THE SPECTATOR
Poor baby Preston didn’t have much of a start in life. His mother Sarah, now 42, was jailed aged 14 for the 1998 torture and murder of a pensioner. Preston was, justifiably, taken from her after birth. Given these unpropitious circumstances, it was the job of the state – here Oldham council – to give him a fair start in life. To begin with, that’s what happened; a decent foster family looked after him.
It was when he was given to the care of Jamie Varley, 37, and his boyfriend, John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, that he was subjected to sexual torture, fear and pain over the course of four months that ended his life. A post-mortem examination found Preston, who was just 13 months old when he died, suffered more than 40 injuries, including 30 visible bruises and serious internal injuries to his throat and bottom.
During the trial that led to Varley’s conviction for murder and his boyfriend’s, for allowing the death of a child, the jury heard of Preston’s three visits to hospital – including one for bruises, one for a fractured elbow – and two visits by social workers, one of whom noticed he was pale and not quite himself. Varley told a colleague he had dark fantasies about drowning the child, but told him that his social worker was aware of the problem.
But then Varley, whose dry-retching performance in court after his conviction showed him to be quite the drama queen, had taken a year off work to look after Preston, and resented being at home all day while McGowan-Fazakerley was at work. Lots of couples have difficulties with a new baby, but in the case of Preston, you might have thought that social workers would have been all over his case; that nurses in hospital would have been alert to the possibility of wilful harm; that the repeated admissions just might have given rise to greater scrutiny of the child, whose injuries were all too visible after death and presumably would have already been evident for weeks before. But that scrutiny, that common-sensical vigilance was absent. Why?
The inevitable response will be that social workers are overstretched, that Varley – who in an instance of the grimmest irony was in charge of safeguarding at the school he worked for – was articulate and plausible; that the couple were well off, so may have talked the social workers and the doctors and nurses round.
But another factor was raised by Preston’s birth grandmother, Debbie Davey. She has suggested that worries about homophobia may have skewed the judgment of those who were meant to be supervising him. ‘Social services might have been hesitant to take action when they saw Preston because they may have been accused of being homophobic,’ Mrs Davey said. ‘They didn’t see through [Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley] and see what was going on.’
Oldham Council hasn’t sacked or suspended any social workers who saw the child. There’s to be an inquiry. But we must wonder whether this inquiry will grasp this particular nettle: was it anxiety not to be seen as in any way homophobic that led to the pair being let off really rigorous scrutiny, such as giving the child a thorough inspection after he was found to be off colour, or when he was admitted to hospital with those bruises and that fracture? Did the individuals in each case go easy for fear of Varley calling them biased or institutionally homophobic? The abuse, if we are to judge from the images on Varley’s phone, did not only happen just before he died. I wonder, I really do, whether the inquiry is even able to find that out. Certainly I wouldn’t want those social workers – so strikingly incurious, so willing to accept Varley’s word – anywhere near vulnerable children in future.
The pair will be sentenced on Thursday. Whatever their sentence, they may well get short shrift from other convicts in any prison where their offence is known. That poor little soul didn’t have much chance from the start; might we hope that the phrase “looked-after” child might now start to mean something?
TERMINALLY ILL ADULTS (END OF LIFE) BILL
As expected the bar stewards are trying again. Shameful.
A fresh attempt to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales has been launched, with the MP behind the plan telling the BBC she wanted to "finish the job".
Lauren Edwards, the Labour MP for Rochester and Strood, said she would bring an identical bill to the one passed by the Commons last year.
That bill, brought by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, was not passed by the House of Lords in April after an unprecedented number of suggested amendments delayed its progress until it ran out of time.
The proposed law - known as the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill - would have allowed people over the age of 18 who were expected to die within six months to be given help to end their own life, subject to certain safeguards.
Its opponents argued it had substantial flaws that risked vulnerable people being pressured into ending their lives early.
By bringing exactly the same legislation, Edwards is threatening to trigger rarely used powers to override peers' objections should they refuse to pass it again.
Bills usually only become law if both Houses of Parliament agree on its final wording.
But the powers under the Parliament Act, which have only been used seven times in the last century, mean that if MPs pass an identical bill in two consecutive parliamentary sessions, peers cannot block it a second time.- would have allowed people over the age of 18 who were expected to die within six months to be given help to end their own life, subject to certain safeguards.
Nil Desperandum all. They will have Gene to contend with!!!
ASSISTED DYING
IT SHALL NEVER BE
NOT IN MERRIE ENGLAND
LAND OF THE FREE
REPOSTED...
LUCY FER WRITES...
Hi everyone,
My name is Lucy Fer. I am a Church of England parish priest with a lovely parish, St Cuthbert’s on Tyneside. I love my work and the Geordie people, but sometimes life as a parish priest has it’s problems. Let me relate a recent incident which illustrates this.
A little background about myself first. I have always been interested in religion, and yet I never imagined I could be a religious minister, specifically not in the C of E. As a child, I was obsessed not with growing up, but with becoming vaguely, romantically good in the sense of morally triumphant. My parents were scornful avowed atheists, so my path to goodness was education, and then the right career. Good was all the things religions weren’t: liberal, open-minded, tolerant, generous toward difference, educated, focused on practical ways to make our world better.
At Oxford University I joined a feminist group. You get the picture: strident harridans, lesbians in paratrooper boots, all sorts of weirdos and men-haters. To may shame I also campaigned with them on pro-abortion rallies. I remember one incident from this time that had a profound impact on me. One Saturday afternoon I set out on a pro-abortion March through Oxford. At the front of the march we had a banner reading: A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE. At one point on our march we were confronted by a young man – about nineteen/twenty – who heckled: ‘You bitches. No one has the right to choose murder’. One of the leaders of our march, a strident harridan with acne and halitosis, started to remonstrate with him. He flung a carton of strawberry yoghurt right into her face. Splat! How she yelled! A right melee ensued, but the young man disappeared before the police arrived. I remember thinking he was a handsome young man and his face somehow reminded me of Saint Padre Pio – not that Padre Pio was a saint in those days. That incident propelled me away from all the radical feminism and pro-abortion evil.
I became a police officer—a bad idea, now that I understand how most people succeed in this profession.
Eventually I trained for the C of E priesthood. I love my work but it is not without its problems. A big issue is the LGBT and Gay Lobby faction who want their own way even when this clashes with the Christian faith. But I am solid as a rock on Church teaching. I know there are many C of E sodomite bishops and priests who are champing at the bit to have gay marriage recognised and to have gay marriages celebrated in C of E churches but that will never happen on my watch. I uphold doctrine and tradition.
The bishops of the Anglican Communion in 1998 upheld the traditional Christian teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman and that those who are not called to marriage so defined should remain celibate. A resolution was passed stating that "homosexual acts" are "incompatible with Scripture" by a vote of 526–70.
Anyhow to recent incident that I mentioned. About a week or so ago after the morning service here I went for a stroll through the meadows at the back of the vicarage. It was such a glorious morning – and I heard the first cuckoo. I was euphoric.
Back indoors I switched on Radio Three at low volume. Janacek. I find Janacek such a spiritual composer. I began work on my homily for the next Sunday. My text was the gospel passage where Jesus warns anyone that leads little children astray that it be better that they were cast into the ocean with a millstone around their neck. I had a flash of inspiration. I would mention the Paedophile Information Exchange, a notorious organisation from back in the Seventies which sought to legalise sex between children and adults. The political Left had supporters of this evil. Also, the C of E had done precisely nothing about this monstrous threat to children.
The doorbell went. I peeped out. It was Canting Detterlng a self-righteous, pompous bore and parishioner at St Cuthbert’s. “Botheration,” I said to myself, “What does the old so-and-so want?”
I opened the door and there he stood. Eighty years old, grossly overweight and bizarrely dressed in a Sixties blue denim jacket, lovat chinos and green woollen socks in open-toed sandals. What a sight!
“Good morning Lucy, can you spare a moment. I have something perhaps you could help me with,” he wheezed.
“Better come in then – I can’t spend too long as I am in the middle of writing next Sunday’s homily,” I replied.
“Very gracious of you Lucy,” he muttered as he came in and planked himself on my best settee which groaned under the unaccustomed weight.
“Lucy,” he continued, “I have got myself into a spat with a character named Swashbuckling Mulligan. I have published that we do not know what the views of Jesus would be on sodomy as he is not quoted in the gospels on this subject. Swashbuckling Mulligan disagrees…”
“You bastard!” I replied. “Let me stop you right there. Of course we know what the views of Jesus would be on this abomination. Jesus is not quoted in the gospels on the heinous sins of bestiality, abortion and paedophilia for example. Does that mean we do not know what the views of Jesus would be on these evils?
Out! Out! Out!”
I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and the ass of his lovat chinos and propelled him out the door.
What we C of E priests have to put up with!
