Lucy Letby guilty

[BarelyLiterate]

Lucy Letby has been convicted of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six more.

My thoughts are with the families of the victims.

Really? When there were very few deaths on the unit in the years before and after Lucy Letby’s employment there? It would be the most extraordinary coincidence, surely?

The more we hear & read about this case, the clearer it becomes that Letby’s absolute normality allowed her to hide in plain sight. She was just completely unremarkable in every way imaginable, and the very last person anyone would think could be involved in anything dodgy.
Normal background, normal education, normal appearance, normal hobbies, normal social life. She was even - literally - the poster girl for the hospital’s fundraising campaign.
Apparently she was infatuated with a married consultant. As anyone who has spent time around young nurses knows, that’s also completely normal.

the jurors would have had to put aside any feeling they had of how she looked like the girl down the road, their sister, daughter, babysitter…..

no matter how much they may have liked to think of her as innocent they would have been asked to consider the facts of the case and nothing else.

reminds me of the British nanny in the US case; outcries from many quarters that she couldn’t have killed that baby, some even without considering any evidence, such a sweet looking girl.

Awful, in every conceivable way. And the fact that concerns were raised but were brushed aside - and that those who raised their concerns were not only brushed aside and even threatened, but were forced to write Letby a letter of apology (Hospital bosses ignored months of doctors' warnings about Lucy Letby - BBC News) is appalling. Those 'managers' involved are culpable too.

I am sure more victims will come out in the investigations that are now underway at the same hospital and elsewhere - and more cover-ups and disregarded concerns.

Don't be deceived by looks!

What's a child killer supposed to actually look like?

That is why it’s is made up from 12 different people and not just one person to determine guilt.

Rape cases are not really comparable here as it’s often someone’s word against another.

A conviction for murder (or a trial) requires an obscene amount of evidence.

It’s like when people watch documentaries and determine a jury was wrong - you can’t learn all these facts in an hour or through a few news articles. It take weeks of evidence and testimonies to determine guilt based on facts. When you are looking at the whole picture so intently you are presented with the facts of a case that allow you to make an informed, educated conclusion.

Dr Ravi Jayaram.

facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02ECL5zbQWFPd5XTXHSu7pEVMnF9q4CSs8Rfv8Eq6YUf37GaBk4vrib3iWo1HfncUvl&id=100044338522964

'Many of you are aware that due to the Lucy Letby trial, I have mostly been absent from social media over the last few months.

My heart goes out to the families of the babies affected by this although nothing can ever undo the evil that was inflicted on their children.

My colleagues and I have lived this for the last 8 years and the period of the trial has been the most difficult part of this. I am proud of all the frontline colleagues with whom I work, for managing to carry on providing excellent care to babies and children under such pressure.

There are bad people in all walks of life and many of them are very good at hiding in plain sight. There are also people in highly paid positions of responsibility in healthcare whose job it is to ensure patient safety. I am relieved that the often-maligned criminal justice system has worked properly this time. However, there are things that need to come out about why it took several months from concerns being raised to the top brass before any action was taken to protect babies, and why from that time it then took almost a year for those highly paid senior managers to allow the police to be involved.

The truth of what happened during that time will shock you to the core as it comes out. The safety of patients should come above any risk of reputational damage and sometimes the right decisions might be difficult and unpopular, but executive level managers are paid to do just that. There are people out there now, still earning six figure sums of tax-payers money or retired with their gold-plated pensions, who need to stand up in public to explain why they did not want to listen and do the right thing, to acknowledge that their actions potentially facilitated a mass-murderer and to apologise to the families involved in all of this. However, I suspect the response will be fudge and misinformation and it is now my mission moving forwards to make sure that they are held to account.

There is a long history of whistleblowers who raise concerns in the NHS not only being ignored but then being portrayed as the problem, sometimes to the point of their careers being destroyed. What happened here was history repeating itself but the patient safety issue that was ignored was beyond anything that the NHS has tried previously to cover up. There needs to be fundamental change in the culture and governance of NHS institutions and it should start right now.'

The BBC interview with one of the consultants who reported her said that it had a baby death rate of 3 per year in line with other hospitals so you can take from that that it was performing similarly to other hospitals. Suspicions were raised when they had 3 deaths in the month of June.

i have not read it all but the thing that caught my eye was one news item which says she assaulted some of her vicitims when the parents went for food or comfort breaks during the night. I just cannot imagine literally living at a hospital trying to be by my premature baby 24 /7 and this to happen and then not having the most overwhelming sense of personal responsibility that I momentarily left my baby. Of course none of the parents are in any way whatsoever responsible a ridiculous notion but as a mother how could you not feel that way even if just for a minute or two to know you lost your baby because in that very brief moment you were not there.

I don’t understand why she’s allowed to decide whether to appear in the dock. Apparently the judge can compel her to appear so hopefully it happens for sentencing.

Wow. He’s absolutely right. Heads should fucking roll, and they will, but too late.

Statement from the hospital was very scripted and made no mention of why senior management failed to act. A reporter shouted out that very point but the hospital representative walked away without answering.

BBC have said that most of senior management who were in charge at the time left in 2018. There has been a massive cover up and I bet all those senior management people were retired early on full pension.

Forcing her would put staff at risk, their safety is more important, I don’t think there really is a way to force it without the risk to staff unfortunately.

Plenty refuse

You can't exactly force it. How would that work?

It beggars belief. The most senior clinical staff were shouting to get LL off the unit but the non-clinical managers wanted to brush it all under the carpet.

A lot of cowards refuse. I read somewhere the sentencing was going to be televised? Although haven't seen it anywhere else.

@GameOverBoys In the year preceding LL starting her killing spree, there were 3 deaths in the entire year, which was high for the unit. And LL was already working there, therefore it is not impossible she had a hand in those also. The year she was killing, there were 7 unexpected deaths and 10 unexpected near death incidents. Following her arrest, there was 1 in 7 years.

There were a tiny number of deaths only that aren't covered by that graphic.

To put it in context, hospitals with a huge NICU, what is known as a Level 3 unit, receive extremely ill babies who will need expert NICU support from all across their given area of the UK usually have around 25 - 30 beds. In comparison, the unit where LL worked had 12 beds, and was a Level 1 unit, caring for babies who needed a manageable amount of extra support. The number of deaths at LL's small unit during that period are equivalent to or higher than the biggest units for the sickest babies in the country.

Apparently she was infatuated with a married consultant. As anyone who has spent time around young nurses knows, that’s also completely normal.

He didnt appear to be beating her off with a stick. Wonder if he's still married.

BBC News reported that Letby has PTSD and offered that as a reason she won't appear.

They went to London together, he would bring her in biscuits and message her fairly inappropriate things- obviously only the two of them know for sure but doesn't seem too wild to assume it was at least partly reciprocated.

No thanks

That's the job done of us do you know, prison,courts....dealing with prisoners

Why should we do that? (Won't happen anyway)

In the nicest way, that wouldn’t work and wouldn’t prioritise staff safety.

What a dreadful dreadful case. RIP the poor babies and my heart goes out to the families. I feel the management are almost as much to blame as LL! They don't hold the smoking gun, but they refused to act on senior consultants concerns and even threatened with reporting to the GMC. I hope the hospital management team are next to face trial!