In a final cruelty inflicted upon the families of her many victims, Lucy Letby refused to attend her sentencing hearing on Monday.
After a ten-month trial, the 33-year-old nurse was found guilty of murdering seven babies and trying to kill six others.
She has now been sentenced to life in prison for her crimes and will die behind bars.
Before the judge delivered his sentence, the court heard powerful victim impact statements from the parents of the murdered babies.
‘Hurt with no foreseeable end point’
The pain contained in the testimonies was evident.
So too was the love that the parents who wrote them had for the children they have lost.
The parents of Child A said that they never got to hold their little boy when he was alive and Letby ‘’tried to play God’ with the lives of the babies in her care.
The mother of Child C said her family’s grief is just as acute now as it was eight years ago.
She spoke about all the moments and memories that Letby stole from her, saying: ‘’I miss everything we should have had, first smile, birthdays, Christmases – I think about what he would have looked like now.”
You don’t need to be a parent to understand the horror of what these families have experienced.
They have been forced to live through the unendurable and theirs is a hurt with no foreseeable end point.
Any comfort that could be usually drawn from seeing justice being served will be diminished by the daily reminders that these parents will experience about all they have lost and all that could have been.
‘Alarming new details’
It’s hard to fully contemplate the magnitude of Lucy Letby’s crimes and the scale of the devastation she has caused for so many families.
Letby preyed on babies when they were at their most vulnerable and abused the trust their parents had placed in her as a nurse.
Her destructive, evil deeds make her the most prolific child serial killer in modern UK history.
In recent days, alarming new details of the period covering the killings has shown that staff repeatedly raised concerns about Letby but were ignored and dismissed by hospital managers.
Consultants first raised concerns about unusual baby deaths back in 2015, after Letby had killed her first three victims.
Despite the link being made between the unexpected deaths and her presence on the ward, it took almost two years for hospital managers to alert the police.
Up until that point, doctors who were concerned about Letby’s potential involvement in the deaths were accused of being engaged in a ‘’witch hunt’’ against her.
After Letby took out a grievance against the hospital trust, consultants who had raised the alarm were forced to issue an apology to her.
One of those consultants, Dr Ravi Jayaram, said management inaction may have cost lives.
‘’I do genuinely believe that there are four or five babies who could be going to school now who aren’t,’’ he said.
Accountability
The UK government has ordered an independent inquiry into the case, including the accusations that hospital bosses ignored months of doctors’ warnings about Lucy Letby.
The findings of that inquiry must be acted upon to ensure that something like this can never happen again.
If it is found that the decisions of hospital bosses meant Letby had the opportunity to attack and kill more babies, then they must be held accountable for their actions.
The NHS should not be an organisation where reputational management is ever given higher priority than patient safety.
Even if lessons are learnt from this harrowing case, it will do nothing to lessen the pain of the families so grievously affected by it.
‘I seem to crumble’
I was on the receiving end of a very stern talking to on my driving lesson last week.
The scolding was no less than I deserved, given how close my test is and how far away I still seem to be from being a competent, confident driver.
My instructor is absolutely brilliant. But he’s not a miracle worker. He told me that he’s now taught me everything I need to know about driving – now it’s up to me to put it into practice.
The thing is, I drive well when he is giving me prompts and reassurance.
But when he leaves me to make my own decisions, I seem to crumble.
Which is obviously less than ideal given he hasn’t agreed to drive around with me for the rest of my life.
If I don’t get my act together and show a vast improvement in the next few weeks, then he’s going to recommend I delay my test.
He’s the expert and I trust his judgement.
But given how long the wait times are for driving tests, such a decision might mean that I won’t get a new test date until next year.
So if anybody catches sight of me looking confused or weepy on a driving lesson in the next few weeks, please overtake very carefully and give me a reassuring wave as you do.
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