![\"Jamie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/00248627-614.jpg\"\/)
\nJamie Varley and John McGowan-Fazakerley had been approved for adoption (Photo: Lancashire Police)<\/p>\n
A secondary school teacher in the UK has been found guilty of the murder and sexual abuse of a 13-month-old baby he treated as a “plaything”.<\/p>\n
Jamie Varley, 37, adopted Preston Davey, at nine months old with his partner John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32.<\/p>\n
Preston had been taken from his mother, Sarah Davey, now 42, by an emergency care order by Oldham Council.<\/p>\n
When she was 14 years old, Davey had been jailed for the “unspeakably wicked” murder of a frail pensioner in 1998 and had been in and out of prison since then.<\/p>\n
Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley were approved for adoption and at nine months old Preston began living at their home in Blackpool, England, in April 2023.<\/p>\n
But in the just under four months he was in their care, he was routinely ill-treated, had indecent images and videos taken of him, sexually abused and physically assaulted, suffering 40 traumatic injuries, the defendants’ trial at Preston Crown Court has heard.<\/p>\n
Following an eight-week trial, a jury spent around 14 hours considering verdicts before it returned to court to deliver verdicts.<\/p>\n
\nJamie Varley and John McGowan-Fazakerley had been approved for adoption (Photo: Lancashire Police)<\/p>\n
Varley was found guilty of murder, two counts of assault by penetration, five counts of cruelty to a child, grievous bodily harm, sexual assault of a child, 13 counts of taking indecent photos or videos of a child, one of distributing an indecent photo of a child, to his co-accused, and one of making an indecent photo.<\/p>\n
McGowan-Fazakerley was found guilty of allowing the death of a child, two counts of child cruelty and one count of the sexual assault of a child.<\/p>\n
Varley stood in the dock and put his hands to his face as the guilty verdicts were read, before retching and vomiting.<\/p>\n
His co-accused made no reaction.<\/p>\n
Preston’s mother and grandmother cried throughout as the 29 guilty verdicts were returned.<\/p>\n
Both defendants will not be sentenced today and Mr Justice Turner said he will pass sentence on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A secondary school teacher in the UK has been found guilty of the murder and sexual abuse of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-502058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}