Lucy Letby thread

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Starting this as don’t think we have a new one.

People have explained to you time and time again how this may have happened.

And many have also explained why we don't believe the narrative put forward also, again repeatedly.

On the subject of Neonatologists, actually, do we know if Cheshire Police contacted any?

I know the NCA advised them to put together an expert panel, including a neonatologist, and we know they talked to a statistician as per the NCA advice, whom they then fired because she didn't agree with their narrative, but do we know if they even bothered to try contacting anyone who specialised in neonates?

I understand that Sandie Bohin does a refresher off-island once a year to keep her in good standing to work with neonates in emergencies, but women normally go to England to deliver, especially in complex cases, and she is a consultant pediatrician in her day job.

So while I've seen Liz Hull describe her as a neonatologist, I think that was very loosely applied.

The other big omission was that the NCA recommended the police involve an obstetrician, but for some reason they decided they knew better and that obstetrics history doesn't affect newborns.

A couple of years ago I was volunteering at a 3 day event. Halfway through the first day I was sitting on the floor with person A when person B walked past. After they'd gone, person A said to me that they'd knocked their shoulder with their knee as they went past. They grimaced a little and rubbed their side, but didn't really seem to be in any pain. There were lots of other people around.

I was called off at that point, and then over the radio I heard person A calling for St John's ambulance, assumed it was for an attendee.

By the end of the afternoon I had been told by four separate people that person B had pushed person A to the floor and kicked them several times in the ribs, and they were severely bruised and taken off to hospital. All four people were people who I'd have credited with common sense, and one had been within 5m when it had apparently happened. They all knew person B well enough that I would have thought they would have queried it on that basis too.
I assumed it was one of those rumours that take off with little substance, but no, I learnt that person A had told this to a group (which contained 2 of the people who spoke to me) saying they were waiting for an ambulance after the paramedic had left them.
The lack of an ambulance turning up did not seem to make them think twice.

So yes, one person telling an outlandish story may be believed by others - even more so if it's convenient for them.
It was lucky for person B that I had been there, and also one of the organisers who when he heard the rumours came and asked if anyone had seen it as they were (rightfully) very sceptical.

And yet you still cling onto this outlandish theory! Despite there being absolutely no evidence for it at all.

I am starting to think you're trolling now.

Not just because they were doctors, because they were there on the unit when all these strange things were happening. They saw these sudden unexplainable collapses, they knew these babies were not responding to resuscitation. How can people ignore all this?!

The other experts were put together with the express task of only finding natural causes-when it's ignoring evidence to exonerate Letby that's fine of course!

What a bizarre and fascinating story.

At Chester, I don't think most of the consultants were independently convinced anyway. There's no evidence - and in fact, in the witness statements there are outright denials - that most were suspicious before Drs Brearey and Jayaram started agitating to have Lucy Letby taken off the unit after the final deaths.

And then there is this email from another consultant, Dr Gibbs, months after that, and a couple of weeks before Dr Jayaram started claiming he might have seen evidence of deliberate harm a year before. The full email wasn't uploaded to the Thirlwall site, but parts of it were:

(24 February 2017)

I said that although we didn't know that Letby had been the cause of unnatural collapses or deaths, we were still worried that this might be the case and that this problem could resurface at any stage in the future - either here or, if Letby moved, in another Trust. So, whilst we don't know if anything unnatural had happened, we felt we had to do everything reasonable to try to find out. Ian assured me that the issues on our NNU had lead to a great deal of soul searching amongst the Executives and that, for months, our neonatal unit has been given priority at each of the weekly Executive meetings.

I also reminded Ian that most of the 'failings' highlighted by the College review (lack of consultant, middle grade, nursing staffing) also applied to most other NNUs and so didn't adequately explain our increased mortality.

Ian went back to the observation he'd made
when we all met prior to the College review, that the workload intensity had increased
significantly on our unit in the past 2 years (prior to the voluntary regrading). Interestingly, without me needing to bring this up again, he said himself that he understood that we were also worried about the sudden, unexpected nature of many of the collapses, but he then added that perhaps when workload is high sometimes early warning indicators aren't spotted and so patients are more likely to then deteriorate, sometimes rapidly.

...I feel that we've probably done all we can and that it's not appropriate to consider whistleblowing to the media or Police particularly since it seems that 'the Trust' has informed the coroner (in fact two coroners), about our 'dark' suspicions and that's almost the same as telling the Police" ... 'We may have to accept that we are probably never going to get a clear answer to the cause of our increased neonatal mortality and non-fatal collapses and insisting on 'pushing things further' isn't likely to provide any better answers (although the coroners or parents might decide to 'take things further' but it's not clear what they could do to clarify the situation). Amongst all of us, Steve might find it the most difficult not to press for further forensic-style investigations (i.e. direct Police involvement), because he's put so much effort into trying to resolve this issue and has been even more frustrated, humiliated and angered (by Ian especially), than the rest of us - not that any of us have found this affair to be anything other than highly distressing."

From thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/evidence/inq0017159-witness-statement-of-jane-tomkinson/

It's a very interesting snapshot, acknowledging the uncertainty, the anxiety and the emotional investment. I'm sure that the consultants aren't all blameless in this, but I do think the major responsibility lies with the police, who simply failed to investigate their concerns appropriately.

If other experts found natural causes, they clearly undermine the work of Bohin and Evans who explained that they had reached their conclusions by determining that there were no natural causes.

But the international panel's remit was to find the most probable cause of death, not to find natural causes of death anyway

The pathologists and neonatologists who saw the bodies and reviewed the cases before Evans had the task of determining cause of death. There was no stipulation that they should look for a natural cause of death either. You need to remember that causes like air embolism would normally be accidental, and if air in the stomach killed, that would obviously happen accidentally too due to CPAP usage and resuscitations. So nobody needed to be told to look for murder to find these causes of death. They just weren't there to find

You know it is only Dewi et al who believe any of the babies were murdered, right?

Even Jayaram et al could not point to a singular death they thought was suspicious; it was the overall pattern that concerned them. They had no clue which babies, if any, were subjected to deliberate harm, hence the not reporting the deaths as suspicious at the time.

The coroners at the time found natural causes in all but one baby; that coroner has now gone on record to say she agrees with Lee and would have come to that conclusion had she been given all the information by the consultants.

The investigations by RCPCH believed it was natural causes exacerbated by poor care, which is backed up by the CQC report, which also highlighted serious, systematic failures on the unit.

Incidentally, for those babies who were referred to the coroner, the initial findings mostly match what Shoo Lee et al found.

I don't think an international panel would come together for the express purpose of exonerating a British woman who had been found guilty. These are really busy and successful professionals who don't have a reason to do that. Academics like to get stuck into the evidence and see if it holds, especially when their research has been used to put it together. They have been dragged into a potential miscarriage of justice so I can understand their interest but they have no motive for finding her innocent. Their incredibly well informed finding was that the evidence didn't hold. That is really significant. The consultants having concerns were not specialised and rarely on the ward.

I have personally seen a very dedicated paediatric nurse suffer greatly when a spike in deaths caused suspicion. With very tiny and very sick babies it is not always clear what has happened and there is no real reason for there not to be spikes at times. The dedicated nurses do suffer at these times and question themselves and everyone else when there are poor outcomes.

There’s also an issue with the unfair treatment of women in the CJS.

Right sure, that's why she was found guilty. Because of one man and his absurd theories. Which apparently no one from the defence could counter.

The more people say all this was down to DE the more it affirms she's guilty. If he wasn't bang on she'd have no problem walking out that court room a free woman.

I also must've imagined the pathologist saying the liver injury was deliberate harm.

The original pathologist identified the liver bleed as being caused by prematurity, as they hadn't been given the details regarding the needle procedure.

The senior coroner who reviewed the case agreed with his initial findings but believes that if they'd been aware of the needle aspiration being carried out, they would have asked for an inquest into the death.

Hepatic subcapsular haematomas (liver bleeds) happen in neonates. They're rare, but they happen, they are usually caused by an underlying maternal medical issue or trauma at birth.

Blunt force trauma hard enough to rupture a liver but not cause external bruising is far less likely than a needle injury or prematurity being the cause.

@Frequency right so these coroners who you put all your faith in, weren't even able to ascertain a doctor had punctured the baby's liver?! That just proves they didn't have enough info to carry them out accurately which is why they came up with natural causes despite the fact Letby had murdered them.

You'd hope this was the only case where the reporting consultants withheld important medical information from the coroner and pathologist.

The case was eventually referred for a coroner's inquest, which never took place, after the full case-note review. Jane Hawdon, working from the full medical notes, concluded that the death had probably been caused by poor care. Unfortunately, we don't have her full report so can't say whether this includes the needle insertion.

I can't see anywhere where Lucy Letby's conviction relied on new medical information not available to the pathologists and coroner and reviewing neonatologists. If all we mean by that is, Lucy Letby was there, that doesn't change the findings of natural causes.

From my memory this was because information about abdominal procedures wasn’t shared with the coroner.

I still find it bizarre that even with so many very experienced professionals and experts in relevant fields , coming forward to say that the evidence presented in court was flawed in many areas, that you have absolutely no questions or concerns about this. Regardless of whether anyone is innocent or guilty, I would hope that the evidence presented in court is of a high standard - and I find it concerning that the prosecution medical expert has been so widely criticised by people with far more experience

Why does this not bother you at all? It is not about guilt versus innocence, but all about ensuring everyone has access to a fair trial

Why does this not bother you at all?

She didn't reason her way into this, so you can't reason her out of it.

Very true and evidence of concrete thinking

I also find it bizarre that those who are convinced of guilt, are not more than a little concerned that the chief prosecution expert presented flawed evidence in court. What if this leads to a guilty person being released?

I genuinely don't understand it.

I can only assume it is subconscious self-preservation. If the investigation and subsequent court proceedings were really as bad as people are claiming, it could happen to us, it could happen to our children...

But if we can convince ourselves that Letby is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the police, Evans, and everyone else involved in this farce acted with integrity, then we can be safe in the knowledge that it could never happen to us because we're not murderers.

No, you've been so convincing on this thread that you finally convinced me otherwise and now I believe she's guilty and I'm ready to argue the guilty side of the argument.

It seems easy enough, just dismiss everything new that has came out and then repeat the same few questions and insults over and over.

All the evidence of substandard care that has come out (even though the focus has been on LL being guilty and they haven't even properly investigated the substandard care thoroughly yet) - now IRRELEVANT.

The issues with the testimonies -IRRELEVANT

The issues with the medical evidence - IRRELEVANT

Etc. etc. ALL IRRELEVANT and act like they don't exist.

People aren’t desperate to find her guilty for self-preservation, we just believe in letting the review system run its course rather than be swayed by a bunch of armchair detectives,

She’s had two appeals rejected based on a review of the evidence and her case is with the CCRC. What more do you want?

I believe she’s guilty but I am open to the findings of the CCRC, who are much better placed to judge than armchair detectives.

You haven’t even said what the flaw is?

Yep, if she did do it and gets released then it's the fault of the police and the CPS for not putting together a case that had been robustly tested in the first place and that couldn't withstand rigorous challenge.