Lucy Letby bosses should face criminal charges, mother tells inquiry
by Liz Hull · Mail OnlineThe mother of a baby boy attacked by Lucy Letby today said hospital managers were ‘complicit in harm’ and should face criminal charges.
The nurse tried to murder her son, a premature baby boy with the blood-clotting condition haemophilia, in June 2016 – almost a year after consultants say they first flagged the link between Letby and a spike in deaths on the neo-natal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital.
The infant, known as Baby N, was allegedly attacked three times over the course of two shifts. Letby, 34, was found guilty of one count of attempted murder but the jury failed to reach a verdict on another two counts of the same charge.
Baby N’s mother told the public inquiry into Letby’s crimes that she wanted hospital bosses who failed to investigate the doctors’ concerns ‘held accountable.’
‘A lot of the harm that Lucy Letby caused could have been avoided if a thorough and prompt investigation had taken place after the whistleblowers raised concerns,’ she said.
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‘Ignoring these allegations, or not giving them proper weight, makes these people complicit in the harm that was caused. They should be held accountable, they shouldn’t be able to continue in their roles and should face criminal action.’
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Lawyers for the hospital managers have told the inquiry no suspicions about Letby specifically being connected to the deaths were raised with them before the end of June 2016.
Baby N’s father told the Thirlwall Inquiry, sitting in Liverpool, that he had been ‘horrified’ to hear during Letby’s criminal trial how staff discussed the babies they were looking after in messages on Facebook and via texts on their private mobile phones.
Baby N’s mother also said she too had been upset about this and revealed she had lodged a formal complaint against a doctor that swapped detailed messages about their son’s treatment with Letby.
She accused the medic, who cannot be named for legal reasons and is being referred to in the inquiry as Dr U, of ‘disregarding’ and ‘blatantly’ breaching her son’s patient confidentiality in the messages, some of which even included his surname.
Letby’s trial heard that she was obsessed with Dr U, a married father-of-two who she went on day trips to London with, and also met for walks and meals outside work.
They exchanged thousands of messages, often late at night, but Letby claimed the pair were just ‘best friends.’ She denied having an affair or being ‘in love’ with the doctor, despite breaking down in tears in the dock when he first came to Manchester Crown Court to give evidence against her.
However, prosecutors suggested that Dr U was Letby’s ‘boyfriend’ and that she was so infatuated with him that she attacked at least three infants, including Baby N, when he was on duty because she knew he would be ‘crash bleeped’ to help.
Baby N’s mother also said Dr U had shared e-mails exchanged between consultants about Letby’s conduct with her, which was wrong.
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She said she had made a formal complaint about him to the hospital where he now works at the end of the criminal trial last August and the investigation is ongoing.
‘I do not object to nurses and doctors discussing patients, (but) it’s the method of communication by insecure means and the breach in confidentiality that was so wilfully ignored and commonly used by a number of staff,’ she said. ‘If they had paid more attention to their patients, rather than gossiping, things might have been different.’
Earlier, Baby N’s mother said the neo-natal unit at the Countess always appeared ‘understaffed’ and, when their son unexpectedly collapsed, doctors had been unable to give them a reason why.
He was transferred to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and was well enough to go home 10 days later.
Baby N’s mother said the current NHS was ‘not fit for purpose’ and that little had been learned since the cases of Beverley Allitt, a nurse who murdered or harmed 13 children at Grantham Hospital more than 30 years ago, and GP Harold Shipman, who killed around 250 patients.
Earlier, the father of twin boys, known as L and M, who were also attacked by Letby, told the hearing it was ‘not enough’ for managers to simply apologise to the parents of babies killed or harmed.
‘The whole management team need to be held accountable for their actions,’ he said. ‘They allowed a nurse causing harm to continue working after concerns were raised by consultants. If they had listened sooner fewer babies would have been hurt.’
Both the parents of Babies L and M and Baby N told the inquiry they had no idea their sons’ collapses were being investigated by the hospital, or examined by an independent neonatologist, until they were contacted by Cheshire police around a year later.