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.
Varley’s partner, John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, was jailed for 25 years for sexual abuse, child cruelty and allowing the death of a child. The couple treated the baby as a “plaything”, Preston crown court heard.
Preston was taken from his biological mother, Sarah Davey, 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.
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. 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.
