Lucy Letby - new thread

[anonymousamy]

No idea why the last one was taken down, but for anyone who wants to continue the discussion on Letby, I’m starting a new thread here.

I’m 100% sure she’s guilty, but I’m still massively struggling to comprehend why on earth she did it.

The court podcast did reveal a constant need for attention. The daily text messages reveal that she wanted others to know she was always there and how sad she was or that she felt lonely or unwell, tired etc
I mean possibly not that unusual-we all know moaning individuals but she does seem very self absorbed. She was convinced that the 4 consultants were plotting against her. She doesn’t ever criticise nurses interestingly.

I think the judges statement was accurate: she is the only one who knows why she did it, there are no mitigating circumstances, her victims were innocent babies, reliant on the knowledge and expertise of the medical team tasked to care for them and that she used that knowledge to commit such despicable crimes is hard to comprehend.
Her parents may have been over bearing, over invested in her life, but they didn’t kill or harm those babies, she did.

She'll be in a maximum secure prison on a wing for other women who have committed similar levels of crime. Hence my phrase 'these sorts of prisons'. The prison she's in now has Rose West there.

She wont be around tv licence evaders.

It almost beggars belief. This was a level 2 neonatal unit, this means it was for relatively stable babies,I think I read just 12 cots. 3 deaths in one month in otherwise stable babies would be incredibly unusual. I think they said there were 3 the previous year. I have worked in many ( well 5) neonatal units at this level over 7 years , the only deaths I witnessed were unsuccessful resuscitations on the labour ward, babies born with significant congenital problems (to whom we were offering palliative care) and one collapse of a fairly stable baby, but she was only about 5 or 6 days old and had collapsed previously and wasn't all that stable. That death still haunts me- I was pregnant with Dd and she (Dd) is about to be 17. That is how rare it is. This was way,way out of what you might expect.

I guess the additional evidence was that clearly someone had intentionally harmed the babies. This is without question.

@BeggyMitchell thanks for the video it does pretty much resonate with my thoughts esp re her parents

@Panic71 thanks for that

Thank you for sharing this as I can’t get my head around this either. These were not the sickest/smallest babies in the country so why were so many deaths in the first month alone not a HUGE red flag. It just doesn’t make sense.

I still dont get what management thought was happening when deaths/collapses increased

By the time police got involved it was a year or so down the line, what did they think was happening at time of the increases. I just dont understand it, surely they would have been all over it, looking at what was going on in the ward, risk management etc

Plus on another point I dont know why people keep going on about her appealing, she wont appeal, she didnt even mount a defence or any mitigating circumstances.

I was dismayed by how the last thread descended, people who had not even taken the time or courtesy to understand how these poor babies died trying to argue her innocence.

Even up thread someone is asking if stats had anything to do with it.

no, no they didn’t, the forensics and pathology results show these babies were murdered. And that’s the key overwhelming evidence of her guilt.

I think some people haven’t taken the time to read and have got confused by the term “unexplained deaths” , when those deaths are no longer unexplained, the science has explained it, all too clearly.

it’s a beyond shocking case, it will take therapists a life time to understand, if ever, why she chose to do what she did. She is one of the most prolific serial killers in our history.

I mean not that it is the important point, but when something like this happens there is a huge amount of hospital red tape ( rightly) staff need a debrief ( possibly more than one), there is a rapid review meeting, in addition to which all neonatal deaths go through the C- DOP process. This was all absolutely in place in 2015/16. So there are multiple layers of scrutiny. I know what happens in a smallish DGH when there is one unexpected death, just how could they be having 3 a month and not immediately know something was going very, very wrong ? Of course LL is a highly disturbed person ( I am not a pyschairtrist so can't really comment further).But the hospital need to be taken to Court as to how this went either unnoticed or ignored for 3 years. The more I think about the less I understand it.

C-DOP
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-death-overview-panels-contacts

Might be a stupid question but why don’t hospital rooms have CCTV? Surely that would remove any doubt that exists in cases like this and potentially act as a deterrent?

They did have two external reviews in response - neither of which identified Lucy Letby as the issue (I think one of them praised her?) but also they weren't given a scope that would have included that. It's quite clear that there was a lot of other problems at the time regarding staffing, the conditions in the ward (hence the slightly bizarre calling of a plumber as the only defence witness) and management. This helped Letby get away with it when she did by muddying the waters. It's also clear that hospital management thought one of the reasons the consultants were blaming Letby was to move attention off wider failings in the unit - one of them was told that it would be 'very convenient' for them to say it was all because of Letby. Obviously that's horrifying when we know there was a murderer operating and not being stopped but it was one of the reasons why they thought she was being bullied, they thought she was a scapegoat.

I have to say I agree with this. But I'd go further. Letby is a representation of what a lot of parents strive to achieve for their child, so the realisation that the ideal can lead to this is incomprehensible.

Most parents spend their lives working towards getting their child through school, onto university, into a good job, on to the housing ladder and happy in a good social life. This is literally the pattern that modern parenting follows. Its ingrained in all of us and 99% of the mums on here are doing it now. We as a society tick off these milestones by Facebook posts, school pictures and graduation photos, and once the tick list of childhood life achievements is done we can feel that we've done well as parents and done our job.

Then something like this happens and it smashes that paradigm into pieces. We are confused and unsettled. Many posts on here confirm that thinking. The comments that she looked so normal on Facebook confirms our societal assumptions of what success and happiness looks like. Rarely do we look beyond the surface. We don't consider for one moment that this is a mask and achievement of these miles stones does not erase the possibility that our children could have the capacity to be monstrous.

I think it does hold a mirror up, and whilst i would agree that if she had been a migrant worker there would have been more acceptance than disbelief, it goes beyond racial or aesthetic profiling. I think it speaks to our values as a society and reminds us that our formulaic social patterns built on social media perceptions are just myths and life is much darker and more complex.

cost and issues of patient privacy. i've been involved with child protection cases where covert cctv has been installed with a lot of legal processes to follow first. in this case it was considered at one point for the unit by senior managers but never implemented.

Of course the medical evidence is undeniable and I have no doubt she is guilty. But to me, the way she came across as a person seems within the realms of normal and so I do find it very hard to comprehend.

I don’t think it’s that shocking that she was searching patients on Facebook. I think it was extremely unprofessional and inappropriate but I expect plenty of people do it even though they shouldn’t.

I don’t think her bedroom was that unusual for a woman of her age/generation. Yes it was a bit immature and not to many people’s taste but nothing sinister about it.

I haven’t seen anything to indicate she was a loner, and she seems to have had a reasonably wide social circle. She was even a godparent.

I don’t think messaging colleagues for support after a hard shift is unusual at all, I’ve done it myself at times. And the affair with the married doctor is again unwise and irresponsible but I’ve seen or suspected many affairs (between completely inappropriate pairings!) during the time I’ve been working.

I don’t think going on holiday with your parents is that weird either in your early twenties, especially as she also went on holiday with friends.

The messages about her parents being suffocating have been widely quoted but from what I’ve seen it was just a passing mention, really not that significant or critical at all. Nothing compared to some of the things people say about their parents on here.

As for her photos, to me she just looks completely normal. I see nothing unusual at all. Young, attractive side of average, posing in the way people do in silly night out/holiday photos.

Again, the medical evidence seems irrefutable so I can’t doubt that she is guilty. But I also can’t relate to people who can look at her see a serial child murderer because my brain just doesn’t compute it.

For those who are certain, there is nothing more uncertain than certainty…as Lucia de Berk is testament to, also Sally Clark wrongly convicted of killing her sons…all on “medical evidence”…food for thought if nothing else.

I'm just wondering if anyone has thought about it this way? I heard on the radio that LL is the third woman to receive a Life tariff. The other being Rose West and Myra Hindley. RW and MH did their disgusting crimes with a partner...LL worked solely on her own...of course their all equally awful people but the fact that LL did this on her own...does it make her worse? Sorry If I'm not making much sense.

Racism? Can you explain more?

I agree. How do you think this will be impacting the unit currently and indeed other units? I can’t imagine how any parent would have any trust in the hospital and I’m certain many will seek care elsewhere. I do feel for the staff but can’t help but feel serious failings have occurred.

Personally I don’t get the whole she looks so normal thing. I genuinely can’t grasp what her appearance has to do with it. I always thought she could be guilty or not, her appearance is irrelevant to me.

I mean what does a serial killer look like? Rose west?harold shipman? They all look like normal folks. Most people have seen images of murderers, inc those who torture and kill their own children, they all look normal. Appearance is irrelevant.

I am stunned anyone genuinely thinks you can either tell a murderer by their appearance or even it has remotely anything to do with it.

@Janieforever Indeed. Most serial killers look normal. It's what makes them so dangerous. Some, like Bundy, were even charming and charismatic.

And why didn't Beverly Allit receive a Life tariff?

It's a bit offensive that you are saying that she looks so normal, are you saying that people that for some reason or another don't look normal are more likely to be murderers

I might be wrong but I think it’s only recently that judges have been allowed to impose them - before that, only the Home Secretary could. So whoever was Home Sec at the time of BA must’ve decided not to.