, or even worse an institutional children’s home where no boundaries are afforded and rape gangs exploited this situation.

Without wanting to turn this into a men vs women thread, Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo Hughes were murdered by their parent’s female partner and Leiland James Corkhill was murdered by his adoptive mother all fairly recently (after lockdown). That’s not to deflect against the seriousness of what these men did to Preston, but just to say that unrelated women in these cases also abused children to death in their care. I think that everyone adopting should be subject to the same scrutiny because that should be highest standard for vulnerable children in the care of their local authority. I’m really not sure what can be done to protect children from their parent’s new partner though, because that’s a parental risk assessment which some parents get terribly wrong.

Grandmother had recently had cancer treatment, and she needed only a couple of extra months to recover her strength, so she could lift the baby and so on.

She and the foster mother got on well, and the foster mother pleaded to keep baby just a little bit longer, until grandmother could take him to bring him up alongside his sister.

As women with the best interests of children at heart, they both appreciated that the foster mother was the familiar 'parent' for the baby, and there was a continuing mutual affection, so the two women would continue to be friends, and would not dream of stopping the baby having contact with the foster mother.

Social workers were fixated on the ideology of the 'sacred' group i.e. gay men.

So were the hospital staff, who did not follow any guidelines about infant/child injuries. The baby had obviously never at any stage been thoroughly examined: If the situation had involved a hetrosexual couple, we can be sure the baby would have been put on a safeguarding list and kept away from the parents, pending futher investigation and extremely careful examinations, and observations of any interactions.

That baby was killed for ideology. In 115 days, he had been to hospital three times, with broken bones, bruises, and he had ruptured insides from anal penetration which had burst his colon. Presumably the penetration of the throat was what finally killed him.

I’m not sure at all that that’s the case @logiccalls . What in particular do you think would have triggered his removal if he’d been adopted by a heterosexual couple?

That is correct. She and a friend, 14 year old girls, murdered an elderly woman. I remember it in the news.
Baby Preston was taken to the hospital on numerous occasions with unexplained injuries and handed back to the these two monsters. There were concerns by social.servises also, but nobody acted upon the information.

Another defenceless child sacrificed on the altar of "diversity"
Everyone involved in this horror needs to hang their heads in shame 😡😡😡

It's so brazen to go through with the adoption process and begin to abuse the child on day one - surely this indicates more than just spontaneous abuse due to access to a child? I would believe he must have offended previously
I'd also be wondering how these two met, clearly they were both child abusers and/or paedophiles so did they meet online ??

Can't quite get over the huge pantomime they did in the hospital. From my understanding he videod the baby after his sexual assault and the baby showed respiratory distress and died after ? Wtaf

Also just saddening and shocking they wanted to strip the baby of his identity by renaming him too. Poor foster mother. I don't understand SS decisions here - surely there's huge attachment issues of removal from birth mother, birth father, maternal grandma then removal from foster mother, then placed with two random men. How is that healthy?
His family were criminals, all of them? Not one member of the family could've kinship cared? Sad.

Its Prestons birthday tomorrow.

Agree. Absolute scumbags - hope they suffer horribly.

Men like these, where there is absolute certainty of their crime, should have their genitals removed.

That baby. That poor beautiful baby.
How dare they do that to a defenceless child.
I cant see them lasting long in prison.......

People are fantasising about harms they wish upon the perpetrators. But what of those who enabled, indeed forced, the placement, and then as you say ignored every known red flag waved right in their faces? Some in the hospital, some in social services. Every one of them will complacently await their golden pensions, and no doubt continue to worship whatever 'sacred' groups are in fashion.

Apparently word has already spread around the prisons that they will be "receiving new guests"