Lucy Letby ( To understand)

[PassingStranger]

What made her kill these babies. Been in the news again today.

It's hard to understand?
Presume as she is in prison and not a hospital, she is not mentally ill?

Will anyone try to find out, I guess if people don't admit they are guilty it's hard too.

Instead of people saying give me 5 mins in a cell with her, surely it's better to stop this happening or maybe it's not possible?
Why does she want to be one of the most hated women in the universe and not give a shit about the babies families and even her own parents?

So much better to be known for doing something nice and have people like you?
AIBU to wonder why she took this road in life?

I believe we are all born with a degree of chaotic violence and a lack of empathy. Working with toddlers and young children you can see the natural tendencies within us all the time. The difference is the majority of us all learn and are taught from toddler/young childhood that we need to restrain our physical impulses to hit and hurt, we need to learn to care for others and animals and our development through childhood puts a social restraint on those more basic reactions. For some people, that empathy or feelings of social restraint doesn't embed and that's why we have people who disconnect with others, hurt others or feel nothing for causing harm or watching death or pain.

In some ways I'm guessing that's what religion was about - saving us from that primal side to a higher, social side.

Have any of her family spoken to medical people re faking being ill? Esp when she was a teen and she was in their care?

@Tunnocksandtablet that story about your relative is interesting, although of course rather sad . As a healthcare professional I am sure I have come across people deploying similar strategies, maybe to give themselves a sense of importance and validated grievance. I can’t help thinking that if we didn’t have a supportive welfare state, they wouldn’t be pulling these stunts.

this 👆

I don't think she fits munchausen's by proxy. She may be mentally ill but considered to have enough capacity to be held responsible via the CJS.

You are only hospitalised if you lack capacity. She clearly doesn't.

Rose West. Lucy whatever her name is.

Yes, there are women killers too.

Utterly chilling.

I survived being with a man who tried to kill me when I wanted to leave him.

Remember Myra Hindley? She was complicit.

Hope Labour will support Women's and Girls Self Devence courses.

In my experience of working in high schools, girls who aren't very bright often court drama. They feed off it.

I wonder if one day she might be found innocent….

You are SO unlikely to get away with faking mental illness. To be detained under any section of the mental health act, you have to be utterly lacking capacity. The threshold is very high.

We KNOW when it is real and when it's not. And capacity fluctuates. If she could even give evidence in court to argue her innocence then she absolutely has capacity to be tried through the criminal justice pathway. She would not have got near the stand if she lacked capacity to the point she needed psychiatric hospitalisation. Her defence will absolutely have attempted that. They couldn’t.

I totally agree - I’m sick of seeing these ‘mentally ill’ criminals get away with diminished responsibility - anyone that murders is obviously mentally ill!

It's really hard for people to wrap their heads around a blonde haired blue eyed woman being an exemplar of pure evil.

Halo effect

I see your point, but having worked in hospitals with very sick people it's very difficult to understand the true root cause of any death or incident because so much is changing all the time. The patterns that they were showing were skewed and how anyone can remember anything that clearly for that many patients without relying on their notes is very unlikely.

For example, when I was a new PT, a patients ventilator malfunctioned while a very experienced nurse and I were standing at the bedside. It unexpected and took us a full 3 seconds of staring at the patient to realise that they weren't breathing, and a further 5 seconds to take the appropriate (live saving) action. If anyone what witnessing that first 3 seconds, it would have looked very strange to them.

I have no doubt that she was at the very least an incompetent nurse on an oversubscribed hospital ward. She had vulnerable patients and required a lot more supervision than she was getting which I think they were trying to do. I also have little doubt that she would be the last person to admit this as her identity was so wrapped up in being a paeds nurse. I have worked with plenty of people in hospitals who are like this. The trial just didn't convince me that the issues were intentional, as she would have to have demonstrated a lot of competencies in other areas to not do this accidently.

Certainly something super weird and controlling about the parents going in to argue their adult daughter's cause with the HR guys at the hospital.

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't she have nothing in her life, no boyfriend, husband, girlfriend or kids or pets, NADA - just work?

She liked the attention, importance, and the sense of playing god that killing gave her. A form of munchausen by proxy / mental illness.

Her case reminded me of the Marybeth Tinning case in the US. A woman who killed 9 of her children, pretending that they were dying by SIDS through some freak genetic disorder, until she just couldn't resist killing one that she'd adopted.

He was only there for the last few, can't remember exactly when. But around spring 2016. As others have said she had a superiority complex, the motives different for each incident. Definitely think the parents were targets mainly - jealousy of their happiness etc.

I find it impossible to fathom, but that does give some insight into a possible mindset that could lead down that road. What I don't understand is what happened to these people (LLs) to turn out that way. Did no one spot the escalating strange behaviours? Why did no one intervene?

Two of the babies were given insulin when there was no medical need for it. That's not incompetence. Or if it was that's incredibly incompetent to a level of manslaughter by gross negligence. She was the only nurse present for every single suspicious death that made it as far as court.

Some of the babies were bruised and bleeding from tubes shoved down their throats.

This wasn't an incompetent nurse.

The strange thing about her case is that, from the small amount I’ve read, she seemed to have a stable upbringing. Which says to me that it’s a personality disorder of some kind, possibly psychopathy.

It was stable but it was also quite insular. Her parents seem quite old fashioned and I think they gave her a lot of attention for doing almost everything.

I do wonder if when she got into the real world and discovered that you just go to work and do your job and nobody is fawning all over you for doing so that she was starved of attention.

Who knows?

Thank providence she’ll never be in a position to do it again, though,

I'm talking in general here especially when the accused is pleading innocence. Lie detectors should not be used as 100% evidence of guilty or not guilty. I do feel there is a place for this in certain circumstances along with all other evidence. Passing the test wouldn't & shouldn't be a case for getting away with crime but in conjunction with everything else it could help those who are genuinely innocent if & when there is doubt. Again I'm not referring to LL as I found it too difficult to follow. It's just my thoughts about serious crime in general.

This just isn’t true though is it? She had a good career as a nurse, plenty of friends and an active social life and loving parents. She’s attractive and there’s no reason to think she wouldn’t meet someone romantically. She had plenty going for her and it’s insulting to all the people in a similar (or worse) situation to say they haven’t amounted to anything. In Lucy Letby’s case there must be something mentally wrong with her to be able to do something like that - a personality disorder, narcissism? A high proportion of the prison population are mentally ill, they don’t all go into a secure hospital.

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't she have nothing in her life, no boyfriend, husband, girlfriend or kids or pets, NADA - just work?

I don’t think so. Newspaper reports said she was on a Hen weekend in York the days before the first baby death for example. A lot of the photos of her seem to show a fairly active social life at bars, concerts etc and she did hobbies like salsa dancing with friends each week. No husband or kids but this all began when she was 24/25 so that was pretty normal. One of her close girlfriends was even on the news insisting she will never believe Lucy is guilty despite the undeniable evidence against her.

I agree ,I don't know how anyone can listen to the trial and think she might be innocent. She was jabbing at these poor babies , watching them gasp from across the room and doing nothing, giving insulin when it wasn't needed. Bloody hell!

I know plenty of HCPs who are utterly incapable.

Sorry to clarify I and my friends are in a similar position- it's not meant to insult, I love my life but I'm trying to say that's the difference between a normal person and someone like her where she would've expected to amount to something of a massive, phenomenal scale hence being the hero in some of the awful situations described. I meant it wasn't enough for her and for someone like that it never would be.