Lucy Letby’s parents asked hospital bosses for an urgent meeting over their “intolerable distress” after police began investigating their serial killer daughter, a public inquest heard today.
John and Susan Letby wrote to the then chairman of the Countess of Chester Hospital, Sir Duncan Nichol, two months after Cheshire Police were brought in to investigate the rising number of baby deaths in the neonatal unit, in May 2017.
The couple told Sir Duncan: ‘It has been a year since our nightmare began. There’s a saying “Innocent until proven guilty,” but it doesn’t seem to apply to Lucy.
“She remains the only one of the entire neonatal unit staff who has been assigned a punishment.”
Requesting an “urgent meeting” with Sir Duncan and chief executive Tony Chambers to discuss the matter, they added: “We would appreciate the meeting taking place as soon as possible as the distress this situation is causing has become intolerable.”
Sir Duncan told the Thirlwall inquiry investigating Letby’s crimes that he did not respond to the email sent on July 7, 2017, nor did he meet the couple.
Letby was moved from the neonatal unit a year earlier, in July 2016, to an administrative position after consultant paediatricians raised fears that she may have deliberately harmed the babies.
But she was furious that two consultants, Dr Stephen Brearey, the unit’s senior doctor, and Dr Ravi Jayaram, head of children’s services, had “orchestrated a campaign” against her and that some doctors had referred to her publicly as an “angel of health”. death’, so he filed a labor complaint against the Trust.
Lucy Letby injected air into newborns on successive days in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital in June 2016 as part of a series of attacks a year earlier in which she murdered seven babies and attempted to murder seven more.
Letby, 34, from Hereford, is serving 15 life sentences after she was found guilty at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others.
It was confirmed and last week the inquiry heard that former retail manager Letby, 78, called for the “immediate dismissal” of the two consultants when he and his wife, along with Letby, met Chambers to discuss the outcome of the complaint in December 2016. .
Giving evidence, Mr Chambers said Mr Letby was “very angry” and “threatened me with guns to the head and all sorts of things”.
He denied being manipulated by the serial killer but admitted telling Letby: “Don’t worry, we’ve got your back” and that he was “amazed” by her resilience.
Chambers explained that she wanted to try to avoid further escalation, “particularly from her father,” who had repeatedly called staff to complain about his daughter’s treatment.
Sir Duncan said he now appreciated that there was a “huge amount of sympathetic support” given to Letby from senior managers, something the board “did not take sufficient account of”.
The investigation heard some senior nurses became “too close” to Letby, who received information about the investigations into the babies’ deaths before some of the consultants and all the families.
Sir Duncan admitted it was a “serious failure” on the part of the hospital not to keep parents informed.
“We did not exercise the appropriate duty of candor towards families and that was a failure,” he said. ‘A serious failure.
Footage captured from an officer’s body camera showing the moment Letby was arrested.
“We were in the middle of a tremendously complex process that we hadn’t finished, but that shouldn’t have meant that we couldn’t keep people informed along the way, and we didn’t do that appropriately.”
Before his appointment to the Countess, Sir Duncan was head of the NHS for five years, between 1989 and 1994, which included the period when another nurse, Beverley Allitt, murdered four children and attacked six others at a hospital in Grantham, Lincs.
Although he was responsible for disseminating recommendations following the investigation into Allitt’s crimes at NHS hospitals in England and Wales, he insisted Allitt was not “at the forefront of his mind” or anyone else’s at the Countess in 2015 and 2016. .
He also appeared to choke up as he apologized for “failing to keep the babies safe” and for the “unimaginable pain” their parents have suffered.
Letby, 34, from Hereford, is serving 15 life sentences after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, including June 2015 and June 2016.
The research, which will take place at Liverpool City Hall, is expected to run until early 2025 with the results published in late autumn of that year.