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As we write this, on 21 August, the verdict of the trial has just been announced and Lucy Letby has been sentenced to spend her life in prison after killing seven babies and attempting to murder another six between 2015 and 2016. What has surfaced in the past 10 months, is the fact that Letby’s possible involvement was reported by a doctor back in 2015 but that she wasn’t actually removed from the maternity ward of the Countess of Chester hospital until June 2016.
On top of that, The Guardian reports that the police were not contacted ‘for almost another year after’ she was removed.
So why did it take so long for Letby to be a suspect? A police officer spoke to Channel 4.
Lucy Letby is a ‘normal’ woman in her twenties
Lucy Letby’s trial has just ended and as we were approaching the end of this 10-month-long process, numerous interviews have been conducted with people who know Letby.
Of course some of them knew Letby before she became a murderer therefore finding the accusations made against her hard to believe. In an attempt to get the most testimonies possible in order to understand the psychology of Letby, Channel 4 interviewed members of the police who were in charge of the investigation.
Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Nicola Evans from Cheshire Police explains one of the main reasons why Lucy Letby wasn’t suspected.
I would describe her as being beige. She had a normal friendship group, a family. She had a normal social life. Everything you would expect somebody in their twenties to do.
According to DCI Evans, that ‘normality’ is what kept Letby safe. She continues:
She used that normality and the trust that she obtained through that as a cover for the crimes that she committed.
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Doctors who accused Letby had to apologise
It is the dichotomy between that normality and the horrible acts committed that protected Lucy Letby. Indeed, several news outlets like The Guardian and the BBC reported that Dr Brearey raised concerns about Letby back in 2015 but that the management of the hospital refused to act upon them.
Instead, the BBC writes that management ‘demanded the doctors write an apology to Letby and told them to stop making allegations against her’ and that ‘two consultants were ordered to attend mediation with Letby, even though they suspected she was killing babies.’
This can be explained by DCI Evans when she states:
(It) is really hard to put those two things together and accept that somebody had committed those crimes, but also that there isn’t something outrageous about them and that actually she was operating in plain sight because she was so normal.
Moreover, Pascale Jones, Cheshire from the Crown Prosecution Service explains:
She was the beneficiary of this confirmation bias. People just could not rationalise how a nurse would be living with that extent of betrayal of the confidence that was placed in her, perverting her skills, weaponising the tools that she used.
To listen to the full details from the BBC click HERE
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Sources:
The Guardian: Doctors were forced to apologise for raising alarm over Lucy Letby and baby deaths
BBC News: Hospital bosses ignored months of doctors' warnings about Lucy Letby
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