Preston Davey Trial #5

[Lucymyers]

I still feel so much evidence hasnt been queried enough. Phone records. Text messages. Internet search history. Has he had timer open before on his phone on the dates the evidence suggests SA taking place? Why did jv say about dark thoughts about drowing preston? Was it to test the friend?

 

[Lucymyers]

I think the jury will be out for at least a week. Hell of a lot of charges to decide on. I think jmf will get away with majority of charges

 

[ChastityDingle]

I thought the judge didn't emphasise things that I would certainly have stressed, but I think you are right. The evidence will speak for itself and it means that they couldn't later claim that the judge "had it in for them" and had directed against them, and use this to try to appeal. Maybe there's method in what appears to us to be judicial madness. I hope so.

Yes, there's a murder case here that is going to be re-tried from eight years ago because the Court of Appeal found that the trial judge’s charge to the trial jury lacked balance. They really have to walk a fine line.

 

[Padparadascha]

Interesting theory about JV trying to engineer an accidental death.

I wonder was there an element of jealousy. Like, they may have fantasised about, and planned the abuse but JV strikes me as hugely petulant and would punish Preston if he percieved the poor baby was the focus of JMFs unhealthy obsession. The most extreme of the abuse, JV was present, participating and documenting it all.

It would not surprise me if he was actively trying to kill the baby. He was slowly torturing that baby to death.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

Interesting theory about JV trying to engineer an accidental death.

I wonder was there an element of jealousy. Like, they may have fantasised about, and planned the abuse but JV strikes me as hugely petulant and would punish Preston if he percieved the poor baby was the focus of JMFs unhealthy obsession. The most extreme of the abuse, JV was present, participating and documenting it all.

It would not surprise me if he was actively trying to kill the baby. He was slowly torturing that baby to death.

It wasn’t that slow. He was only in their care for 117 days

 

[Padparadascha]

It wasn’t that slow. He was only in their care for 117 days

But he was probably hurt or harmed most of those days.

 

[YessicaHaircut]

I hope the jury don’t need it spelling out to them that squeezing a baby like toothpaste is unlikely to perforate the bowel, cause bladder bruising and the injury to his bottom they’ve literally offered no other explanation and JV invented it on the stand.

The judge's summing up essentially suggested that the squeezing and the scooping vomit from the throat only became part of the story to explain away the post mortem findings.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

But he was probably hurt or harmed most of those days.

Definitely. 40 separate traumatic injuries at death. Peter Connolly suffered 50 over 8 months.
JV’s family bear a degree of culpability I think. Referring to your newly adopted child as dead meat and wishing their death is a massive red flag. They should have spoken to the adoption agency.

I’m not sure I can bear to listen to the podcast. Peter Connolly kept me awake at night And he still does if I think about him. I can’t quite comprehend that degree of evil

 

[Rubyroo160]

A small thing but did anyone else pick up these details? It seems there were other things that were filmed/photographed which were obviously not considered serious enough to be reported but were discussed in court?
Guessing but I imagine the 'swing' and 'pram on rocky ground' were borderline inappropriate too but because they were shared with his mum they were OK?
View attachment 4020368

Oh yes this is interesting, it’s the first I’ve heard of his pram being pushed down a rocky path.

 

[Monkeydust24]

When it comes to any sort of bruising/injury/illness a social worker and their manager will always defer to the medical experts. If a doctor says there is no cause for concern then that is it.

If a strategy meeting is held then you will have someone from each discipline present. So for example I had a case where a child under was on their third hospital admission for an injury. All the injuries were accidental but 3 in less than a year was cause for concern. So at the hospital we held an emergency strategy meeting and there was a doctor, social worker, police and a nurse present. Doctor agreed that the injury was consistent with mother's explanation and was an accident. Everyone then voted as to next steps and outcome was for child to be removed from hospital that day and taken to foster care with mother's consent because had then become that there was not enough supervision by mother and this needed dealing with.

Exactly. If the medical experts say it’s accidental - for social workers it’s incredibly difficult to then argue against their opinion. It gets overturned by managers

 

[Monkeydust24]

They might not be qualified in the same way that the expert witness in this case is but they surely must be qualified enough to engage professional curiosity at the first instance. If a non mobile baby repeatedly has bruises to the head or face then that should be an instant investigation imo.
In education settings, if a child has a large bruise, a facial bruise or injury, repeated bruising, you would ask multiple adults to casually enquire about it and see if the child said the same thing to each person, you might speak to the adult at pick up too and see if the story matches. Finger mark bruising would be logged regardless of explanation.
I’ve not worked in a nursery but if a non verbal baby or child presented with that many bruises then I would be reporting them for sure!

The SW knew Preston in his foster care setting didn’t present like this and then in a matter of weeks he started to be covered in bruises and in and out of hospital. There’s really no explanation the new parents of an adopted child could give that wouldn’t warrant further investigation imo cos quite frankly even if their BS about fidget spinners on windows and floor tiles and boxes falling on him were true, they were bleeping idiotic tit parents putting him in repeated danger of injury so that should have been flagged instead.

Highly unlikely it was the same social workers. Once final care orders are made, the child is moved to the child in care team / looked after child team. So no they wouldn’t have noticed a difference.

 

[MmmB777]

Highly unlikely it was the same social workers. Once final care orders are made, the child is moved to the child in care team / looked after child team. So no they wouldn’t have noticed a difference.

Fair enough. Presumably notes etc are available? I think that’s a bit of a flaw tbh. You should be able to join dots and have a link between the teams, especially when such a short amount of time has passed.

 

[Monkeydust24]

Fair enough. Presumably notes etc are available? I think that’s a bit of a flaw tbh. You should be able to join dots and have a link between the teams, especially when such a short amount of time has passed.

Yes of course but relying on a case note of a visit is different to a visit. In my opinion, if the first visit/marks on Preston were identified as non-accidental this would have triggered an immediate child protection medical where Preston would have been examined all over & removed immediately from his placement. Fundamentally, that’s where things have gone wrong sadly.

 

[Shinythings]

I was wondering if it's possible that JV didn't have a sexual interest in Preston but rather SA was more about degrading and humiliation that he was into. It put me in mind of prisoners who have historically been sexually degraded as part of the torture. It sort of fits with everything else he was doing to him.

I really hope we and the jury find out what the porn charge was that JV has so they can be confident their verdict was the correct one.

Unfortunately, I do think JMF will get away with most of not all his charges. It will be extremely telling if they continue their relationship when JV is in prison.

Also even IF JV was innocent of SA, for the sheer cruelty he showed Preston of which there can be no doubt he deserves to be in prison for a long time anyway. If I were a juror, that would give me less hesitation to go for a murder conviction

 

[Rabbitweed]

During the trial for the murder of Star Hobson, where her mother Frankie was also accused (and then convicted) of causing and allowing the death of a child, there were similar discussions as we’ve seen in this trial about what she could have reasonably known when a lot of the evidence was when Brockhill was on her own with Star. There were mentions in court of everyday photos where bruises could be seen. At the time i guess i was picturing that they wouldn’t look much different to typical toddler bruises because you wouldn’t take photos if you were causing bruises due to abuse?

It wasn’t until after the verdicts (both guilty) the police released one of the photos and you can immediately see why there is just no disputing that the parent who wasn’t present should have reasonably foreseen a problem. I think when we are just reading words on a page it’s difficult to remember how impactful images and videos will be to the jury.

I’ll put it behind a spoiler as not everyone will want to see this. I can’t remember the specifics about this particular bruise but if your child was appearing with bruises like this when left in the care of someone else, what would you do?

and bear in mind it’s not disputed that JMF saw the bottom photo and various videos of genitals etc.

Spoiler: Bruise photo

View attachment 4020318

That bruise is horrific. That poor, poor little girl. If anyone harmed my children, I'd be kicking them out before they'd even have time to blink, regardless of who they are.

 

[MmmB777]

Yes of course but relying on a case note of a visit is different to a visit. In my opinion, if the first visit/marks on Preston were identified as non-accidental this would have triggered an immediate child protection medical where Preston would have been examined all over & removed immediately from his placement. Fundamentally, that’s where things have gone wrong sadly.

I think the previous team should definitely make a visit or even better a joint visit with the new team. The foster carer, on the one time she was allowed to visit, noticed he was stiff, pale, withdrawn. A SW said he couldn’t smile and when he tried he would cry. This is so different to the baby that was in the loving arms of his foster family. That doesn’t take a medical expert, it takes leading with safeguarding at all times.

 

[ItsmeImtheproblemitsme]

I think the previous team should definitely make a visit or even better a joint visit with the new team. The foster carer, on the one time she was allowed to visit, noticed he was stiff, pale, withdrawn. A SW said he couldn’t smile and when he tried he would cry. This is so different to the baby that was in the loving arms of his foster family. That doesn’t take a medical expert, it takes leading with safeguarding at all times.

In elderly community teams where I am, they always have a handover meeting and follow up between care homes, where there are plenty of staff with their eyes on anything suspicious. Bit crazy that you get a baby off your caseload, pass them to new parents then that’s it!?
This isn’t a pop at the foster mum btw, but seeing a baby be ‘stiff’ and withdrawn must be so baffling. Obviously she will have maybe experienced some babies with this kind of trauma, but it’s so hard for me to imagine a baby stiff and withdrawn, or not physically being able to smile without crying . Babies that age should be fussed over and smiling all day long. I’ve seen grumpy looking babies where you might chuckle to yourself, but I’ve never been so concerned that anything untoward was going on. That poor woman

 

[Katienana]

I think they will both be found guilty, its so obvious that they are lying about the drowning and to me that shows that JV is a murderer and that JMF stood by and let it happen. I think he actually could have got off, if he'd made his story closer to the truth and agreed that the drowning never happened but it was already too late. By not admitting this, it gives the impression he could have saved Preston but didn't.
I can't see a jury letting either of them walk free.

 

[Sophieceebee]

I think JMF will walk free…

 

[Sophieceebee]

I was wondering if it's possible that JV didn't have a sexual interest in Preston but rather SA was more about degrading and humiliation that he was into. It put me in mind of prisoners who have historically been sexually degraded as part of the torture. It sort of fits with everything else he was doing to him.

I really hope we and the jury find out what the porn charge was that JV has so they can be confident their verdict was the correct one.

Unfortunately, I do think JMF will get away with most of not all his charges. It will be extremely telling if they continue their relationship when JV is in prison.

Also even IF JV was innocent of SA, for the sheer cruelty he showed Preston of which there can be no doubt he deserves to be in prison for a long time anyway. If I were a juror, that would give me less hesitation to go for a murder conviction

They aren’t a couple anymore.