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.

I don't think it's surprising her parents and a friend supported her through the trial really. She's evidently a master manipulator to have not only evaded investigation for so long but to have been offered funding for a masters course and a transfer (amongst other things noted in her messages). For these people it's much easier to manipulate those who love you because you know them best and you know their weaknesses.

Her dad accompanying her to the meeting for example. Lots view it as him being overbearing, but to me I thought given what she said about her parents worrying about her living alone etc she could easily play into this to get him to move mountains to try and protect her by spinning a yarn, especially if he knew about an older married doctor being on the scene. People play into these fears to get what they want from that person, I don't know of course but honestly wouldn't be surprised if she's manipulated and put across a fake Lucy to even her parents for many years. I can see how they needed to hear these things in court for themselves (they weren't going to be getting the truth from her either); if they had heard another version of events of course it'd be shocking bordering on unbelievable. Again these are assumptions, but I suspect its really challenging coming to terms not only with what she's done, but that you never really knew her either.

Her friend is probably similar- saw the sweet, caring side and just can't reconcile the two. It's scary to know you've invested so much time and had so many experiences and fond memories over the years with someone so evil who again you didn't really know.

no basis whatsoever. One documentary showed one woman who beleives her child was a target and she was white. The anonymous parents interviewed were blacked out but clearly looked white. not everything is about race. 93 percent of the demographic of the uk are white

Of course people think like that ,in certain countries Canada for example you can abort a healthy 40 week gestation baby. There is no value put on certain babies lives unless they are wanted and loved by their parents.

We know that race often affects the way service users are treated in hospitals and by police and other authorites, so I think it's possible it works in reverse too i.e. BAME people treated with more suspicion by authorities than white people.

Some people who spring to mind:

Victoria Climbie - doctors and staff ignored the scald marks from boiling water on Victoria's head and the cigarette burns, because Victoria was a black child from Ivory Coast.

Banaz Mahmood - a white policwoman accused Kurdish Banaz of making things up before Banaz was murdered

Child Q - 15yo black girl strip searched by police in school whilst menstruating

Yes I agree with this. I think there is a huge amount of repressed fury in LL. I expect she actually hates her parents and felt suffocated by them. Having control over babies must have made her feel powerful for the very first time and it became addictive.

DD's best friend at university is an only child and feels totally suffocated by her parents. They insist she speaks to them every day and goes home every other weekend. They vet her grocery shopping and won't let her learn to drive. They're now moving to her university city 'to spend more time together' and she is distraught. Yet she is all sweetness and light when in their company.

And on the subject of racial element if there was any whiff of racial element it would have been seized apon by the prosecution as a- racism becomes an aggravating factor in a prosecution and will get a higher sentence and B- it would have provided a clear motive that they are still saying they aren’t sure of and never quite pinned down. so why on earth would they have ignored that??

This is a failing on behalf of your DD's best friend's parents, who sound like controlling weirdos, and nothing to do with being an only child. I'm one of five and spoke to my mum every day while I was away at uni, and still speak to her on the phone most days.

I hate how if you're an only child every personality failing about you is assigned to that specific thing, whereas if you have siblings no one assigns similar personality failings to the fact you have siblings.

I hate how if you're an only child every personality failing about you is assigned to that specific thing, whereas if you have siblings no one assigns similar personality failings to the fact you have siblings.

Exactly. It's ridiculous.

This isn't about the children she targeted or the doctors who reported her. How many times does this have to be explained?

So what people are saying is if she was any other ethnicity, but with all the same qualities (manipulative, intelligent, with all the answers when questioned, very highly qualified/ educated, excellent at playing the victim) she would definitely, 100% not have gotten away with it?
And if a person who is not white thinks this we should simply take their word for it, because, only they can know and it's not my (a white persons) place to have an opinion at all.

Makes perfect sense...

It's ignorant and pathetic. Truth is none of us know about her upbringing aside from some stuff the media has largely assumed and from messages LL sent to others (hardly a reliable source). People suggesting as she was an only child she must have been stifled and a response to this was killing babies is genuinely insane.

The race angle is about how long it took for Lucy to become under suspicion, not that particular families were targeted. I think we would know about that by now if that was the case.

Who is saying that? No one on this thread that's for sure. Perhaps read people's actual responses?

Exactly

I wonder if her suffocating relationship with her parents interfered with her ability to have relationships with men. Hence her being potentially jealous of couples starting their families. Bit of a stretch perhaps?

No matter how jealous someone is, it's still very rare that they would be able to kill babies over and over. If someone held a gun to my head, I couldn't do it.

The fact that Lucy was deemed "nice Lucy", was young, white, reasonably pretty and blonde and middle-class, may well have helped her evade suspicion at first. Even Stephen Breary initially thought, "not nice Lucy".
The list of cognitive biases is huge.
Affinity bias is one.
Halo effect/Physical attractiveness stereotype is another.
So that may explain people's shock to some extent.

If you think of societal discrimination (seen in things like Missing white woman syndrome) institutional racism (racial profiling DWB etc) or the SODDI defence used against men of colour, it's not surprising that many may think Lucy would have been removed from post quicker, had she been a nurse of colour. The counter argument for that would be of course, if management were afraid of union action and being accused of mismanagement/bullying/scapegoating - and iirc Lucy was vocal about staffing shortage issues - then they may have been even more afraid of conflict with a nurse who came from an ethnic minority/BAME.

Authority bias is the interesting one in all this.
Usually, consultants would have more power over nurses.
Their word would be taken over nurses.
They would be believed more.
Yet in this case, that didn't happen. Whether that was because the chief exec had a nursing background himself, they all thought the NHS was crumbling and it was a result of being overworked, they all thought the consultants were covering up errors/mismanagement "convenient for them", they couldn't afford nurses/consultants divide, it is an interesting departure from the norm.

These are the people who need to account for themselves:
Tony Chambers chief exec /resigned Sept 2018 NDA
Ian Harvey medical director / retired to France Aug 2018
Alison Kelly chief nurse and safeguarding lead /suspended from current job

I'd also question Karen Rees nursing director left NHS 2018 / threatening legal action against critics as claims was in the dark, Stephen Cross who allegedly thought it would bring the hospital into disrepute and Dr A for sharing confidential emails with the perpetrator.
They'll all be looking for ways to cover their backs.
"I referred/phoned/escalated/emailed" but at least two babies' deaths could have been prevented.

As to why Lucy started 2015 (and it's more likely she has prior to that) isn't it because she didn't qualify as QIS until April 2015 therefore had less opportunity?

It's not about the ethnicity of the babies.

There must be a link to to being an only but going to for twns or triplets

My 16 year old son was in intensive care.six months ago I can't believe most nurses working in intensive care ( either adult ,child or neonatal ) are only paid at band five the amount of knowledge they have to.have I wasnt disputing that she wasn't highly trained just that band five ( although a pp pointed out she was actually band six ) are fairly low down in hospital hierarchy particularly compared to consultants .

Children of overbearing parents learn very young and very well how to lie, manipulate and appear “good”.

There is undoubtedly discrimination against non white (and non UK and non m/c etc) people and LL would have benefitted from that hugely along with her “beige” - ness and general drippiness and boringness but it’s a stretch to say a non white, male or migrant nurse would have been stopped in June 2015. LL had been a student there and had worked for years there post qualification. They KNEW her, or at least they thought they did. She was “nice Lucy”. She did extra training, she volunteered for overtime, she didn’t make a fuss about working nights and weekends, she was a dream employee as far as the rota organiser goes. She went to hula hoop classes and on mini breaks and hen weekends with other nurses, she helped make banners on the ward, she was a team player, she always stayed in touch and even popped in for a chat on her days off . She wasn’t being quickly judged on appearances by the people who mattered.

@SequinsandStiIettos

I think all that helped but even more than that I think it's her general demeanour, tone of voice and how she speaks that made it hardest to believe. I've seen in real life how someone can come across can blind people to their actions

I agree that children of over bearing parents learn to lie and manipulate. The only child thing must have something to do with it? Really, another stigma manifests itself about only children!

At the end of the day we can hypothesise all we want, we will likely never know the root cause of her behaviour. Personally I am going for a psychopath in sheep's clothing.

As to the families, race or gender weren't issues imho. I bow down to the incredibly well-informed poster FyrestarOmega who said the following on Reddit:

I don't think gender had an impact.
I think it was down to some perceived sense of cover first and foremost, then opportunity, and then significant dates. I think this for a few reasons - I can list a possible "cover" for each baby in the trial:
A&B, born with anti-phospholipid syndrome.
Baby C was on the cusp of being too small by weight for the unit.
Baby D was born with an infection after a long delivery.
E&F were born prior to 30 weeks, and F was screened for Down syndrome after the events of his charge.
Baby G was born at 23 weeks (attacked on her 100th day of life (guilty) and her due date (one guilty charge, one not guilty charge).
Baby H had chest drains (one not guilty verdict, one no verdict).
Baby I had been born in her 27th week of gestation.
Baby J (Letby found found not guilty) had stomas.
Baby K was born at 25 weeks (no verdict).
Babies L and M are a bit of an outlier, but they were the first set of twins that Letby admitted to the neonatal unit as designated nurse, and were in the immediate aftermath of her being formally moved to primary day shifts.
Baby N has mild haemophilia (One guilty verdict, two no verdicts).
Babies O and P were term identical triplets - no medical cover here, this one was unbridled determination to kill and collect some sort of grief trophy.
Baby Q (no verdict) seems to have been allegedly targeted since she had been unable to "complete the set."
I suspect that the remaining 6 deaths that occurred that year, all of which she was present for, were also babies that gave cover for her attacks, but that the proof of deliberate harm was still better obscured.

In other words, if the babies were on a ward where they were expected to recover and go home, Lucy deliberately chose premmies who all were very early or already had some medical complication/condition to try to cover her tracks. Someone upthread mentioned eugenics as a motive, given that not all had comorbidities, I'd say not. She chose vulnerable babies as a cover, babies who still should have made it home.

This has nothing to do with being an only child.

I know over-protective parents to more than one child.

What is (likely) relevant is potential losses prior to her birth, a difficult birth, and their being over-protective, possibly also commenting on other newborns in a broody way? Being an only-child on its own doesn’t imply any of these things.