A UK nurse has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering seven babies in a neonatal unit. In what is the longest murder trial in recent UK history, 33-year old Lucy Letby was also convicted of attempting to kill six other babies, and further investigation by the BBC has also revealed how hospital management at the time deflected concerns by doctors and actively silenced them.
Between June 2015 and June 2016, Letby deliberately injected air into babies’ parenteral nutrition lines, force-fed milk to others and administered huge doses of insulin to two others. In the years before, less than three death per year had been recorded at Countess of Chester Hospital at the neonatal unit where she worked.
According to The Guardian, Mr Justice Goss said during her sentencing: “This was a cruel, calculated, and cynical campaign of child murder involving the smallest and most vulnerable of children, knowing that your actions were causing significant physical suffering and would cause untold mental suffering.”
She was found not guilty of two other counts of attempted murder, but the jury consisting of four men and seven women were unable to reach a verdict on six additional attempted murder charges. The court will consider whether to attempt to retry these six charges.
Dr Stephen Brearey, lead consultant at the neonatal unit where Letby worked told the BBC he first raised concerns about the nurse in October 2015, but not no action was taken and she went on to attack five more babies.
He that hospital management failed to investigate allegations against her and also tried to silence doctors. An investigation by BBC Panorama BBC News revealed just how Letby was able to get away with murdering and harming the babies for so long.
The hospital’s top manager ordered doctors to make written apologies to to Letby, and two consultants had to undertake mediation with the nurse, despite their suspecting she had killed babies. Efforts to bring in the police were also quashed by senior management, who said in an email “This is absolutely being treated with the same degree of urgency … All emails cease forthwith”.
Dr Ravi Jayaram, a consultant paediatrician at the hospital, wrote on social media that he felt relief at the oft-maligned justice system working “this time”.
But he continued there were “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”.
He also added: “And why from that time it then took almost a year for those highly-paid senior managers to allow the police to be involved.”
