'I’m sick of it, it'll happen again' - Care worker slams broken system after tragic Preston Davey murder
“I’m sick of it. I want to do something to make a change.”
A care worker says the care system “isn’t working” amid major safeguarding concerned for adopted children after a baby was sexually abused and murdered.
Following the tragic death of 13-month-old Preston Davey in July 2023, who died at the hands of teacher and prospective adoptive dad Jamie Varley, 37, Varley was given a whole life order for sexually abusing and murdering the tot.
Varley’s now-ex partner John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, was sentenced to 25 years at Preston Crown Court, convicted of sexual assault, child cruelty and allowing the death of a child.
Now care worker Dawn Gibson, 32, wants to introduce ‘Preston’s Law’ to demand new mandatory child protection measures known as the “Preston Trigger”, which would mean that, if two independent safeguarding concerns are raised about an adopted child, an urgent safeguarding review is automatically triggered.
More broadly, it calls for mandatory, structured safeguarding follow-ups for all adopted children, monthly for the first six months and then regularly for a minimum of two years.
Dawn, a residential childcare worker, has started a petition calling for ‘Preston’s Law’ and has worked with vulnerable adults for 14 years. She says she had ‘broken down in tears’ after reading the ‘gut-wrenching’ details of the case.
Paedophile Varley, 37, was handed a whole life prison sentence for murder, sexual assault and child cruelty and told he will die behind bars. His now ex-partner and co-accused McGowan-Fazakerley, was found guilty of causing his death and sexual abuse and sentenced to 25 years behind bars.
The pair had been in the process of adopting baby Preston when he died. He suffered more than 40 trauma injuries, internally and externally, including tears and lacerations, with “in excess” of 30 ‘non-accidential’ bruises across his body. He had only been in the care of the couple less than four months when he died.
"These places [care systems] don't have enough resources. They don't have enough staff, they don't have good enough pay,” said Dawn. “It can't continue on the way it's happening, because it will happen again, and that's what's frustrating about it.”
The mum-of-two from Stirling, Scotland, added: “We’ve been in these situations before. It's so frustrating that we're hearing about this again and quite frankly, it's absolutely heart-breaking. I have literally broken down in tears thinking about him, I wake up thinking about him.
“I’m sick of it. I want to do something to make a change.”
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Dawn says she started the petition not only because of the impact Preston’s case had on her personally and her work as a carer, but also because she ‘experienced significant instability’ within her own family as a child.
Dawn hopes the petition will have a “massive impact” and that ‘it would eventually open doorways for better safeguarding for all children’. She added it is ‘definitely bittersweet’ that the petition has received so much traction.
Dawn said: “As much as it's amazing that the petition’s getting all these signatures and things - the petition shouldn't even have to be a thing. I’m so thankful that people are signing it and we're all coming together, but reading all the comments and seeing everybody talking about how it's affected them, it's so sad.
“I think we live in a time where a lot of us don't talk to each other, we don't talk about things, we're quite keen to turn a blind eye, especially with the horrors that go on. We turn a blind eye because it's to protect our own mental health and our own sanity but I think there's got to come a point where we all just go, no, enough is definitely enough.”
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Music icon and campaigner Ellie Goulding is just one of the high profile celebrities who has backed The Gazette’s call for a public inquiry into the death of little Preston Davey.
The ‘Starry Eyed’ singer, who has sold more than 27 million albums and 216 million singles worldwide and accumulated 43 billion streams, is ranked among the best-selling British female artists of the 21st century.
She has added her voice to more than 60,000 others demanding answers about how a little boy could so catastrophically be failed by the safeguarding procedures designed to protect him.