Anne Whyte KC rose to deliver one of the most emotionally charged closing speeches of the entire seven-week trial and left the packed courtroom at Preston Crown Court in absolute silence. She told the jury that if you trust and love someone then you are the very last person to suspect them of harming a child. Painting her client John McGowan-Fazakerley as a quiet, decent and caring man who was frequently at work, possessed almost no prior experience of looking after young children and therefore placed total blind faith in both his partner and the battery of social workers and health visitors who regularly checked on Preston, Whyte KC argued that guilt by ᴀssociation alone is not justice.

She stressed that Preston was a highly visible child; no one was hiding him from the world or from the professionals whose explicit duty was to monitor his welfare. The co-defendant, she said, had initially believed the little boy died from secondary drowning possibly complicated by a chest infection and had trusted every medical and social-work ᴀssessment that followed. With the jury only moments away from retiring, this raw and human plea about the nature of trust, love and misplaced confidence has hit harder than almost any other moment in the trial.

Whyte KC warned that it is simply not good enough to convict someone merely because they lived under the same roof; the jury must examine the specific evidence against each man separately and must not allow emotion to create guilt where proof is lacking. The speech has already been described by observers as a masterclass in humanising a defendant who had remained largely in the background of the more sensational evidence.

Outside court several MPs have linked the argument to wider concerns about the support offered to new adoptive parents who work long hours and rely on both partners and professionals. As the judge prepares to sum up and the reduced jury of ten prepares to deliberate, the words “if you trust and love someone you are the last person to suspect them” continue to hang in the air, offering a powerful alternative narrative that could still swing the outcome for McGowan-Fazakerley.