Lucy Letby - have you changed your mind thread 4

[MistressoftheDarkSide]

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

To be fair that’s not what the poster was asking - or at least this is my interpretation:

Wouod you leave your baby in need of NNU or nursing care with Lucy Letby (and let’s pretend that the UK is #1 in good outcomes for NNU and infant care)

I don’t think it’s the win the ‘true believers of the magical insulin spiking and Evans flip-flopping’ yhink it is, either.

They just don’t understand the difference between ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ and being 100% sure.

Even if LL is a serial killer that unit was still a death trap that, since they foolishly took on with upgrading it to a level 2 NICU for extremely vulnerable infants without improving any facilities or care, was still experiencing deaths that year over and above the usual amount. That’s even taking into account the ones LL got blamed for.

You’d trust your baby to lazy arse consultants that only bothered doing 2 ward rounds per week, when the required number is 2 per day?!

You’d trust your baby to doctors who were so poor at intubation that multiple baby’s had repeated traumatic failed attempts, and one of the Drs had previously caused the death of a baby by intubating him into his stomach rather than his lungs, suffocating him?

You’d trust them with your baby even though the unit was literally leaking 💩 from the ceiling into the NICU?

You’d trust them even though they did nothing but email management for over a year while (they believed) a serial killer was stalking the wards, murdering babies willy nilly?

Rather you than me. Poor baby though.

I think this might be the first time I agree with you (on the information I have)

I think the staff on the unit floor were doing their best with the cards they had.

I'm sure there were plenty of good staff there, and I'm sure the problems with resuscitation and intubation skills could be improved. But I'd have serious reservations about reopening the unit at that level under the leadership of doctors who claim it was perfectly good as it was and that the deaths they had could not have been due to natural causes or problems with medical care. I'd also want to know if basic issues with safeguarding - reporting anything "suspicious" to the coroner and honest record-keeping - reporting procedures to the pathologist even if you made errors - had been addressed.

So no, with all sympathy for the many dedicated members of the unit, I couldn't rejoice in this. Anyway, I hope I didn't mislead - the application has been in for nearly a year now according to Thirlwall so I wouldn't be sure it's going anywhere, especially with Chester's warning about unsafe conditions after the most recent CQC visit this year.

It isn’t naive. Not considering the total refusal to look at any of the expert input, the quality of the rebuttal arguments to information shared here and the sheer doggedness. It really doesn’t look like someone who was convinced by the trial reporting and struggles with critical thinking.

The same applies to the rest of the Tattle coven. Why would anyone literally stick their fingers in their ears and go la la la in the face of what has emerged? Only someone with skin in the game of supporting the prosecution narrative would be so invested. Or if they genuinely are that stupid it’s terrifying and I hope and pray they never get called for jury service.

Wilfull ignorance based on the need to be right

Don’t misunderstand me - theres training heeded on whistleblowing and having the courage of your convictions, and the upper management needs to go: it looks like they pulled the wheel and the rudder off ship whilst swigging rum.

The only managers left from those days are Drs Brearey and Jayaram, as far as I know.

And if we consider only the failings in care acknowledged by the prosecution at the trial, not even the expert panel, there are serious questions around that cohort of consultants acknowledging and address their own limitations and failings in medical practice. That would be my chief concern.

Everyone above them has gone?

Also, the toxic scapegoating shot through the nhs like a stick of rock needs to be exorcised or this kind of thing will keep on happening

Everyone considered a person of interest at Thirlwall: so Ian Harvey, Tony Chambers, Alison Kelly, Karen Rees. Also Eirian Powell.

But not the two managers who also worked as consultants, Drs Brearey and Jayaram, who withheld information from the coroner and pathologist and persisted in the position that children could not have died from natural causes or failings in care.

I don't think the other managers got everything right, but I can't see what they did or failed to do that is anywhere near as problematic as the consultants' behaviour.

What's going to happen next time there's a death they can't explain on the NNU?

No, you’re right - I didn’t think that through.

Blame it on no coffee.

so no @Firefly1987i do not agree with you - I allowed myself fall foul of no coffee and that part of me that still wants to see the best in people even after 50 years of experience telling me otherwise, that little voice just will not die. And no, before you tell me that my little voice wanting to see the best in people is the reason I don’t believe Letby is guilty:

I’m not seeing ‘the best’ in her - what o am seeing is a bunch of evidence that doesn't stand up to the legal test of ‘guilty beyond a reasonable doubt’

If that's what the poster meant, such a pretence would entirely change the context and circumstances and thus the question is pointless. The UKs significant structural problems are an important part of the picture here. Unless for some reason Chester was an outlier that nobody was doing anything about, I suppose, but again the unit being the mess that it was would still be vital context.

I’ve had bad experiences with the NHS and seen first hand how they ‘lose’ notes, fabricate new notes that get them out of trouble and lie and gaslight if you complain. I’ve known others in similar situations and read about countless other cases. They sadly have form for this. Whether it’s because they are understaffed, overworked and overtired, not running units well or just over confident and negligent there are failures all over the place. This case seems to be an extreme version of NHS mistakes, negligence and a cover up where it’s preferable for them to condemn one person rather than admit massive failings.

To be fair, I think if the stakes hadn't been pushed so high with the murder accusations and disciplinary hearings, all involved might well have been able to stand down and reflect and work to improve the unit. It's a shame that didn't happen.

I would happily leave my baby with LL. The doctors, not so.

I blame Dewi and hisself-aggrandising, hubristic, limelight hogging knee jerk ‘it’s MURDER’ for that. Entirely.

@Kittybythelighthouse Who is going round leaving their baby in the care of random people they have never so much as spoken to?

I find that response so bizarre in this context. I was the one that asked the question, and I did leave one of my babies in the care of people I didn’t know. For several months. They were in NICU, I had no choice. We had other kids at home, including toddler who also needed mummy/daddy, and it was not possible for us to stay on a chair bedside the NICU cot 24/7. So we did leave them a n the care of random people we had never do much as spoken to if staff were perm night shift (some were, others rotated shifts). Many people DO need to do this. So, it was not an odd question as ‘who on earth would do this’. Would have thought that blindingly obvious in the context spoken of here🤷‍♀️.

I often think if Lucy had not put in a grievance and rather than asking to go back to the ward she had instead agreed a reference (after the hospital's inital investigation had found nothing wrong) and gone to work as a nurse elsewhere she would be a free woman today.

Whilst it isn't fair I would always advise someone to seek to negotiate an exit fron a work place where people in a senior position have turned against them.

The OP was asking about leaving in the care of Lucy, though, I think. That’s how I read it.

It’s what I would have done, now, in middle age.

At 23-24 - nope. I still had blind faith in people and systems back then and principles that I believed in and believed others were principled too.

@Firefly1987- you’ve mentioned several times now about Mike Hall and his opinion on the Shoo Lee panel: you stated that he doubts their findings.

Can you explain what you mean?

It should be safe to leave your baby in the care of a professional team in a NICU. You asked would you leave your baby in the care of LL. That’s a frequently posed and highly disingenuous question which seems to be meant as a gotcha to people who say they don’t believe she’s guilty.

I think most people who don’t believe there is any evidence against her would therefore think it would be safe to leave their baby in a NICU with her as part of the team. Why would you think otherwise if you don’t think there’s evidence she’s a murderer? Most people would be concerned about leaving their baby in that particular unit given what has been revealed about the standards and failings though.

Since 2008 British judges no longer give juries the direction that they must find the defendant guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt”. They direct them instead to “be sure”. Apparently the concept of “reasonable doubt” was deemed to be too complicated for juries to understand,

Jurors are just as likely to misunderstand “sure”. What kind of “sure”? 100%? 95%? Emotional certainty? Moral certainty? Pure vibes on the day? The phrase “reasonable doubt” had centuries of legal weight behind it, with precedent and case law spelling out its meaning. “Reasonable doubt” forces the prosecution to overcome doubts; “be sure” focuses jurors instead on their personal level of conviction, which can come down to just “gut feeling” and may shift the balance toward guilt.

“Sure” is quite simply linguistically weaker and less precise. There is a reason why “reasonable doubt” was used for so long and still is used in every western country. It is actually enshrined in the US constitution. It originated here, yet our judiciary are the only ones who have forgotten the importance of it.

This is just another sign of the slow erosion of the once mighty British justice system, formerly admired all across the world.

I read somewhere that they started to do that because juries grappled with understanding what ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ means.