Lucy Letby - have you changed your mind thread 4

[MistressoftheDarkSide]

With thanks to the original poster @kittybythelighthouse and @Tidalwave for continuing the discussion.

Don't need to see the future it's just common sense. We know more charges are likely to be coming in due course. I think once the truth finally dawns (if it ever does) there will be some regret over saying they'd have left their baby in the care of LL. Even if it's a totally hypothetical scenario.

If Ms Lightfoot said nothing about this story of her inappropriate reaction until later I'm inclined to think it's another thing that's been put through the 'evil murderer' lens.

There seemed to be a pattern of her wanting to be the first one to break the bad news. She treated it as gossip. Not proof of murder but doesn't look good.

@Insanityisnotastrategy I'm about 95% on her innocence, so as far as I'm concerned that's a clear 'not guilty' but I wouldn't take a 5% chance with a child.

Exactly you wouldn't take the risk. Even if you believed she was likely innocent, it's too big a price to pay if you're wrong. Interesting how Kitty managed to avoid answering this question, I would've thought for sure she'd have no qualms leaving her baby in Lucy's care...

As far as bad luck - the parents had the incredible misfortune of having sick babies on a failing ward in an underfunded NHS. I don't believe in omens but I do believe our healthcare system is broken.

And to have been in the vicinity of a killer nurse...if it wasn't them it'd be another set of parents. I just think Lucy's "bad luck" goes far beyond what would be believable (when you put it all together) a lot of the babies were not that sick, they just needed a little bit of extra help.

“As far as bad luck - the parents had the incredible misfortune of having sick babies on a failing ward in an underfunded NHS. I don't believe in omens but I do believe our healthcare system is broken.”

Very well said@Insanityisnotastrategy

When my child was returned to me after 18 months, it was with a conditional regime that included a stipulation that I continue to work part-time, that we attended first a mother and baby group, then hr went to a nursery - both of which lnew "the history" and reported back weekly every detail of attendance. Other days he was cared for by my DF and myself SF. His father kind of had to supervise me at home. There were extra HV checks as well. It was a further 18 months before we came off the "At Risk" register.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that despite and because of this regime my paranoia was off the scale, and I dreaded being left alone with him. I didn't get any support with that, everything was geared up to waiting for me to fail in some way. As a result, my DC did not have a normal or relaxed childhood, and the SW implied that giving him up for adoption would have been the moral choice even if I was innocent.

Even now, 31 years later, I would not want to be left alone with anyone else's child. I once babysat for a toddler, and my by then new DH had to come with me. The parents trusted me, but if anything had happened at all, it would have been doubly awful as not only would I feel natural guilt at the event itself, but also I would fall under suspicion.

My son has yet to reproduce. If he did, I could never do the normal childcare a grandparent would do, even though he knows the full story and trusts me implicitly. I couldn't take the risk.

In addition if he does have a child there's a strong possibility that because he is on record as an abused child, he and his partner would come under LA scrutiny.

The ramifications and stress associated with a false accusation of this nature break people, break up families, and it's obviously multiplied a thousand times over for people like Lucia, Lucy, Sally Clarke. I have no doubt that Lucias early demise was contributed to by her experience.

The cavalier attitude of some to such grievious failures demonstrated in cases like these is frankly appalling, and it demands reform across all the agencies.

I'm still chilled to the bone that Lucia suffered a stroke and was left to suffer by prison guards.

It's so easy to stand in judgement....until it's you having the finger pointed at you.

“a lot of the babies were not that sick, they just needed a little bit of extra help.”

Which ones exactly were “not that sick”?
@Firefly1987

Be specific.

@MistressoftheDarkSide I’m really sorry that you went through that horrific experience ❤️

I'm so sorry for what you went through I can just imagine the paranoia and fear of something going wrong. What an awful experience, and thank you for sharing.

You could perhaps make that claim for baby N. When people talk about children who were expected to go home that day, they mean baby N. Baby N's parents expected to bring him home on 15th June 2016. Instead, he deteriorated and had to be transferred to another unit. Lucy Letby was charged with attacking him that morning. However, the defence showed that his deterioration started hours before she came in or on shift, and she was found not guilty.

She was found guilty of attacking him on 2nd June though, in what was probably the silliest conviction of the lot. Based on notes showing that the child had been "screaming" during a half-hour time frame, and on the possibility, not testimony or evidence, that Lucy Letby was babysitting him, Dr Evans and his sidekick Dr Nicole Bohin diagnosed an unspecified painful attack and / or air embolism. The prosecution's account has since fallen foul of their door swipe data mix-up.

It would be interesting to know if there is anyone out there who would now find this charge and conviction defensible

https://medium.com/@triedbystats/baby-n-transcripts-reveal-previously-unreported-swipe-data-error-in-lucy-letby-case-16ff22254561

This sort of thing is why I really can't take the spectre of new charges seriously.

Thank you.

Even now I dread interacting with HCPs for fear of being regarded as attention seeking. There have been cases where accused mothers have become seriously unwell or died because of the breakdown in trust after a false allegation.

I can do it when I have to, and I'vegot better over time, but the internal anxiety makes me feel like a nervous whippet.

What I regret most is that the whole experience left my DS short changed both emotionally and materially, as going through this process seriously fucks up your finances if you're in the lower income bracket.

As he got older, it got better, but we missed basically any sense of normality for 3 years. We're all good now, but he definitely missed out.

I really think we need a different system when cases hinge on disputed medical evidence.

On another forum someone has transcribed the channel 5 documentary on Lucy Letby and there's an interesting section about Waney Squiers, the experts who challenged SBS, that illustrates the difficulty for the defence to get expert witnesses willing to fight a defendants corner. It's worth a look.

There seemed to be a pattern of her wanting to be the first one to break the bad news. She treated it as gossip. Not proof of murder but doesn't look good.

Hmm, well there's also plenty of evidence of her being devastated by the deaths. It depends what you pick and choose, doesn't it?

Exactly you wouldn't take the risk. Even if you believed she was likely innocent, it's too big a price to pay if you're wrong. Interesting how Kitty managed to avoid answering this question, I would've thought for sure she'd have no qualms leaving her baby in Lucy's care...

I haven't spotted that but imagine she thinks it's a silly question? As do I. We're discussing a potential miscarriage of justice, not our childcare arrangements.

And to have been in the vicinity of a killer nurse...if it wasn't them it'd be another set of parents. I just think Lucy's "bad luck" goes far beyond what would be believable (when you put it all together) a lot of the babies were not that sick, they just needed a little bit of extra help.

It wasn't called the 'little bit of extra help' unit. Intensive care. Have a think about that.
And we're back to the luck/probability thing. Have you ever bought a lottery ticket? Because your chances of winning are probably much less than a really horrible spate of deaths on a poorly run hospital ward. Someone wins the lottery though. And sometimes a nurse will have a bad run.

@Oftenaddled

The prosecution's account has since fallen foul of their door swipe data mix-up.
In other words, we can specifically rule out Letby being present. It's a nonsense, isn't it?

I can see you’ve never failed an exam in your entire life. You must be extraordinarily successful, maybe even a genius? Impressive!

It's not just "failing an exam" it's that the assessor felt that Letby did not have the "overall characteristics" to become a successful nurse. That's quite a big thing to fail someone on. You're purposely minimising it.

Obviously you’ve also never once in your entire existence done anything that upset anybody else, ever. Nobody has ever not quite gelled with you. Do you give lessons in charm and deportment? You really should.

Of course, but we're talking about things wildly outside the norm. Like it or not the prosecution looks at the behaviour of suspected serial killers. This isn't going to stop just because you personally don't care about any of this or think it's all irrelevant. You'll just get more and more mad at perceived miscarriages of justice because you refuse to look at this entire part of the evidence. Either through lack of interest or not actually understanding the weight of it.

Even though you are a self proclaimed true crime fan there is nothing in your search history, or your bookshelves, or your text message history that reflects this morbid curiosity? Are you absolutely sure? Your Tattle history only reflects an interest in cupcakes and doilies does it?

It's a passing interest in true crime and mysteries. The LL case is currently widely being talked about by lots of people. I actually don't know too much about many other cases. I can guarantee there's nothing else. I certainly haven't written crazy things on post-it notes or hoarded confidential documents. So at a push that's ONE red flag (if the police would even be the least bothered about an interest in true crime) Lucy was nothing but red flags. And this would have to be after I'd been in the vicinity of multiple deaths happening over and over. I don't see ever being in that situation somehow.

1. She kept track of her shifts in a diary which was completely uncontroversial except for the fact that Cheshire police stupidly thought that they’d found a secret code, like Poirot, but it was in fact just ordinary nursing shorthand. Embarrassing.

I thought she had also written the initials of the babies that she had attacked on those dates?

Am I missing anything? She called a tracksuit pyjamas? She said she didn’t know what “go commando” meant in a text that someone else sent? She rejected offers of cosy lifts home from a doctor she supposedly was bunny boiling for? She won money on the grand national the same day a baby died in the literal intensive care unit she worked at?

I assume the prosecution brought that up to show she lies and plays the victim for sympathy. She's good at that. Funny you should mention the doctor-in any other scenario on here she'd probably be branded "evil" just for sniffing around a married man alone. But be a suspected serial killer and people want to die on the hill of defending you?!

Lucia De Berk started keeping her handover sheets once she felt she was under suspicion. They actually helped in her eventual exoneration. Lucia De Berk also wrote “incriminating” things in personal notes, more so than Lucy Letby. She still didn’t kill any babies though. She died yesterday btw, aged only 63. I’m sure the vicious hounding, the dehumanisation, and the injustice of a wrongful imprisonment as The Netherlands’ most hated woman didn’t help.

Let's leave her out of it since she just died.

But then surely that has to go for a retrial. How can a whole life order for this one be allowed to stand?

I honestly don't know. It's crazy, to my mind.

If profiling serial killers is such a big part of the prosecutions case, why were no psychological reports commissioned or submitted as evidence?

(I had 3 that basically found I was angry and bewildered and destabilised by the accusations made against me and paranoid about losing my child to adoption, all normal responses in the circumstances and that was just the family courts. The SW was livid that I didn't "fit the profile" she was building in her head.)

I can't be specific. I was actually going by Lucy's own text messages.

June 22 2015, the day after the death of Baby D, Letby once again reached out to her colleagues.
She said: On a day to day basis it's an incredible job with so many positives. But sometimes I think, how do such sick babies get through & others just die so suddenly and unexpectedly? Guess it's how it's meant to be... I think there is an element of fate involved. There is a reason for everything.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/revealed-disturbing-text-messages-sent-by-killer-nurse-lucy-letby-during-murder-spree-4310597

So there's your theory that they were all at deaths door gone out the window.

Oh ffs, those babies were at significantly higher risk, hence being on NICU.

Baby N was one of the most absurd cases and a great illustration of just how weak evidence could be for the CPS to be willing to press charges.

Babies cry and scream! Sometimes they do it no matter what you try to do to comfort them. Every parent know this. Every neonatal nurse knows this.

Using only a written note from
years before that said a baby was “screaming” and treating that as a specific medical symptom for air embolism (!!) is absolutely bonkers.

Thats without even getting into the farce of the door swipe data that supposedly proved exactly who was where and when in the NICU, but turned out to be arse over tit after Lucy Letby was convicted for 15 whole life orders.

It's a bit more complicated than that.

The corrected door swipe data makes it extremely unlikely that Lucy Letby was in charge of the child - not impossible if we assume she took a break in the middle of proceedings though. But there was never any evidence or testimony that she was in charge of the child anyway.

The door swipe data was used to time the event, and to suggest that the baby was in enough pain to scream for half an hour. On this basis, it was assumed Lucy Letby did something to him. You have to read the article to see the madness of Evans' and Bohin's testimony on this point. But the corrected data shows he screamed / cried for only about two minutes.

This whole incident is at the extreme end of the, something strange happened and we assumed Lucy Letby was there and caused it, spectrum - which is nearly always all the prosecution mean with their claims about her being cotside. She's unlikely to have been there, but more to the point: the incident Evans and Bohin are going on about didn't happen - explaining why nobody could remember it ...

I recommend a read for their appalling nonsense alone.

medium.com/@triedbystats/baby-n-transcripts-reveal-previously-unreported-swipe-data-error-in-lucy-letby-case-16ff22254561

But they weren't as sick as the ones that survived despite being in much worse condition to start with. You can't have it both ways. Lucy has said herself that the sick ones made it and others died suddenly and unexpectedly. Doesn't that make you wonder why this was happening?

We know babies die suddenly and unexpectedly. Lucy Letby isn't even saying there, that any particular babies died suddenly and unexpectedly - just that it's a known phenomenon.

That has no connection with the state of any of the children she was caring for, which is quite simply a different question.

There’s a massive difference between “not expected to deteriorate imminently” and “not that sick”.

It is quite possible for someone to be very poorly but stable. You surely must have heard the term “critical but stable” in press releases?

It’s also quite possible for someone who has been stable for a while to become suddenly unstable. Bodies are not cars. There are myriad ways they can go wrong unexpectedly.

Are you being serious? It was a NICU. Not a daycare. That is a text message. Not specific medical detail.

Which of the babies “were not that sick” in this level 2 neonatal INTENSIVE CARE UNIT.

Be specific about exactly how they “were not that sick”.

Go on.

What? It was the day after baby D died and you're trying to say she just came out with that randomly just in general 😆the straw clutching is getting desperate guys. It's hard to argue against something LL herself said isn't it...you'll give it your best shot though. How come there's only been one death since they downgraded the unit if babies die suddenly and unexpectedly then?

Well, in the case of child D, the original pathologist and the international expert panel agree that there was damage to the lungs meaning pneumonia would progress faster than normally expected. But since the postmortem hasn't happened yet, Lucy Letby didn't yet know that. So wondering was a very natural response.

The obstetrician in charge of child C's birth stated that he was not surprised to hear of his death (Thirlwall) and the consultant supervising his care wrote to his parents that they might never have a full explanation of his death, since these things happened to children of his gestation and development. So again, not surprising Lucy Letby was reflecting on the fact that some deaths seemed predictable, some not.