Lucy Letby found guilty.

He’s right isn’t he!

Dr. Ravi Jayaram has released this statement

Many of you are aware that due to the Lucy Letby trial, I have mostly been absent from social media over the last few months.

My heart goes out to the families of the babies affected by this although nothing can ever undo the evil that was inflicted on their children.

My colleagues and I have lived this for the last 8 years and the period of the trial has been the most difficult part of this. I am proud of all the frontline colleagues with whom I work, for managing to carry on providing excellent care to babies and children under such pressure.

There are bad people in all walks of life and many of them are very good at hiding in plain sight. There are also people in highly paid positions of responsibility in healthcare whose job it is to ensure patient safety. I am relieved that the often-maligned criminal justice system has worked properly this time. However, there are things that need to come out about why it took several months from concerns being raised to the top brass before any action was taken to protect babies, and why from that time it then took almost a year for those highly paid senior managers to allow the police to be involved.

The truth of what happened during that time will shock you to the core as it comes out. The safety of patients should come above any risk of reputational damage and sometimes the right decisions might be difficult and unpopular, but executive level managers are paid to do just that. There are people out there now, still earning six figure sums of tax-payers money or retired with their gold-plated pensions, who need to stand up in public to explain why they did not want to listen and do the right thing, to acknowledge that their actions potentially facilitated a mass-murderer and to apologise to the families involved in all of this. However, I suspect the response will be fudge and misinformation and it is now my mission moving forwards to make sure that they are held to account.

There is a long history of whistleblowers who raise concerns in the NHS not only being ignored but then being portrayed as the problem, sometimes to the point of their careers being destroyed. What happened here was history repeating itself but the patient safety issue that was ignored was beyond anything that the NHS has tried previously to cover up. There needs to be fundamental change in the culture and governance of NHS institutions and it should start right now.

JenniferEccles

I am horrified that the paediatricians, all seven of them, agreed to sign the letter (presumably written by a manager) apologising to Letby.

What cowards. They all strongly suspected her involvement in the babies deaths, as she was the only member of staff on duty at the time of each one yet they STILL signed that grovelling letter.

It makes me wonder just how widespread this closing ranks/covering up is in the NHS.

What would have happened if they had been taken to tribunal for bullying a member of staff?
They were told there would be "consequences" if they did not comply.

Could they have been struck off?
It certainly wasn't closing ranks.

With hindsight, perhaps they could have called the management's bluff, but perhaps they began to doubt themselves.

Even now, there are people on this thread and in fact her friends who doubt that she could have been guilty of such heinous crimes.

Theu were afraid for their jobs Jennifer. They were told if they didn't sign there would be 'consequences'.

I am horrified that the paediatricians, all seven of them, agreed to sign the letter (presumably written by a manager) apologising to Letby.

What cowards. They all strongly suspected her involvement in the babies deaths, as she was the only member of staff on duty at the time of each one yet they STILL signed that grovelling letter.

It makes me wonder just how widespread this closing ranks/covering up is in the NHS.

The details that have come out about these crimes and the shocking negligence on the part of the unit management are truly harrowing. I couldn't go on watching the BBC report.
I agree that Letby must be insane. Perhaps she will take the same way out as Dr Shipman. Or she will be murdered in prison.

I also feel so very sorry for her parents. Lucy is their only child. The whole thing is so terribly sad for all concerned.

She may not be mentally ill but she must hav personality disorder no person with a normal brain would get satisfaction from killing babies or anyone come to that There must be something missing in her psyche to be able to do that

Yes I agree Foxygloves. This was a long trial and the jury were out for several days. I'm sure they came to the right verdict.

fancyflowers

I am sceptical about the verdict. I hope more will come to light as investigations continue.

That is your opinion and you are entitled to it but tonight's Panorama programme shed more light on the case and I for one think that in this case the "unthinkable" was very much the "possible".

the first instinct of any group like this, when faced by a massive calamity like this that could be seen to be a reflection on the organisation itself

Hopefully in future their first instinct might be to protect life. I am sure that would reflect well on the organisation.

I do not know what the latest rules are as regards "sectioning" someone under the Mental Health Act, but I do remember when I was in SW training learning that someone could not be sectioned unless they had an identifiable and labelable mental illness. People with a personality disorder used not to fit into that category I believe.

Is she mentally ill? - who knows? But she is certainly not not mentally normal. It takes a pathological degree of coldness to act as she did; and a complete absence of empathy - but everyone thought she seemed totally normal.

This young woman went to the same school and college as my children.

I am sceptical about the verdict. I hope more will come to light as investigations continue.

Anniebach

Fantasies of hurting and killing babies are normal?

No, not normal.

Iam64 didn't say it was normal, she said she was not diagnosed as having a mental illness.

There is such a thing as evil combined with a feeling of power.

I don’t think she is insane but she is evil. I believe we should stop thinking about nurses as “angels” because many are not. It’s just a way of earning money to them and just a job.

I came to this conclusion many years ago because I believe I encountered an evil nurse. I had just delivered my very premature baby who was in SCBU. Most of the nurses were very caring and professional. I was in there a lot and sometimes it was busy but other times quiet.

There was an older nurse with dyed blonde hair wearing a green uniform - I can see her very vividly even all these years later. One evening it was very quiet and my baby was next to a black baby girl. This nurse was being quite rough with her, not at all tender. I said what a beautiful baby she was and she laughed and made a very racist remark about the child and just plonked her back in the cot. I can’t even say on here what she said about the child.

I should have reported her I know but my baby was very poorly, I was quite unwell and the premature birth had been a huge shock.

I have never forgotten the look on that nurses face and often wonder whether she did harm any babies because I believe I encountered evil that evening.

Indeed, Whitewavemark2. As much as we try to seek for reasons behind such heinous crimes, I think sometimes we have to accept that some people are just that - evil.

Iam64

Lucy Letby seems to have been a skilled manipulator, good at acting the part she was playing. The extent of her denial along with the lack of empathy is chilling.
We always seek to understand behaviour. Psychiatrists concluded she wasn’t mentally ill with a diagnosable, treatable mh problem. She was not psychotic, she was in control of her actions and understood the consequences.
I’m not convinced she could be diagnosed with munchausen’s by proxy. She wanted to hurt and kill babies. She acted on her fantasies, got away with it, continued

Yes there have been other examples of killers who had no classifiable psychosis - who appeared to be simply evil.

Fantasies of hurting and killing babies are normal?

Lucy Letby seems to have been a skilled manipulator, good at acting the part she was playing. The extent of her denial along with the lack of empathy is chilling.
We always seek to understand behaviour. Psychiatrists concluded she wasn’t mentally ill with a diagnosable, treatable mh problem. She was not psychotic, she was in control of her actions and understood the consequences.
I’m not convinced she could be diagnosed with munchausen’s by proxy. She wanted to hurt and kill babies. She acted on her fantasies, got away with it, continued

M0nica

Casdon However experienced and trained the managers, the first instinct of any group like this, when faced by a massive calamity like this that could be seen to be a reflection on the organisation itself, is to go into denial and then try to cover up the event.

We have seen this happen again and again in hospitals (North Sraffs, Maidstone, and other institutions - schools, care homes. No matter how qualified the management the procedure they go through mentallywhen they discover major abuse, mispractice, malpractice is the same; deny, 'explain away' cover up.

Every time the whistle blowers(consultants in this case) are denigrated, undermined, and ostracised, sidelined or sacked. It happens again and again and again. The Countess of Chester management behaviour was a classic of its kind.

You’re absolutely right Monica, I said several times that they got it wrong. I also said the big lesson from this is that the police should have been called much sooner. The quality of the initial investigation clearly wasn’t of the standard it should have been, and I wasn’t in any way defending their actions, I was saying that I could understand how it happened, which isn’t the same thing.

Casdon However experienced and trained the managers, the first instinct of any group like this, when faced by a massive calamity like this that could be seen to be a reflection on the organisation itself, is to go into denial and then try to cover up the event.

We have seen this happen again and again in hospitals (North Sraffs, Maidstone, and other institutions - schools, care homes. No matter how qualified the management the procedure they go through mentallywhen they discover major abuse, mispractice, malpractice is the same; deny, 'explain away' cover up.

Every time the whistle blowers(consultants in this case) are denigrated, undermined, and ostracised, sidelined or sacked. It happens again and again and again. The Countess of Chester management behaviour was a classic of its kind.

Skye17

eddiecat78

In cases like this I struggle to understand if someone is evil or insane. Surely these were not the actions of a "normal" person. And does that mean she should be shown understanding and leniency? I'm not suggesting she should be - but the idea of someone actually being "evil" for no reason troubles me

She was sane enough to function in the job the rest of the time.

‘The line between good and evil runs through every human heart.’
- Solzhenitsyn

Absolutely. And as several others have said, evil walks among us every day. How many times do we read of horrific murders and then friends or neighbours of the accused say what a 'nice, normal, quiet person' they were? There was a murder not far from us several years ago where a man took an axe to his wife - a friend of mine lived two doors down from the couple and said they had been the perfect neighbours for years. A nicer, quieter couple you couldn't wish to meet. You don't have to look like a monster to be one.

For those that need to know more;

www.itv.com/news/central/2023-08-18/the-quiet-cul-de-sac-in-hereford-where-killer-nurse-lucy-letby-grew-up

Urmstongran

And Mr & Mrs Letby. Their only child is a child murderer who will spend her life in prison. Awful shock for them. How do you process that?

I don’t know. It is beyond sad for all concerned.

Apparently lessons are being learned

Yet again.

Luckygirl3

It's not about "piling in with blame" but about being shocked that the system functions in a way that allows this to happen even when serious concerns were raised and hoping that "lessons will be learned" [sic].

Quite.