A baby boy was \u201croutinely ill-treated, sexually abused and physically assaulted\u201d before he was killed by a secondary school teacher adopting him, a jury has heard.<\/p>\n
Jamie Varley, the teacher, 37, and his partner, John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, were in the process of adopting Preston Davey.<\/p>\n
Varley is facing a charge of murder along with 25 other charges relating to sexual and physical mistreatment of the baby. McGowan-Fazakerley has been charged with allowing the death of a child and four other offences.<\/p>\n
On the first day of their trial at Preston crown court, Peter Wright KC, prosecuting, said the Blackpool couple were \u201cin a seemingly stable and loving relationship\u201d.<\/p>\n
But the evidence would show, he said, that they were \u201cwholly unsuited to the role of adoptive parents\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSadly, this fact only became so patently obvious when, for Preston Davey, it was too late,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Wright said it was \u201ca highly emotionally charged case\u201d. \u201cIt is inevitable that it will provoke strong feelings in anyone who hears the details of this case,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The baby was placed with the couple in April 2023, aged nine months. Four months later he was taken by them to an A&E department suffering from cardiac arrest.<\/p>\n
Despite the efforts of medical staff, the baby died. A postmortem gave his cause of death as acute upper airways obstruction, a result either of a smothering, most likely with a hand or soft fabric, or by the insertion of an object or objects into his mouth.<\/p>\n
Wright said: \u201cAs terrible as it is, this tragedy was not the result of some dreadful yet unforeseen accident, or natural phenomenon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe evidence gathered during the investigation into his untimely death revealed a much more sinister pathology.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe say the evidence demonstrates that he was murdered by one of the people entrusted with his wellbeing; one of his proposed adoptive parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe say the person responsible for killing Preston Davey was the defendant, Jamie Varley.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright said the jury would hear evidence that in the care of the defendants, Preston, \u201cin the final months of his brief life \u2026 was routinely ill-treated, sexually abused and physically assaulted\u201d.<\/p>\n
He told jurors to \u201csteel themselves\u201d as images were shown on screen of the child after he had been sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n
Varley had also taken a number of images and videos of the abuse, the jury was told.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said the jury would see videos from Varley\u2019s phone including one of the seemingly unattended baby \u201cslithering and sliding\u201d round in a bath for 14 minutes while Varley \u201cnever once intervened and just recorded it \u2026 not even speaking\u201d.<\/p>\n
The jury heard that at the time of his death, Preston was found to have sustained about 40 traumatic injuries. His injuries included 30 external bruises.<\/p>\n
Wright said the baby had bruises on his thigh that medical experts said were \u201cconsistent with a slap with an open hand\u201d. There were bruises to the forehead consistent \u201cwith a gripping of the little boy\u2019s head\u201d.<\/p>\n
Varley denies murder, manslaughter, 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 denies allowing the death of a child, three counts of child cruelty and one count of the sexual assault of a child.<\/p>\n
The trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A baby boy was \u201croutinely ill-treated, sexually abused and physically assaulted\u201d before he was killed by a secondary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-542118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}