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Merged Concerns over baby killer ignored? / Nurse Lucy Letby killed babies in her care

One of the executives in question has been suspended from her position with the Northern Care Alliance.
 
Unsurprisingly, the judge handed down a whole life order, which even her own barrister agreed was probably the correct sentence.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
There has to be a better way of preventing incidents like this from happening again than just demonizing the administrators and pretending it wouldn't have happened if they weren't 'monsters'. I don't know what the answer is, but it's not this.
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Maybe I should be forced to write a letter of apology to each of the administrators who continued to give Letby access to helpless victims even after multiple doctors were scolded for trying to ring the alarm. Maybe that's part of the answer. Let me get started here.

Dear Unethical Scumbags...
 
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Matthew Best said:
Wow. Turns out I have something in common with a mass murderer.
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Imagine my surprise to discover that the actual phrase in question was not as reported above, but the rather better-known one '[to] go commando'.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...-hours-before-attempt-on-boys-life-court-told

In text messages read to the jury, Letby told a friend she had received a “strange” message from the male colleague, who cannot be named. The friend replied: “Did u? Saying what?” then suggested the doctor had suggested Letby “go commando” along with a crying laughing emoji.

Letby insisted she did not know what the phrase “go commando” meant when asked three times by the prosecutor, Nick Johnson KC. Asked whether it was a reference to the Royal Marines, the defendant did not reply.
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I suppose the lesson here is that if you suspect criminal activity, you should be making an independent report to the police or other authority in addition to reporting it to management. Never rely on middle management to make a good decision.

In the US we have the concept of "mandated reporter", which requires for professionals to make reports to the authorities for any suspected child abuse they witness for this exact reasons. This help avoid having reports of child abuse being captured and killed by incompetent or complicit management.
 
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Skeptical Greg said:
I apologize if I overlooked if this question was asked earlier, skimming through I didn't see it, but was there something that prevented the Dr./s from going directly to the police?

Where I'm at ( in the USA ) I'm breaking the law if I don't report suspected child abuse, much less murder.
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If you come across crime in the work place, more often than not the police will tell you to refer it to the Human Resources department.
 
smartcooky said:
Agree

The Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven and the Birmingham Six were locked up for up to 17 years for bombings they had absolutely nothing to do with. The corrupt Policemen involved committed perjury in court and actively concealed exculpatory evidence.

Not a single one of those bent coppers was ever brought to account for what they did.
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Maybe that is so in some of the cases. However, an unsafe conviction doesn't mean the defendants were found to be innocent.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
This ridiculous hyperbole is not helping. We all know who the real monster was, and everyone else was a victim.

Yes, the system failed to stop her sooner, but it wasn't because anyone else involved in it was a monster. Clusters happen. If every nurse who had more than 2 patients die in their ward was accused of murder the backlash would be catastrophic.

There has to be a better way of preventing incidents like this from happening again than just demonizing the administrators and pretending it wouldn't have happened if they weren't 'monsters'. I don't know what the answer is, but it's not this.
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It is not about 'demonizing the administrators'. The average salary of a Hospital Administrator in the UK is £267,000 pa. It is true that this type of plum job is generally reserved for those in class-ridden UK with the right old school tie, right connections & recommendations and the support of family wealth whilst qualifying. But the fat cat salary and pension isn't a reward for having a plummy accent, although you might be forgiven for thinking it is. This salary level represents the degree of responsibility. If something goes wrong under your watch, sorry, but you do have to take some responsibility for it. Ignorance is no excuse. There is a statute that makes Gross Negligence Manslaughter by a professional a criminal offence, so it is nonsense to say the serial killings of Lucy Letby have nothing to do with the management. They are answerable to the law just like everyone else.

When seven highly specialised consultants reported their concerns, the hospital administrators had a duty of care to take them seriously. The trite corporate speak 'We take all complaints seriously' isn't something they can just do by choice, they have a responsibility to take complaints seriously, especially so where weak, defenseless and vulnerable premature neonates are the focus of the complaint.
 
Planigale said:
There is a truism that difficult cases make bad law. This is clearly a very difficult case, it took years of police investigation to build a case and a very long trial to present the evidence, even so of 15 babies she was accused of killing she was only convicted of murdering seven. There is minimal physical evidence against her, most deaths were unexplained and remain so, they had to hypothesise that she killed them using aa method which would leave minimal evidence. Unusually for this type of serial killer she was not consistent in her method of killing. There was no smoking gun. At most the paediatricians would have had evidence of coincidence, that she was present on the ward when a number of unexpected deaths occurred. Clearly there was little support from the nursing hierarchy; that is something that needs to be explored.

The other route that the paediatricians had was referral to the coroner who could have carried out a judge led inquiry. There is a reluctance to do this as it might result in a post mortem, police possession of the body and is seen as distressing for the family.

I think that the paediatricians were presented with a rise in deaths in their unit and would have appeared to have been scapegoating a junior nurse. They were not forbidden from approaching the police and subsequently did so. What managers warned them about were the consequences of doing so. The threat of being reported to the GMC was not from management, but Letby's family.
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I have to disagree with you. The police found hard physical evidence in the result of the insulin test for one of the babies. Likewise, vivid skin mottling was observed, plus a split diaphragm and air embolism evidence in the brain.

Circumstantial evidence and direct evidence as per expert witness testimony also qualifies as hard evidence in a criminal trial.

It is up to the jury whether or not to accept them.

Justice Goss pointed out to the jury in his summing up that the four expert witnesses, were not advocates for the prosecution and that their testimony could be trusted.
 
Vixen said:
Maybe that is so in some of the cases. However, an unsafe conviction doesn't mean the defendants were found to be innocent.
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Well, except in these cases, the Police knew they already had the bombers in prison for other bombings.

Vixen said:
When seven highly specialised consultants reported their concerns, the hospital administrators had a duty of care to take them seriously. The trite corporate speak 'We take all complaints seriously' isn't something they can just do by choice, they have a responsibility to take complaints seriously, especially so where weak, defenseless and vulnerable premature neonates are the focus of the complaint.
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Yup, the highlighted 100%.. and the rest too!
 
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Vixen said:
Maybe that is so in some of the cases. However, an unsafe conviction doesn't mean the defendants were found to be innocent.
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Nobody is 'found innocent' in a British court; there is a presumption of innocence until proved guilty.
 
Vixen said:
When seven highly specialised consultants reported their concerns, the hospital administrators had a duty of care to take them seriously. The trite corporate speak 'We take all complaints seriously' isn't something they can just do by choice, they have a responsibility to take complaints seriously, especially so where weak, defenseless and vulnerable premature neonates are the focus of the complaint.
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Maybe they did take those concerns seriously- maybe that was the real problem.
 
Vixen said:
It is not about 'demonizing the administrators'. The average salary of a Hospital Administrator in the UK is £267,000 pa. It is true that this type of plum job is generally reserved for those in class-ridden UK with the right old school tie, right connections & recommendations and the support of family wealth whilst qualifying. But the fat cat salary and pension isn't a reward for having a plummy accent, although you might be forgiven for thinking it is. This salary level represents the degree of responsibility. If something goes wrong under your watch, sorry, but you do have to take some responsibility for it. Ignorance is no excuse. There is a statute that makes Gross Negligence Manslaughter by a professional a criminal offence, so it is nonsense to say the serial killings of Lucy Letby have nothing to do with the management. They are answerable to the law just like everyone else.

When seven highly specialised consultants reported their concerns, the hospital administrators had a duty of care to take them seriously. The trite corporate speak 'We take all complaints seriously' isn't something they can just do by choice, they have a responsibility to take complaints seriously, especially so where weak, defenseless and vulnerable premature neonates are the focus of the complaint.
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I dunno, that sounds like too much work for too little money for the "old school tie" brigade. That's not to say that senior administrators aren't "connected" but in my experience of working in the NHS (management consultant to various PCT boards) and from reading Private Eye, those connections tend to be political rather than class-based.

The PCT leaders were a fundamentally different group of people than the old school tie City types I had worked with previously.
 
Vixen said:
Maybe that is so in some of the cases. However, an unsafe conviction doesn't mean the defendants were found to be innocent.
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In the cases listed those convicted were in fact innocent.
 
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