To the outside world, they appeared the epitome of a modern family. In a seemingly loving same-sex relationship, living in an immaculate home and with respectable, professional jobs, Jamie Varley and John McGowan-Fazakerley impressed the social workers who approved them to adopt a baby, sailing through all the checks.

So when, on the weekend of March 31, 2023, Preston Davey, a beautiful, curly-haired nine-month-old was formally handed into their care, everyone was full of hope for the future.

As sales manager McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, would later remark: ‘It was magical, it was fantastic. We were so excited.’

The couple even had a sketch drawn of their ‘perfect’ family, which showed Varley, McGowan-Fazakerley, their dog and Preston walking together from behind, which they had mounted and hung on a wall.

Tragically for Preston, the magic did not last. Within four months he was dead, having suffered systematic psychological, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the ‘evil’ couple.

On the day he died, on July 27, 2023, Preston had been sexually assaulted twice by secondary school teacher Varley, 37, in an unspeakable manner, the details of which are unprintable in a family newspaper.

Sustaining unsurvivable internal injuries, doctors were immediately suspicious of Varley’s claims that Preston accidentally drowned in the bath while his back was turned. A post-mortem confirmed he had no water in his lungs and that he had been smothered – either by a hand over his nose or mouth, or, more likely, the insertion of an object or body part into his mouth.

The examination also found more than 30 visible bruises and other internal injuries, including an unusual bruise to the back of his throat and another to his bladder, plus a human bite mark to his bottom.

This week, as Varley was convicted of Preston’s sex abuse and murder, and McGowan-Fazakerley found guilty of sexual assault and being complicit in his death, serious questions are inevitably being asked about how two men were able to abuse a baby under the noses of social workers.

Preston was taken to hospital three times in six weeks, including with a broken arm, but no further action was ever taken.

Were social workers and other healthcare professionals too easily taken in by the lies of the middle-class pair and blinded by a desire to promote diversity?

As a senior social work source told the Daily Mail: ‘In my experience, social workers can find it difficult to confront same-sex adoptive parents, due to a fear of being seen as politically incorrect.

Have the social workers been too easily manipulated by these men’s lies?’

Oldham Council, which was responsible for Preston because his adoption had not been finalised when he died, says no staff have been disciplined or sacked following the infant’s death but insists an independent child safeguarding practice review is being carried out and will report in due course.

For Preston, it was a desperately tragic end to a short life that also had its roots in depravity.

In an extraordinary twist revealed today by the Daily Mail, his mother was forced to give him up for adoption because of her own murderous past. Sarah Davey, now 42, had been recalled to prison shortly after Preston was conceived in 2021, under the terms of a life licence for the callous murder of 71-year-old Lily Lilley when she was a teenager.

Davey’s mother, Debbie, 66, would have been considered a candidate to adopt her grandson. But she was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly before his birth, in June 2022, meaning there was little option but for him to be placed into care.

Debbie has called for those responsible for placing him with Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley to be sacked. ‘Everyone involved with Preston is still working,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘That’s not right.’

Mrs Davey added: ‘Social services might have been hesitant to take action when they saw Preston because they may have been accused of being homophobic.

‘They didn’t see through them and see what was going on.’

She also believes the couple had a ‘sinister plan’ for Preston and purposely set out to adopt a baby to carry out their sick sexual fantasies. While police say they found no evidence that was the case, they admit they cannot discount it either.

Varley did have a secret cache of pornographic photographs in a locked file on his mobile phone. But police said while it included bestiality, no images of child abuse were found.

How did these two men, who each boasted in court that they had no previous convictions, ‘not even a parking ticket’, turn from outwardly respectable members of society into warped child-sex abusers within weeks of Preston being placed in their care?

By their own admission, Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley are very different personalities, from contrasting backgrounds.

Born in Newark in March 1989, Varley was raised on a council estate, the second youngest of Karen Graham’s six children.

No father is named on his birth certificate, but in 1989 Karen had been married for ten years and all her offspring took her then husband’s surname, Varley.

Before he reached his teens, Varley’s parents moved the family to Blackpool, although their marriage didn’t last and Karen wed her second husband in August 2005. One neighbour told the Daily Mail that Varley and his siblings were ‘a nightmare family’. ‘The kids were allowed to do what they wanted and Jamie was out of control,’ a local woman said.

‘I reported him for anti-social behaviour and criminal damage once after I asked him to get off my drive and he stuck a potato up my car exhaust.

‘When I read about the court case I wasn’t a bit surprised. He was a little f***ing s***. He was horrible. When they all finally moved, we put the flags out.’

In contrast, McGowan-Fazakerley had an altogether more middle-class upbringing.

Born in July 1993, the only child of Guy Fazakerley, an accounts manager, and his wife, Jayne McGowan, who worked in retail, he was raised in a five-bedroom detached property in the Cheshire market town of Middlewich.

According to a family friend, the McGowan-Fazakerleys, who have been together for almost 50 years, were determined to ‘give him everything,’ including a private education at the prestigious £19,700-a-year King’s School in Macclesfield. They even named their home ‘Casa Juan’, which means John’s House in Spanish.

McGowan-Fazakerley repaid them by succeeding in his studies, graduating with a history and politics degree from Keele University, where he went on to complete a Masters degree. He also started a PhD in politics and international relations but never finished it because, in late 2018, he met Varley on a night out on Canal Street, in Manchester’s gay village, and decided he wanted to go out to work instead.

Despite their differences – Varley is described as a ‘sassy’ drama queen, with McGowan-Fazakerley a calmer personality – the pair hit it off immediately and, as Varley said: ‘John never really went home after that.’

Varley was working as a technician in the design and technology department of Blackpool’s South Shore Academy and had his own house, so McGowan-Fazakerley, still living with his parents, effectively moved in.

He got a well-paid job as an accounts manager for a finance firm and a year later the besotted pair bought a home together, a £220,000 semi-detached house.

The family friend of the McGowan-Fazakerleys told the Daily Mail: ‘John’s mum and dad saw much less of him after that. Jamie’s mum and step-dad lived round the corner, so they were with them a lot.

‘It felt like Jamie, who could be quite a domineering character, cut John off from his old life once he moved to Blackpool.’

Encouraged by McGowan-Fazakerley, Varley began progressing his career at South Shore Academy. Despite struggling with dyslexia, he went to university as a mature student and qualified as a textiles teacher.

Later, he was promoted to head of year and also underwent training to become a safeguarding lead which, police now believe, he manipulated for his own ends.

The couple already had a miniature pinscher dog, Maximus, and a baby felt like the next step.

McGowan-Fazakerley did some research and registered with Adoption Now, an organisation that runs adoption services for five councils across Greater Manchester. Those local authorities include Oldham, where Preston was registered when he arrived on June 16, 2022.

Oldham Council has so far refused to explain why Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley chose to adopt outside their home county of Lancashire, but one senior social worker told the Daily Mail it was ‘extremely odd’ they had not used their local agency. By early 2023, following months of what the men described in court as ‘intrusive’ scrutiny, including eight home visits, criminal record checks, examination of their finances and medical histories, plus virtual reality training on ‘abusive’ situations, Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley were approved as adoptive parents and matched with Preston.

On March 18, they threw a party to celebrate. The equivalent of a baby shower, the couple called it a ‘chosen shower’ because they’d chosen Preston, after falling in love with his biography on Adoption Now’s website.

In preparation for his arrival, the pair spent hundreds of pounds on clothes and toys, and Varley, who opted to take a year off his teaching role to be Preston’s main carer, also painted a mountain mural in his nursery.

They furnished it with a cot, glass chandelier and sheep-skin rug. The couple also had his name - Preston Elijah – stencilled in large italic letters on their kitchen wall.

‘We couldn’t buy enough for him,’ Varley said.

One senior detective has speculated that they wanted a baby ‘as a fashion accessory – a designer baby to fit in with their Instagram lifestyle’.

After a series of introductory meetings, Preston spent his first night with the couple on March 31, 2023.

A picture sent to the ‘Team Preston’ WhatsApp group – set up to keep social workers and Preston’s foster carers Sandra and Paul Cooper, who’d cared for him since he was five days old, abreast of his progress – showed the infant smiling and enjoying breakfast in his high-chair the following morning.

Scores of other messages, images and videos – the vast majority taken by self-confessed ‘snap-happy’ phone addict Varley – were sent to the group over the next few weeks to demonstrate how well Preston was apparently adjusting to his new life.

Only Mrs Cooper, who has looked after 43 children in her 27-year fostering career, sensed that the couple’s glossy portrayal of parenthood was too good to be true.

In court she said she raised concerns with Preston’s social worker, Amy Shepherdson, when the men cancelled two of three scheduled meetings designed to ease the transition for Preston. ‘I had a gut feeling,’ she said. ‘I said, “I feel like they are hiding him from me.”’

Eventually, they were forced into a meeting but the couple later lodged a complaint about Mrs Cooper, which didn’t go anywhere but left her devastated. Social workers were less concerned by the men’s behaviour.

Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley gave plausible excuses that Preston, who was a difficult sleeper and on medication for milk reflux, was ill or might feel too overwhelmed to attend.

Sadly, it meant no one in a position of authority spotted what was really happening behind closed doors until it was too late.

The reality was that, within just a few days of Preston’s arrival, Varley started showing a sexual interest in him – filming himself bathing naked with the little boy for long periods and taking videos of Preston with no nappy on, sitting on a play mat or in a paddling pool, playing with his genitals, while the camera zoomed in on the tot’s private parts.

Varley also confessed to friends that Preston was ‘annoying’ for keeping him up at night and joked with relatives about ‘murdering’ him, saying he was ‘dead meat’.

As the abuse escalated, Preston’s health deteriorated.

On the evening of May 11, the couple rang 999 – before hanging up and re-dialling 111, which handles less serious medical enquiries – telling doctors that the infant’s breathing was rapid and laboured.

Then, on May 25, a frantic Varley took Preston to Blackpool Victoria Hospital. He had suffered a nosebleed, was unconscious and had a suspected seizure while being examined in A&E.

Staff noticed two bruises on either side of Preston’s forehead and two officers from Lancashire police’s child protection team attended after being alerted by the hospital’s safeguarding staff.

But they were sent away after reassurances from medics and neither Varley or McGowan-Fazakerley were spoken to directly.

But the mere involvement of police spooked Varley, who complained in texts to friends that they were ‘worried’ it could affect the adoption process.

He also told them he found parenthood boring and was increasingly resentful of McGowan-Fazakerley, who went off to work leaving him to care for Preston all day.

Having a new baby also caused the couple’s sex life to stall and Varley began to suspect that McGowan-Fazakerley was looking elsewhere for affection. ‘You will end up going elsewhere, so we might as well split up,’ Varley wrote.

Varley told the jury that the couple were still together, but when McGowan-Fazakerley gave evidence he claimed they were no longer in a relationship.

Two more hospital trips followed, on June 30 and July 6, when doctors diagnosed Preston with a fractured left elbow, but again neither visit raised any red flags.

By now Varley was accustomed to manipulating officials and, after showing nurses a video of Preston pulling a wooden activity toy on to his head to explain a bruise (the film had actually been taken 12 days earlier so couldn’t have caused the injury), he even quipped: ‘You’ll think we are abusing him.’

His varying accounts of how Preston broke his arm – as he was laid down in his cot, when it got it stuck in the cot bars, or while he was in his car seat – also somehow failed to alert any suspicions.

The following day Helen Magee, an independent reviewing officer from Oldham social services, made a scheduled visit. In her notes, written for Preston to read when he was older, she acknowledged: ‘I did watch your responses to your daddies quite carefully as I’m aware that you had a few hospital admissions of late and this made me ponder a little bit as to whether there was a problem.’

But, sadly for Preston, Ms Magee concluded: ‘I decided there wasn’t.’ Again an opportunity to protect him was missed.

The social work source who spoke to the Daily Mail questioned whether Ms Magee or Ms Shepherdson had been ‘professionally curious enough’ or made any further investigations with relatives, hospital staff or neighbours – who later told police they heard Preston crying ‘all the time’.

‘Babies don’t just break their arms,’ the source said. ‘This child had been in hospital three times in six weeks.

‘I would have expected a strategy meeting to be scheduled by Oldham Council – a meeting that should have involved not just social workers, but police, education, everybody – what exactly was the management oversight on Preston after this happened? Were any unannounced visits planned?

‘Questions need to be asked about whether these men, who had professional jobs and were obviously articulate, were sufficiently challenged.’

What’s not in doubt is that the sexual abuse was escalating and Varley was becoming increasingly cruel and reckless.

He took videos of himself spinning a haunted-looking Preston aggressively in a ‘teacup’ in a park, causing his eyes to roll in his head, and told colleague Janet Gee he was having ‘dark thoughts’ about suffocating or drowning him.

When she asked if he’d told South Shore’s headteacher Rebecca Warhurst about his mental state, Varley lied and reassured her that she and his social worker knew he was struggling.

Other teachers, however, also raised concerns but Varley fobbed Ms Warhurst off when she visited and it’s understood she did not contact social services as a consequence.

Ten days later, on Sunday, July 23, both men spent the afternoon sexually assaulting Preston in his cot.

Pictures taken of the baby, suspended by his neck over the cot rail showed him in respiratory distress, and, experts told the court, in need of resuscitation.

Then, on July 27, while McGowan-Fazakerley was at work, Varley molested Preston twice more. This time he went too far and, by 6.15pm, when his partner arrived home, it was too late. The tot was not breathing and in cardiac arrest.

Although both men are likely to receive very long sentences for their despicable crimes, very serious questions still remain about why social services were not able to protect Preston.