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A secondary school teacher has been jailed for life for sexually abusing and murdering the baby boy he was adopting with his partner.
Jamie Varley, 37, was sentenced to a whole-life order on Thursday for abusing and killing 13-month-old Preston Davey. It means he will stay in prison for the rest of his life and never be eligible for parole, the judge Mr Justice Turner said.
His partner, John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, was jailed for 25 years for sexual abuse, child cruelty and allowing the death of a child.
Preston was taken from his biological mother, a convicted killer, and went to foster parents five days after his birth. He was placed by an adoption agency with Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley at the age of nine months.
The adopting parents treated him as a “plaything”, Preston crown court heard. Over the course of his time at the couple’s home in Staining, near Blackpool, the baby was “routinely ill-treated, sexually abused and physically assaulted”, the prosecutor Peter Wright KC said. Evidence showed the baby had 40 traumatic injuries.
On 27 July 2023, the couple took an unresponsive baby Preston to hospital where medics worked in vain for 50 minutes to try to save his life.
Varley, described in court as overly dramatic by nature, gave a “performance” of a grieving parent that one senior doctor described as unlike anything she had seen before.
Jurors heard that Varley claimed to have left the baby in the bath for a couple of minutes and returned to find him submerged. But there was no medical evidence to support that story. Preston’s hair was dry, he had a nappy in place and he did not appear to have swallowed any water.
Instead, a pathologist gave the cause of death as acute upper airways obstruction by either smothering or an object or objects being inserted into the baby’s mouth.
A long police investigation revealed a number of disturbing images and videos on Varley’s phone, which were used as evidence that he had been physically, psychologically and sexually abusing his child.
The case has raised questions about whether authorities missed opportunities to save Preston. The eight-week trial heard that Preston was seen by a “battery of professionals” in the final weeks of his life. They included social workers, doctors and nurses.
Preston was taken three times to hospital by Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley, once with a broken arm. Each time, the baby returned home in the care of the couple.
No alarms were raised and explanations for the injuries given by Varley, a head of year at a Blackpool secondary school, and McGowan-Fazakerley, a sales manager for an asset finance company, were believed.
A child safeguarding practice review launched by Oldham council after the baby’s death was paused during the criminal proceedings and has now resumed. The independent review will examine the handling of Preston’s safeguarding and the involvement of agencies responsible for his welfare before his death.
Preston was born four weeks early to Sarah Davey, who was on the mother and baby unit at the women’s prison HMP Styal. Davey was jailed when she was 14, along with a teenage friend, for the murder of a pensioner who had befriended them.
The baby’s maternal grandmother, Debbie Davey, from Oldham, said she had wanted to care for Preston but had been unable to do so because she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Preston spent his first nine months with Sandra and Paul Cooper, experienced foster parents, where he lived happily.
In a victim impact statement, Sarah Davey said Preston’s death “should never have been allowed to happen” and she carried “grief, guilt and heartbreak” every day.
“He was defenceless,” she said. “He relied entirely on you – the adults responsible for him – to love him, care for him, and keep him safe. Instead, you caused him suffering. You took away his chance to grow up, to go to school, to make friends, to live a full life. You took everything from him.”
Davey, sitting in the public gallery, sobbed uncontrollably as a barrister read her statement.
Preston’s foster parents read impact statements from the witness box. Sandra Cooper said the couple often watched videos they took of Preston when he was with them and he was happy, laughing and giggling.
“Preston’s face would light up when we looked at him,” she said. “He was joyful, so content and happy, with sparkly smiling eyes. That is how we want to remember him.”
The children’s commissioner for England, Rachel De Souza, described Preston’s murder as a “massive safeguarding failure”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme before the sentencing, she asked whether more attention was not paid because Varley was a teacher.
“Did that evil abuser hoodwink people under that professional guise?” she asked. “The social worker saw [Preston] 20 days before he died. I want to know whether the correct level of professional curiosity was there. I have huge numbers of questions and I’m not going to let go until I have the answers.”
DCI Andy Fallows, of Lancashire police, the senior investigating officer, said Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley had made Preston’s life one of harrowing misery and pain. “It is not often in this job that you encounter pure evil,” he said. “Anybody who has followed this trial will no doubt understand why I place Jamie Varley and John McGowan-Fazakerley in that category.”
Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley had denied all charges.
Karen Tonge, for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “This has been one of the most shocking and horrific cases I have dealt with in my career. It is difficult to comprehend how the very people who should have loved him could inflict such sickening physical and sexual harm on an innocent child.”
