Not only did Lucy Letby kill and badly hurt babies…

[determinedtomakethiswork]

She also prepared the memory boxes for parents of the dead children. Can you imagine having a memory box with photos and footprints of your dead child which had been taken by his or her merger?

That goes way beyond the murder. I just don't know how the families are coping.

I think she is probably mentally defective in some way relating to psychopathy. In some people the defect doesn't have to be very pronounced to produce this sort of behaviour

They always do in police headshots.

I think if you said to vulnerable new mothers that their had been a spate of unexplained deaths on a neonatal ward can you have CCTV you'd have distressed parents and a political storm on your hands.

It's just not something that's an option.

Sorry if this has already been discussed, in the Panorama i think they said that all 7 consultants on the unit had raised concerns. She was having an affair with a registrar on the unit I believe , did he also raise concerns do we know ? I wonder what happened there, and if he realised what he had got himself immeshed in?

It sounds almost similar to that rare condition where people, for whatever reason usually mothers, deliberately make their own child ill by feeding them poisonous substances or medicines that they should not have. They do it because (well obviously because there is some mental disturbance, but also) they are compelled by the attention and investigation and sense of power they get from "miraculously saving the child" which is something that was reported in this case.

It's awful enough to do it to one child but to many, especially such tiny vulnerable children is just so horrifically wrong. And I'm guessing it wasn't picked up on because it is human nature to assume that nobody could harm such tiny vulnerable children. We want to believe the best in people. In 99.999% of cases this is absolutely right. Unfortunately it's the one in a million where it's the wrong call :(

I don't know if it's very helpful to look at upbringing and state that serious mental disturbances can only be caused by severe abuse and neglect. While there is a very clear risk that those things do increase the risk of personality disorders, there are also other more subtle kinds of abuse/neglect which might very well look to the outside like "She had a stable home and a nice upbringing". And I don't think it's the whole story either. People/neurology/psychology/motivation are all extremely complicated and if it was as easy as someone having the right kind of upbringing and that could be easily defined, then there would be all sorts of guidelines and education in the way of ensuring that every child gets that. Though I suppose that also assumes that we have the resources - as it currently stands many many children fall through the net with even obvious abuse/neglect because there are only so many resources to enable intervention in the very worst cases.

Depends on the seriousness of the issues behind it surely....to get away with what she did she had to be pretty convincing even her childhood friend had no idea of any underlying issues and still can't believe it.

Yes, to me the truly terrifying thing is not that Letby was a psychopath but that people knew there was something very wrong, raised it, & were silenced.
THIS is the most terrifying bit as it means it could happen again tomorrow.

My heart goes out to all the families involved.

There is. The CQC.

I made the same point earlier. Myra Hindley lamented her mugshot on arrest as making her look hard and emotionless. Brady looked the same in his.

They looked completely different in candid photos smiling and enjoying themselves on nights out.

Passport photos are the same usually. And work IDs. I look horrendous in mine.

Face on, bright overhead lighting, not smiling shots generally do.

@Mysland https://www.mintonmorrill.co.uk/site/blog/clinical-negligence/nhs-trust-charged-with-corporate-manslaughter

I followed the daily Mail podcasts on and off and I swung between thinking she was guilty and not guilty. I didn’t like the way they did those podcasts as it felt like they were sensationalising it from the start . I just remember thinking the Jury had such a hard job .How could they ever be sure ? Was she just a scapegoat for a failing hospital that was under pressure ? Or was she really that callous and ruthless that she would use premature babies as the pawns in her need for drama and attention ?
I really hope that the Jury didn’t decide on the note saying I am evil though as I have mentioned before I had a mental breakdown and that I kept saying over and over. I think it was acute feelings of not being good enough and blaming myself for things ,which is common with people with low self esteem who think things are their fault.
Also if anything comes out of this case please can we ensure all medical staff have regular mental health appointments especially those working night shifts and extra hours. It seemed to me like she was always around when these deaths happened but she was also the one doing the most overtime. They didn’t mention that after the verdict . Not looking for excuses but answers to stop it ever happening again.
my thoughts are is it possible she had some sort of traumatic brain injury at birth that affected her psyche? Did she lose reality at some point due to working nights extra hours. Or were the babies just pawns for her to create a satisfying shift that was more stimulating. Sadly this seems the case.

Absolutely, this is what needs to be looked at and changed.

Unfortunately it seems this kind of thing is behind any major incident - early warning signs are ignored or all treated individually and not joined up.

This psychopath ended up with the ultimate control, she literally decided life & death for her defenceless victims and gained a further level of control via the role with parents. Female psychopaths sometimes appear to be more multi layered, attacking every tenet of traditional female caring roles, therefore rejecting societal expectations of females, Rose West is another example. Surely this century is the time to look again at social care, child mental health services, parent support and public awareness of personality disorders. I'm seeing more children now than ever before with various personality disorder.

Yes it’s beyond dreadful x

I profoundly disagree. The death penalty has not been proven to be a deterrent. State authorised killing leads to all sorts of issues in the people who sanction it and carry it out. It puts us the people morally on the same level as the killers. And it is a much easier end for the perpetrator who should suffer the severe punishment and deprivations of long term incarceration.

He did. He gave evidence against her from what I can gather. After she was moved/ suspended.
Not surprised the jury took so long. Only real evidence of her guilt that I've read about, is being on shift when the babies were attacked. No other suspects.

Sounds like he didn't raise concerns at the time, but later, after she'd been accused.

@Marmite17 thank you that’s interesting .

I work for the NHS and the way the managers behaved doesn't surprise me at all.

My managers are notorious for ignoring problematic staff or siding with them. If they can't ignore numerous complaints about someone they do exactly what happened here, they move them elsewhere.

It's an NHS cultural issue as it's very difficult to discipline or sack someone so the managers just can't be bothered to deal with problem staff.

I'm not downplaying mental health issues but it's a known fact where I work that saying you have MH problems/stress means you become a sacred caste and there are plenty of people who play the system.

I suspect it looked like she was being bullied and it was affecting her mentally, the managers wouldn't have wanted to look bad and being seen as joining in the bullying so they totally protected her.

I'm glad those managers are being named and shamed and I hope they are held to account.

I’ve only had one experience of sitting on a jury, but for me it was an open and shut case with dna proof! It took ages to reach a unanimous verdict because quite a few jurors just didn’t want to believe someone could behave that way - they said things like ‘but he had a difficult childhood’ . I was losing my mind trying to point out that was entirely irrelevant in the question of guilty or not guilty.

Jus from that very limited experience, I’m convinced a jury would not convict someone like LL unless there was absolutely overwhelming evidence/likelihood

As far as I have seen, there isn't definite evidence that they were actually having an affair. Flirtatious texts, yes, and a trip to London that I'm sure his wife might not approve of, but neither of them admitted a full-blown affair. At one point at the end of a long cross-questioning, she said "yes" to a long statement from the prosecution which included him being her boyfriend, but on other occasions she said it was a close friendship only. Work friendships in these kind of environments can be very intense, due to the nature of the cases you share.

It is not clear whether he also had/raised concerns at the time. He will have rotated away from the hospital and worked in lots of other trusts since then, so may not have thought much of it until the criminal investigation got underway.

Where does this leave the cases where she was found not guilty and/or there was insubstantial evidence? Are they just left in limbo as unsolved cases? Is the evidence looked at again to determine whether it really was attempted murder or was there another reason why the babies died? Does it mean that they're potentially looking at whether someone else was responsible? If medical evidence shows that an attempt was made on a number of babies lives, then what happens next?

@RedToothBrush I agree, but that's the problem isn't it? We aren't truly consenting to hospital treatment if significant things are being held back from us, such as that there's an ongoing investigation into a spate of unexplained deaths. What could have happened is that the person could have been moved to other duties indefinitely, better and quicker investigation into the causes of these deaths (e.g. insulin results taking months to come back or unnoticed), CCTV as a minimum or the ward being closed until investigations were complete. I don't want to have a heart surgeon do my surgery who is being investigated for malpractice, I don't want to have my baby cared for on such a ward- it's that simple, it's not informed consent for the parents, and it breaks safeguarding rules. At the absolute minimum, LL should not have been allowed back onto the wards, suspended until a satisfactory explanation had been found for everything and new safety measures put in place.

Stats from America show the death penalty costs the state significantly more then imprisonment due to the amount of appeals, the severity of outcome etc.

Really the death penalty doesn't make sense in terms of cost and is unnecessary for safety. It causes PTSD in those whose job it is to carry out executions. There is little point to it other then to satisfy emotional feelings of revenge

The BBC article said the prosecution has asked for 28 days to consider what to do about those cases.