A school teacher has been found guilty of murdering and sexually assaulting a baby, and his partner of the crime of allowing the death of a child and sexual assault after the death of the 11-month-old they adopted together.
Two men who were adopting a baby subjected the infant to sexual abuse, causing 40 “traumatic” injuries, and recorded indecent videos before the child died, have been found guilty by a British court.
37-year-old Jamie Varley [above, left], a teacher, was found guilty of murder, two counts of assault by penetration, five of cruelty to a child, one of Grievous Bodily Harm, sex assault of a child, and over a dozen counts relating to indecent photographs and videos.
His partner John McGowan-Fazakerley [above, right], 32-year-old and a salesman, was also found guilty of allowing death of a child, one count of child cruelty, and one of sexual assault of a child. The court was told that while McGowan-Fazakerley was not present on the night of the killing on 27th July 2023, he had known the abuse was happening and turned a blind eye.
Baby Preston Davey had been taken from his biological mother, herself a convicted murderer, aged just five-days-old by Oldham Council. He spent the first months of his life with a foster family but after Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley were approved to become adoptive parents he was handed over to the pair in Blackpool, Lancashire.
Preston Crown Court heard Varley claimed baby Davey, who was 11-months-old at the time of his death, had accidentally drowned while left unattended in the bath. But a post-mortem revealed the child had suffered “40 traumatic injuries”, the BBC reports. These included damage to his rectum, a perforated bowel, and bruising to his mouth, throat, anus, bowels, and bladder.
The court heard the injuries were consistent with “forcible penetration” and police said they believed the bath drowning was a complete fiction, given the child was not wet and had ingested no water at the time of death. Police further said they ad found evidence that that beyond the physical abuse, the baby was also psychologically tortured by Varley for months for “sordid amusement”.
While officers were unable to conclusively prove that Varley had “sourced” a child purely for the purpose of sex abuse and murder, a spokesman said the public would “come to their own conclusions”.
Police said in a statement today that “I think Jamie Varley has sought to deceive right from day one… He is a serial manipulator and a serial liar, and his defence has basically been everybody else is wrong… I don’t see any evidence of regret, remorse, or actually sorrow for Preston Davey”. They said in their digest of the case that they discovered a trail of evidence on Varley’s personal mobile phone, including messages to friends saying he found baby Davey “annoying”, and the sending of an indecent video of the baby on Snapchat.
The force said one of the videos taken of Davey was on the day of his death. They stated: “…on 27th July 2023 Varley recorded a video of Preston [left] on a bed struggling to breathe and in obvious discomfort. It was the prosecution’s case that earlier in the day, Preston had been the victim of a sexual assault at the hands of Jamie Varley. There was then a second assault on Preston which caused an obstruction to Preston’s airways… He was sadly pronounced deceased at 7.20pm.”
The men will be sentenced on June 18th.
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