We need to talk about Lucy Letby

[HardwickHall]

As the “Lucy Letby denied leave to appeal” thread has filled up, I thought I’d start another thread to discuss the case, hopefully for discussion of the trial, evidence, prosecution and defence etc rather than fact free frothing.

I’ve just listened to episode 15 of “We Need To Talk About Lucy Letby” where they discuss the New Yorker article by Rachel Aviv and specifically the problems with the roster data table which was shown (several times as I understand it) by the prosecution during the trial. It’s quite shocking actually. Recommended listening.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/we-need-to-talk-about-lucy-letby/id1736761161?i=1000658160398

That was Kathleen Folbigg. A devastating miscarriage of justice with many of the same hallmarks seen in this case. The same mistakes will be repeated over and over if something isn’t done to correct common misunderstandings about statistics, even in highly educated people. The Royal Society of Statisticians have been begging to be heard on this for a while.

That was Sally Clark, a former solicitor. She was convicted on the dodgy evidence of Roy Meadows - a doctor who fancied himself to be a Sherlock Holmes (he was literally in the SH society and gave a talk about how similar he was to SH). Troublingly, both Dewi Evans and Ravi Jarayam supported him when the GMC struck him off for, basically being a charlatan in Sally Clark’s case and a number of other cases. Meadows heavily relied on his own poor interpretation of statistics too, which was eventually how Clark got freed.

The conviction and her time in prison completely destroyed her life and she ended up drinking herself to death. The other inmates poured boiling water with sugar in it on her. She was literally tortured in prison. Afterwards “Sally was unable to come to terms with the false accusations, based on flawed medical evidence and the failures of the legal system, which debased everything she had been brought up to believe in and which she herself practised."

The fact that Meadows didn’t get prison for this, and that Dewi Evans and Ravi Jarayam supported him, is shameful.

My God, all this is horrifying. I didn't realise there was a link between Meadows and those doctors for the prosecution. What a load of utter villains. It's sickening.

It does make you wonder if some doctors subconsciously get a taste for the limelight, the publicity, being made to feel important/an expert by the police/legal teams. 🤷‍♀️

Absolutely.

This is going to turn out to be a huge scandal when the truth comes out, as it will eventually.

Poor poor babies being let down, parents put through hell thinking their babies were murdered and a woman losing her freedom

Most of them are egotists. I blame their training. I've had some horrendous treatment by male doctors in the past. I wouldn't trust one as far as I could throw it.

It is extremely telling that none of Lucy’s fellow nurses suspected her at all, saw anything odd, or felt that she was in any way off. Lucy was well liked and considered to be diligent, competent, and hard working, by her fellow nurses. She had been working closely, hand in glove, day in and out, in a cramped and busy unit with her nursing colleagues for several years before all this started. Anyone who is a nurse or has worked in a hospital (even if you’ve been in a hospital) knows the nurses always know what’s going on in the wards before the doctors do.

Many of the COCH nurses still support her to this day, even coming to the trials. Janet Cox, an older COCH nurse, came to both of the trials every single day. Joanne Williams spoke strongly in Lucy’s defence, totally contradicting Jarayam’s version of events, at the retrial.

All of that is very compelling to me and it’s interesting, though unsurprising, that no one seems to care what the other nurses think.

Meanwhile the “clever doctors” (that’s what the rather wide-eyed Chester Police called them) were only on the unit for twice weekly ward rounds. Many of the babies who died had nursing notes stating “Doctor not available” repeatedly, which rather puts a different light on the claim that the babies all collapsed “unexpectedly”. You being “unavailable” and therefore unaware that a baby is declining does not = an unexpected collapse when it eventually happens.

All that plus the fact that none of the doctors were included in the infamous shift rota, or investigated, despite several known events of doctors having directly caused baby’s deaths at COCH, and that Dewi Evans is on record making misogynistic statements (something about nurses only coming to the profession to marry doctors) and the narcissistic self aggrandisement of some in the profession is well illustrated.

What struck me as I watched the video of the ward is how small the wards were, and that often there was just one nurse in the room. I think it would have been easy for Letby to hurt babies.

There was no CCTV. So Letby would have had many opportunities to tamper with babies. E.g. Child I was alone in the room.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8nbp0s

It is extremely telling that none of Lucy’s fellow nurses suspected her at all, saw anything odd, or felt that she was in any way off.

That’s just not true. As an example, the nurse who saw Lucy do nothing for Child I thought it was odd.

@Rubbishconfession one nurse, in her first 8-9 months of training, said - after the accusations were made about LL - that she heard a baby crying hard and saw LL with her hands in the incubator. She wasn’t fully trained and hadn’t been there long. Nothing she said is actually shocking in a NICU. If I was a trainee nurse and someone told me there had been a murderer loose on my ward, I might well look back on everything with new eyes myself.

That’s the worst that was said out of all the nurses that worked with LL for years, many of them for much longer (and with much more training) than this nurse.

The rooms being tiny and cramped makes it harder, not easier, to get away with murder without anyone seeing a thing out of the ordinary. In a NICU of that level there should be a nurse assigned to each baby and each room usually had multiple babies. The nurses weren’t often in the rooms alone. Sometimes I’m sure. But often enough, long enough, and reliably enough to get away with a murder spree like this without being seen doing anything that is actually odd?

Not to mention that pumping babies stomachs full of air via a very fine tube would take ages even if there was any scientific precedent for that at all whatsoever, which there isn’t. It’s just not credible that nobody who actually worked closely with LL for years suspected her and so many of them support her to this day. As I say. anyone who is a nurse, knows a nurse, or has ever been in a hospital knows that the nurses know what is happening in their wards well before any doctor who only does a twice weekly ward round.

How quickly ‘none’ has become one nurse.

And what about the nurse in ChildI’s case I described above?

Ashleigh Hudson is the nurse in the child I case, unless I’m missing something here?

I don’t count a trainee nurse, after she’s been told there’s a murdering nurse on the loose, reporting that she saw that same alleged murdering nurse doing an ordinary NICU nurse thing (hands in the incubator while a very sick child is crying) to be anything suspicious unless you already think she’s guilty. Any neonatal nurse would be seen doing the same any day of the week.

The point stands that none of the nurses who - as I said - worked closely with LL for years before and during all this, had anything bad to say about her and many of them support her to this day.

The case needs urgent review 😒

dailysceptic.org/2024/10/21/david-davis-says-hes-90-certain-lucy-letby-is-innocent-and-will-campaign-for-a-retrial-hes-right-the-case-against-her-is-collapsing-by-the-day/

Yep agree

From the article: save the face of a unit and its doctors

That's what it's all about.

I can't be sure she's innocent, but the trials and everything surrounding this case have been a mockery of justice, that I am sure about.

It's incredibly distressing to consider the possibility that the 'evidence' was deliberately compiled in such a way as to only point the finger at Lucy Letby. A thorough investigation should rule out any other reasonable doubt and that clearly hasn't happened here, the standard of CPS review and processing can be a postcode lottery. Just think about the very real consequence if the accused is in fact innocent of the charges levied. It doesn't bear thinking about. Add to that the public essentially 'tried' the case in the media months before it actually came to a court room. How can the proceedings ever be viewed as fair in such a situation? The three principles of British justice are Independence, Impartiality and Integrity however there appears to be so many holes in the case that one could practically steer a double decker bus through it. Several decades ago the consequence was likely to have been capital punishment. There are far too many 'what ifs' to be completely confident that justice has been served. Judges are not always right and sadly neither are juries.

We need to not talk about Lucy Letby.

She is an infantile adult who tried to get the attention of a married doctor in the most appalling way.

If the NHS was functioning as it should have been, her crimes would have come to attention way earlier than it did. If people weren't so desperate to cover their own arses, her crimes would have come to attention much earlier than it did.

Circumstantial evidence is still evidence. Most of the evidence was not circumstantial though and one clinician watched her allow desaturation of her patient.

She will have a far nicer life inside than she deserves.

Watched her. Then walked back out and left her to it. Didn’t put it in the notes or tell anyone. Or mention it at all for years. sounds totally believable, that a doctor would catch a nurse red handed harming a baby and then say and do nothing, and leave the unit to go to another part of the hospital while she is still there. If it occurred the way he claims, he should also be in a cell right beside her. Another nurse testified that the alarm was sounding. And the swipe card data has since shown she wasn’t alone as he said she was. Even the appeal judges conceded that he was an unreliable witness.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyv3jlzme90o

Dewi Evans has changed his mind on 3 causes of death.

This whole case is terrifying. There needs to be a retrial.

It’s unbelievable. If this is true and the expert witness has now decided what he stood up in court and said about the deaths of three of the seven babies is incorrect then there is no way this verdict can be safe.

Those poor parents. They deserve the truth. It’s just awful