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

There have already been thousands of gay and lesbian adoptive parents who haven’t abused their children.

gay and lesbian couples tend to be more open to non-traditional ideas of family because they’ve already made peace with the fact that their family life is not going to be the societal norm. They tend to be more open to adopting older children with medical or psychological issues.

Those are not the only sectors of society wanting to adopt. There are childless heterosexual couples who want to adopt too. There are even single women as well.

Doesn't the adoption agency deal with those people too?

Laura Perrins is founder of the Conservative Woman website. Anyone who wants to read articles behind a paywall can use for free the archive ph / archive today resource; simply cut and paste your link to read your article.

There are NO agencies dedicated to increasing the numbers of LGBTQ+ adopters. Adoption agencies have to be equal opportunities.

There are even single men.

https://www.communitycare.co.uk/content/news/preston-davey-macalister-sends-in-experts-to-scrutinise-agencies-involved-in-boys-case

As you can see, Josh MacAlister has asked experts to look at the role of the council, NHS trust and adoption agency.

It is illegal in the UK for anyone to profit from the adoption of a child. You are being fed misinformation here.

Voluntary Adoption Agencies (VAAs): Charities and not-for-profit agencies (such as Coram or Adoption Matters) are paid fees by Local Authorities for recruiting, assessing, and training adoptive parents. They do not make a profit, but the fees cover staff wages and operational costs.

How do you know that? Did you do a survey? Or is it what you believe?

You would think so but
I read in the link in the pp about the report on the agency that,
It found the agency pledged to focus on “increasing the number of LGBTQ+ applicants” the year after baby Preston was murdered, and to examine “the barriers to single males seeking to adopt”

From that it seems to me that the agency was targeting and prioritising a particular section of society.

edited for typo

I don't think one thing follows from the other. Were they actually excluding straight adopters?

I had another go and the article must have been archived by someone else, as I wrote in my previous post it would not archive for me

https://archive.ph/w1RaK

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/19/baby-preston-adoption-agency-pushed-staff-hit-strict-target/

There definitely seems to have been a monetary incentive

The 2022 DfE review reported industry concerns that financial incentives to prioritise agencies’ own adopters led to matches that felt “pushed or forced”.

Although things may have changed in the intervening years, this is the time around which Preston was adopted.

If there were no other adopters to choose from then one does not follow from the other.

If there were, and the gay couple were prioritised and chosen even though the other adopters were as good or better, then the other would-be adopters were effectively excluded.

That is what positive discrimination does.

This was responding to:
mrsbowes · Today 22:39
I don't think one thing follows from the other. Were they actually excluding straight adopters?

I really think you should think about how you speak to people you don't agree with.

As it happens, someone posted the Telegraph article yesterday on this thread but it was behind the pay wall and I couldn't read it.

Later on the thread on X which I posted came up on my X feed and as it seemed to summarise the Telegraph article zi thought I would share it.

I have no idea who the woman who wrote it is. I don't personally have a problem if she is Conservative - it isn't illegal.

Anyway, the article pulled out some stats about the adoption agency's targetting of the LGBT+ community. That's what I was referring to. If they had been targetting any single group I would have made the same comments - I fundamentally disagree with the "anyone can adopt" approach and the targetting of groups they think will be particularly interested in doing so. Atm it's the LGBT+ community but it could be any group eg particular ethnicity.

And i stick by this. 24% of their business involving the LGBT+ community is IMO of interest. Imo they have seen a group of people who can be persuaded to adopt and have pursued it. I have posted before that I completely disagree with the recruitment of well meaning amateurs with next to no training and zero support - and I include myself in that category.

For those of you living in the UK there is a petition for a national enquiry, has 60k signatures so far
https://www.change.org/p/preston-davey-deserved-better-demand-a-national-inquiry?recruiter=173329&recruited_by_id=44722650-be5b-012f-fd5a-40406f61fb41&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_medium=copylink&share_id=G5ZqMHZRSt

I think they were actively targetting the LGBT+ community - i would imagine that meant attending LGBT+ events, advertising in LGBT+ publications, using LGBT+ case studies, that sort of thing.

I personally don't disagree with LGBT+ adoption. I know several gay couples and single gay men who have made excellent adopters. Like I said in another post though, imo adoption is not as easy as the Gov makes it out to be and the support just isn't there if the family needs it. And I just think they have identified a group which is interested in adopting and plugged this "anyone can adopt" message at them, which imo is too simplistic, and I would say the same about any group they were to pick out eg single women, disabled people.

There have been several research studies about this. It’s well-proven.

This is against a background of gay and lesbian couples making up 1 in 5 adoptions nationally since 2023.

The problem with targeting the LGBT community is that the T involves a known and significant number of male fetishists.

And it's well known that paraphilias cluster.

It really is the bloody elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about, but surely, after this horrific event, it must be.

I understood that the research showed they were just as good, not better. Tbh I think it's a highly complex area - the vast increase in LGBT+ adoptions in the last few years won't have filtered through to outcomes.

This was all I could find Source: First4Adoption https://share.google/L1uhNTmXOnz11WfMB

This horrific, deeply depraved, American affluent and ‘respectable’ gay couple
William Dale Zulock and Zachary Jacoby Zulock
are in prison for life for raping and sexually exploiting ( lending out for rape and filming) their two adopted sons who were
3 and 5 when they came into their custody.

These men had been prominent campaigners for the right for gay men/so called “LGBTQ+” to adopt.

The children were given to them by a Christian Agency.

Common ground with Preston’s case is that the men seemed so wholesome and and also that perhaps the agency were too quick in their checks.

NB. I am fully aware of the very many heterosexual men (and some women) who sexually abuse children in their own families, especially if they are stepfathers, most of whom are never reported.
You can only hope that the presence of the children’s mothers helps prevent even more of this abuse from happening.
The huge rise in child sexual abuse films for pornography, including of babies, shows how many men (and also women in some cases) must be involved.

Then there was this Australian report:
www.humanrights.unsw.edu.au/news/shocking-number-australian-men-sexually-attracted-children-and-teens
Disturbing research into the extent of child sexual abuse has found almost one in six Australian men have sexual feelings towards children and teenagers, and almost one in 10 acknowledge having committed child sexual offences, despite few being caught.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_and_Zachary_Zulock

It’s not that they’re “better” but that they are more open to children who arrive with conditions that make them more difficult to care for, as well as older children.

What was it that made Preston more difficult to care for though? I get that LGB people are obviously a target market to be adopters (one of my close relatives who is a lesbian, is, has just been approved and has a very challenging now-teenage adoptive son. She had to jump through absolute hoops as well, despite having been his foster carer herself for several years.). But Preston, aside from his acid reflux, did not have special needs, and was a happy, healthy baby by all accounts.

What strikes me (and this appears to be true of multiple people who adopt young children, not just this pair of abusers) is that Varley's reactions show he was really woefully underprepared for the realities of a baby. To the point that his foster mother, who, let's not forget, has prepped over 40 children for adoption, commented on it, with surprise, which suggests she found their cluelessness unusual.

Why is a non-verbal baby being placed with someone who clearly is not prepared for the reality of a baby? I appreciate nobody is going to be fully prepared for the reality, including birth parents, until they are in the midst of it, but - what? JV's colleague said that he was adamant he wanted a baby not a toddler or an older child. So what was it that made placement with them look so desirable over and above everyone else who might've wanted to adopt Preston?

The Zulock story is absolutely horrific. Those poor little boys. That their "associates" knew about it and cheered them on in their abuse is absolutely grim.

As is that Australian report. They do indeed walk among us, and yes, i do think porn has something to do with its seeming escalation.

Sadly, we already know that unrelated males have many more times the risk of sexually assaulting children than women do. Although toddler Poppi Worthington was raped and asphyxiated (I now, after the Preston case, realise what that probably means) by her own father, and of course there is another horrific case coming through just now of Isabelle Rose Welsh, whose mother appears to have enabled/joined in with her new boyfriend's abuse, including sexual, and eventual murder of little Isabelle. Repellent.