This whole story is the most insane, fucked up thing I have read in years.
Especially the companion story, Hospital bosses ignored months of doctors' warnings about Lucy Letby. The hospital execs seem almost as callous as the murderer. Holy shit. You have to have some sort of psychological or empathetic disorder as manager or director to fail to act when babies are dying like flies, there is one common factor, and your response isn't to immediately investigate and take that common factor out of the equation as a safety measure.
They just refused to act for 3 years (where 17 babies died mysteriously or had near-fatal unexplained events in one year) - except silence, threaten and bully the doctor and seven (!) pediatric consultants who repeatedly raised the alarm and called for outside investigation. Since the murderer was removed from the neonatal ward in 2016, there has apparently been 1 baby death. In total, in 7 years.
I don't know how you would live with yourself knowing that you actively aided a serial killer by refusing to listen to multiple people warning you about them and pleading with you to act.
Letby put in a formal complaint saying that she was being bullied by the doctors who were complaining about her. A panel upheld her complaint and the doctors had to apologise.
Yes, it's impossible that they didn't at least entertain the idea that she was guilty with so many incidents and so many people speaking out. And the execs immediate response to that is to... silence the whistleblowers, to maintain the reputation of the hospital. Absolutely repulsive. They come very close to being accessories to the murders, in my opinion.
It has to be Criminal negligence at the very least.
The reviews they themselves commissioned (when they should have gone to the police) said at least 4 deaths should be forensically investigated and they ignored it.
Having seen the top end of an NHS trust some of it is similar to leadership at a big business in terms of attitudes. They care much more about reputational damage than dealing with problems sometimes.
They just refused to act for 3 years (where 17 babies died mysteriously or had near-fatal unexplained events in one year) - except silence, threaten and bully the doctor and seven (!) pediatric consultants who repeatedly raised the alarm and called for outside investigation. Since the murderer was removed from the neonatal ward in 2016, there has apparently been 1 baby death. In total, in 7 years.
They also made them write and sign a written apology to her.
And try to force them to attend a mediation session with the murderer, actively discourage them from going to the police... Fail to report the baby deaths appropriately to the NHS, fail to do the initial investigation about the first three deaths the executive team had decided on. Fail to present to the board of trustees that the conclusion of two external reviews were that some of the baby deaths should be forensically investigated. Fail to do any investigation. Refuse to reassign the murderer for months while more murders and attempted murders happen, then reassign them into a position where they have access to manipulate the narrative. And additionally order the whistleblowers to cease email communications about the issue...
I think I missed a few things as well, there's just too many things wrong in this picture.
Some of these chief execs may be corporate psychopaths themselves, and they'd be more interested in arse covering and making sure they're protected than having external powerful strangers poking thru everything they do.
I think what makes me even sadder is that Ian Chambers (one of the directors at the hospital where Letby committed her crimes) left his job shortly after Letby was charged… only now to be interim director of nursing at a Salford NHS trust.
He spent years enabling Letby and covering up her crimes, gaslighting and silencing numerous senior doctors… only to go somewhere else and continue managing at a high level the moment that there was a risk of facing consequences for his failures.
I don’t know what’s more disturbing- the fact that Chambers moved on once he realised the jig was up, or that another trust ACTUALLY HIRED HIM. Disgusting.
You’d probably deny, deflect, and accuse everyone else of 20/20 hindsight, while taking the one piece of your soul that’s shouting no! I failed those kids! and packing it away in a closet with no door where no one can hear it scream.