One dead baby, a tragedy.
Two dead babies, a concern.
Fourteen dead babies, I don’t care about her. She’s fucked. But what fucking hospital has 14 dead babies? Are you saying you cant identify a pattern after 4 or 5?
The heads of the hospital should be gutted.
Call that place “The dead baby hospital” because wtf.
Multiple doctors came forward to say that their concerns were ahot down by hospital administrators. They cared more about a bad mark on their record than a someone harming newborns under their watch.
Administrators should be gutted in a public square. And let’s not stop with these ones.
Are administrators actually going to face any punishment?
The senior nurse who was in charge of her was suspended the other day. No idea if any others will face consequences.
Two of the administrators have since retired. One of which decided to bugger off and retire in France.
She worked in neo natal. That is already “at risk” births. Premature. Addicts. All sorts of things that are risky to begin with. I’m not justifying anything she or the administration did. However it is to be expected at times in those units. Sounds heartless but my family was in those departments for many years.
Okay but the mortality numbers for her unit pretty clearly and obviously pointed to the fact that something was happening here other than the natural deaths one would expect in a NICU
Absolutely. However it took more time because it’s an inherent risk for the unit.
They said other than when she was working, and before and after she left the number was around or close to 0-2 per year, so pretty obviously an anomaly and certainly worthy of an investigation. The doctors that reported her were punished by the administrators and actually forced to apologise to her so I think they are pretty guilty in the circumstances.
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Kill a bunch of babies? Jail forever.
Ignore someone killing babies to keep your £250,000 a year job safe? That’s just good neoliberaling.
How is it liberal, neo or not, dumdum?
@Potatos_are_not_friends @Lanky_Pomegranate530
She murdered 7 babies and attempted to murder 6 others.
Please read the article instead of just the headline.
That’s still ridiculous!
I know, how do you manage to “attempt” to kill an infant? They aren’t exactly known for being durable.
She alternated between giving them insulin, injecting air into their bloodstream, and overfeeding them. The babies that recovered most likely did so either because they weren’t in bad shape to begin with, or because they coded while a competent doctor or nurse was on call and able to stabilize them, or because of luck. One of the babies she attempted to kill survived, but has severe cerebral palsy and requires a feeding tube. There’s no definitive way to say that the nurse’s attempts on her life caused her condition, as she was already a preemie and at risk for multiple complications, but I’d say the lack of durability definitely led to at least some lasting damage for some of the babies that recovered.
What was the purpose of over feeding them?
I’m guessing to kill them
I’m not a doctor so this is me just trying to piece together info from other sources, but it sounds like overfeeding can cause a lot of issues that premature babies aren’t developed enough to deal with on their own, like severe gas and bloating. Depending on how delicate the baby is, this might lead to a cascade of problems that are difficult to diagnose, treat, and recover from. With babies that underdeveloped, even something as benign as eating too much can become deadly.
But again, not a doctor, and a quick Google search turned up a bunch of complicated articles that don’t really clarify. I just know that it was one of her strategies for worsening the babies’ condition.
Depending on why the infant is in the neonatal unit, specific food can have extremely deleterious effects. Disorders of metabolism are rare, but not as rare as you think, and most are controlled with specific diets. So if she purposely fed the wrong food, and in large amounts, it could absolutely kill certain populations. If an otherwise ‘healthy’ infant, the most likely cause due to overfeeding would be vomiting, and then aspiration of the vomitus. Infants, especially neonates, are very unlikely to be able to protect their airway. Even if a patient is already on the operating table, survival rates of aspirating vomitus is only 50% or so. That’s why you don’t eat/drink before surgery, btw.
Oh okay it’s fine then.
Oh how fucking silly of me that she murdered 7 babies instead of my original number.
Lots of people die in hospitals every day. Even babies. That’s why they collect data, in order to see a pattern when it emerges.
Looks like she might have targeted higher risk babies so it’s harder to catch, and of course many murders seem to be really good at faking feelings and appearing innocent. One part in the article makes me think all the victims were premature births, and that some of them were especially at risk due to that.
I’d say deaths in hospital aren’t rare. Especially in premature babies where survival could go either way. If you’re going to murder babies, a hospital is probably the place where you’re going to go unnoticed the longest.
That said, the timeline is pretty damning. Over a decade she’d still be doing it, but this was all in the space of just over a year.
It’s weird to me the level of deranged guilt her diary entries show.
We are responsible for our actions. I just wonder wtf was going on in her head that allowed her to keep doing it. She hated herself for it. Like a lot.
That’s the sort of evil I understand and can cope with. There is something wrong with her we don’t have the capacity to understand. Some chemical imbalance or growth pushing on her brain in a certain area.
It’s the people with nothing wrong with them but allow evil to happen like the hospital administrators that gets me.
A lot of time there is nothing visibly wrong with them and their background doesn’t explain it
Sadly, we don’t understand the brain yet. Otherwise perhaps certain things could be visible. I know that there is some research how activity patterns in brains of “psychopaths” difffer from other people. But it is all still on shaky grounds.
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Yes, but it’s difficult to access. You need to want to get the care and actively campaign to be referred.
And that’s the “easy” things like anxiety or garden variety depression.
As soon as it gets complicated it’s a whole other story.
If she never tried to seek it out, then it doesn’t even matter as it appears she didn’t give off any “I murder babies” vibes to the extent that the investigation was delayed beyond a reasonable length of time because she was not suspected of such a thing.
Not to mention, if she was diagnosed with something severe, she would probably lose her job if not her entire career. A lot of people avoid seeking help for that reason.
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Ok, but she shouldn’t have had her job.
Easy to say from where we sit. Harder when that job is what’s keeping a roof over your head and food on your table.
Right, but she was compulsively murdering babies in the hospital. Can we all agree that she shouldn’t have had a job as a nurse in a NICU? That doesn’t feel like a statement with room for debate.
But… The comment is about why the murderer perhaps didn’t seek mental health. Because she didn’t want to lose her job. Who is saying that this was a good job for her to have?!
Funniest joke we heard all day
So a baby murderer should have been allowed to keep her job and continue to put innocent lives in danger because you 1) baselessly think she’s mentally ill, and 2) think that a condition as extreme as you’re implying shouldn’t be regarded with consequence.
I never said that she should be allowed to keep her job.
Ok, but she shouldn’t have had her job.
Of course not, but that’s not looking at it from the perspective of her mental illness.
From her point of view, keeping her job was likely a high priority.
So weird that private medical info is only like sorta private except if they wanna use it
I mean, on the one hand I agree.
On the other hand, if you dream of murdering babies or crashing planes, perhaps the hospital or airline you work for should be informed.
Real talk though, you can’t punish thought crimes.
Who TF dreams of crashing planes that does not fly planes? The incidence of plane-crash-dreamers is most certainly highly concentrated amongst pilots.
As are those who dream of killing babies concentrated around those who spend time around them.
Most of us use our brains to filter out things that we don’t want to come to actualization. But the bad thoughts are in there. 94% of us will experience intrusive thoughts at some point in our lives. All to jail?
And yet you think people should have their guns taken away for their thoughts or their words, so what makes you think you’re any better?
But the bad thoughts are in there. 94% of us will experience intrusive thoughts at some point in our lives. All to jail?
Imagine treating intrusive thoughts and killing babies as somehow equivalent. And that psychologists aren’t trained to know the difference and who to flag, and who not to. At least that’s what you’d say when pushing for red flag laws.
Or like get it solved before it becomes a problem? And have a professional medical opinion reccomend if you should work somewhere to not based on a risk assessment, not just a blanket statement
And that attitude is why they don’t seek help
Ok, but the alternative is knowing a nurse directly in charge of infants wants to murder them and still letting her go into work. You’re basically an accomplice at that point.
Every mental health professional I have seen over the years is a mandatory reporter (in the US). Meaning they stated to me, upfront… if you have thoughts of hurting others OR yourself that WILL be reported. I didn’t have those thoughts so I probably put that out of my mind rather quickly.
But after reading these comments, and the articles I can see both sides of the argument. Those suffering from these thoughts may well feel scared to admit them knowing they would have consequences for their jobs/ or legal trouble from admitting them. I’ve no idea who they would be “reporting” it to. I assume the mental health worker would attempt to send the individual to a psychiatric hospital so they can get help .
Isn’t there protections for that though? That may fall under some medical status protection. Also when diagnosed you also get medicine which may help your brain balance.
Not the right time. Not the right place.
This woman murdered a lot of babies. Your comment is wildly inappropriate.
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Nah, not self defense.
That would not be murder, then. Murder requires premeditation.
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All murder is homicide, but not all homicide is murder.
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You may have had a different experience than I had, but in my local authority area, access beyond your GP is very difficult. The list is so long they try to avoid referrals, and if you’re unwell the ability to advocate for yourself is diminished.
Some would rather chuck a Prozac at you and hope that’ll fix it.
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There’s a big fucking difference between “i hate myself and want to die” and “might murder a half dozen babies this month”.
I think you might be asking a bit much of public mental health care, yeah?
No, not really. Both are psychiatric issues that need to be adressed.
She might think she didn’t have a problem and rationalized her actions
I read the article and didn’t see any diary stuff. Do you have a link to it?
You’d have to look at what she got out of it emotionally. Other hospital killers did it for a combination of “They were a burden”, “I was putting them out of their misery” and a sense of godlike power of life and death. Some started doing it for seeming mercy reasons but got so comfortable with doing it that they started killing patients because they annoyed them.
I think you’re perhaps ignoring what I said about the content of her entries.
She suffered from her actions, emotionally. A lot. It’s quite clear she got nothing positive emotionally from it:
"I am evil I did this”.
The note added: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them.
“I am a horrible person.
“I hate myself. There are no words. I am an awful person. I pay every day for that.”
“I panic I’ll never have children. I don’t deserve mum and dad. The world is better off without me. I did this, why me.”
“No one will ever know what happened and why . . . I’m a failure.”
“I am a problem to those who do know me . . . it would be much better for everyone if I just went away. I just want to be happy.”
“Kill me” and “Help me” along with the names of some the babies she murdered.
In one, Letby scrawled: “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t live like this.
“No one will ever understand or appreciate what’s like.”
She got something out of it though. No one was forcing her to do it so regardless of her entries at the moment of choice she wanted to do it. She may have felt regret or self-hate after the fact but it is clear that those feelings eventually passed.
Regret or self-hate can just as well turn into driving factors to continue doing harm to others. When you are mentally ill, logic starts completely bending and finally making a 180 degrees turn from normal
There’s a whole lot of mental health issues in there.
I don’t think it’s possible to really understand a person that is that level of abnormal. Or rather, when you have empathy in a somewhat normal range, I think it’s really hard to understand how not having empathy works.
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The whole thing is unconscionable imho. Obviously firstly, for her to prey on, and hurt/ murder newborn babies? I can’t wrap my mind around that. At all.
From the admins at the hospital ignoring the worried reports from the physicians who worked on the unit WITH her. The administration went so far as to demand those same physicians go to mediation with her and write out apology letters. Admins accepted her complaints of harassment over the doctor’s concerns that there was a pattern to the infants collapsing. If the DR’s refused to do that they were threatened to lose their jobs!
Then you have the fact that she was in a caregiver profession. Generally the public trusts caregivers/doctors. No one wants to believe that if you have a family member in the hospital, they are at risk of being MURDERED! That’s supposed to be a safe space from the world!
No one will be able to repair the public’s perception of the medical profession if medical professionals kill their patients.
This whole incident is terrifying. Reading the article, it linked to other articles, which I of course followed… that was a eye opening experience. I had no idea that there were multiple occasions that this had happened. Counting babies, adults, and the elderly. I can’t make sense of this.
Honestly the administration should be doing just as much time. Somewhere in their cushy offices, they ran the numbers and decided that the life of multiple infants was worth less than their brand. I wish them all a very long stay in gen pop.
I remember watching a (at least somewhat) factual documentary about another serial killer who murdered elderly people in care. Apparently, even when there are multiple suspicions, even from previous employers, some hospitals refuse to take action. In the documentary it was speculated that this is because it’s apparently hard to get enough personnel. So if someone does an otherwise good job on the surface they won’t look closer. Hospitals are a business, and management only cares whether or not it’s profitable.
That’s scary. I read some articles last night following links after this article. From nurses who like the thrill of “saving lives” (causing patients to code so they can be the “hero”). To doctors killing to get written into their patients’ wills. To one male nurse who killed his elderly patients, by all accounts simply because he hated geriatric women?
The crimes were years ago, but the system needs to be fixed. If a medical professional is suspected of causing harm to their patients, then they should be investigated while being suspended (or removed from direct patient care during the investigation).
If ultimately the accusations are unfounded, then great. However for those times the investigation shows wrong doing. That’s when shit needs to get real. Police need to be called in. Medical/nursing board of licensing should be involved. Otherwise, a hospital should be liable for lawsuits for wrongdoing in my opinion.
They should be suspended entirely instead of removed from direct patient care because they could still cause harm indirectly
Also.just like bad cops, bad nurses can jump around the country as well. This also makes it difficult to stop these people from committing more crime. It’s almost the same scenario as well, in regards to people being aware of what’s going on . I wanted to add veterans to your list as well. Search Kirsten Gilbert…
Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good.
Ah. I see what you did there.
Ok I know this bitch should die but this judge should do at least three months in a level two for this fit.
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That’s literally his work clothes, including the wig. That’s just what judges in the UK wear. He probably ain’t a fan either.
And practically all the courts in countries that used to be part of the Empire/Commonwealth wear pretty much identical outfits. The whole justice system was founded in the UK.
Sometime I swear the UK is stuck in a previous century
tradition: ancestral peer pressure. fuuuug that
He looks like he steals candy from 18th century children.
What? He’s a little dandy boy. Nothing wrong with that.
There’s a lot of hate here that I can empathise with and I’m trying to not take calls for her to commit suicide or be murdered/ tortured in prison literally. It’s difficult to express hate verbally without reference to physical violence that underscores it. There’s sentiment here that life in prison isn’t enough and I tend to agree, but not in a way I’ve seen talked about here or anywhere else.
Letby should be imprisoned for life, no question. But that shouldn’t stop us asking more questions about what happened here. Do we treat Letby’s murders as isolated, unique cases and expect them to never be repeated? Lock her away and continue business as usual? It’s possible that things aren’t so simple and we need to look into how somebody like Letby got away with so much for so long and maybe also why she began doing something quite so horrific.
Mental illness is an unfortunate reality to come to grips with because we are steadily recognising that it is caused by relationships an affected person has with their environment. That means there is a share of responsibility in all of us and the systems/ institutions we have built to make sure this does not happen again and that we identify it before it’s too late.
It’s entirely likely that Letby will turn to self harm, or other extreme outcomes of poor mental health. We can’t ask anyone to sympathise with her after what she has done, but we can hope to treat mental illness better in the future and offer help to those who need it, before it’s too late. And I don’t mean too late in the sense of killing people, because that’s not what all mentally ill people do.
There should definitely be better trigger points added to healthcare and warnings to signify either errors of judgement or malice. My opinion of the management involved in this case is also very low. The parents also deserve justice with the failings in that area.
The mental health side of things should be taught in schools to let people know when things are abnormal. No one tells you that it is normal to have some of the syndromes that affect all of us in our daily lives. Without realising there is an issue, people can easily blow things up and create spirals that are hard to get out of. Mental health should not just be down to professionals, just like physical health having some awareness of good/bad can go a long way.
I appreciate the leveled comment. It’s difficult to separate one’s more reactive side of anger with the reasonable side. There’s a reason the family of victims of crimes can’t be jurors. I, too, would not be able to hold it together if I was in the position of those impacted by this person. Still, like you said it’s vital we look at it from a position of a civilized society. The lens of Justice should not be focused on vengeance or punishment — both proven ineffective in terms of recidivism. Rather, the true pillars of justice involve: Separation from society, and rehabilitation (when possible). Arguably deterrence, but that is questionable.
Someone like this should not just be sentenced to life imprisonment (as a precaution to civilized society), but also subject to scientific study from both life and after death in autopsy. Every. Single. Part of her makeup should be dissected from checking for tumors (Tower shooter), analyzing her brain chemistry, relentlessly studying her past and psychoanalyzing her.
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Insulting the userbase by implying anyone calling for the death penalty is angry? Check
Bringing up mental illness when it has nothing to do with the case? Check
Implying the baby murderer is mentally ill with no basis whatsoever? Check
“Hot” (in their minds) closeup pic of young 20-something baby murdering
nursehorse-faced bitch smiling? CheckLooks like we got ourselves a SIMP in here, boys
The point is to be more nuanced and actually get to the bottom of why she did what she did. By default, people don’t have the capacity to just straight up murder helpless children. If someone does that, something is seriously wrong. What happened in this case? Is it mental illness? Is that nurse this incompetent (unlikely)? Why was this left unchecked for so long since doctors have seemingly voiced some concerns in the past?
Even if turns out to be mental illness, that doesn’t mean that she should go back to business with a warning, she is still a threat to other people.
By default, people don’t have the capacity to just straight up murder helpless children.
Whoa there, citation needed. Most of us don’t do it, but we all have the capacity to do it.
Capacity as in mental capacity. People don’t just wanna murder people. Even if you think you’re in the right, killing people kinda makes people feel bad.
By default, people don’t have the capacity to just straight up murder helpless children.
😆
What happened in this case? Is it mental illness?
😆 😆 😆
You people are a fuckin’ riot
Hot
Dude, splooge one off please, your eyes aren’t working
I am not the one who thinks she’s hot. It’s these losers simping after a horse-faced baby murdering bitch you need to talk to.
I don’t think I do.
Implying the baby murderer is mentally ill with no basis whatsoever?
Did you actually just type that with no sarcasm like baby murderer doesn’t give reasonable suspicion of mental illness?
Are you that desperate for pussy that you are defending a baby murderer with no sarcasm?
These bizarre attacks are silly, no one said they want to sleep with her - people are just pointing out that emotional responses are easy and feel good but they don’t help - you’re full of hate and I understand that but it’s not going to stop the same thing happening again, we’re saying that stopping the same thing happening again is more important.
I hear prison is really fun for child murderers.
Strangely enough there is another baby murdering nurse in UK prison called Beverley Allitt who in 1993 killed children the same way. She’s been inside for 30 years and is actually eligible for parole since she hasn’t received a whole life order (i.e. to die in prison). Doesn’t mean she’ll get parole but expect an outcry if she ever does.
And here I thought this was the nurse from the 90s, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverley_Allitt
But, no. This apparently happened in 2015. Creepy how both cases are so similar.
No kidding… How strange they both were UK serial baby killers. And Beverley Allitt was convicted before her 25 birthday if I looked at it right. She was caught in '91, so she was doing it as a 23-year-old girl…
ETA: they were both mid-twenties when the murders occurred. I don’t know why I got hung up on that, it is just shocking to me that they were so young and doing something so deplorable. I just imagine some older deranged woman doing something like that. Either way…unreal.
Apparently this one is eligible for parole now, after receiving 13 life sentences.
Tldr/ootl… How and why did she do this?
Apparently she wrote in her private diary stuff like “I am evil for doing this” and “I am a horrible person for doing these things”. IMO this points more towards a massive mental health disorder rather than someone purposely doing evil acts to achieve their own selfish desires. It sounds like she had very unwanted intrusive impulses and she was unable to stop herself from acting on them.
Don’t get me wrong, her being aware that her acts were wrong doesn’t give her a get out of jail pass. The awareness of her drives being wrong means the onus was on her to get help to prevent her from acting on those drives. But IMO it does make clear that there was no motive, it was likely caused by a compulsion mental illness. This is all IMO though.
The fact that she recognized how horrible the things she did was and didn’t immediately yeet herself off the roof just makes it worse
You’re not helping the stigma against mental illness here
People who are awful and know it should kill themselves
they said while being awful intentionally
Leaving an internet comment and murdering double digit newborns is an interesting equivalence
Most mental illness doesn’t involve murdering anyone. I’d say Ms Murder Nurse is the one really not helping the stigma against mental illness.
You’re not helping the stigma against mental illness by automatically assuming she committed the murders as a result of it. You are not a psychologist, more importantly not her psychologist, so you do not have the authority to make that kind of a determination.
Claiming she committed the murders because she is mentally ill is an ableist act.
Being mentally ill doesn’t mean you’re going to murder anyone, certainly not babies.
You’re ableist, and unempathetic.
dude, just stfu.
No. I will not be silent in face of blatant ableism.
It’s not fucking ableism. You’re jumping through hopps to invent shit the OP didn’t say just to have an argument. Get a grip.
She murdered 7 infants talk to her about the stigma against mental illness.
Babies supercede mental illness in the real world.
That’s a false dichotomy. We can make things better for both.
You can resurrect dead babies?
The point is that if you destigmatize mental illness then she could’ve gotten help for herself AND as a result no babies would’ve been killed. Saying “she should’ve killed herself” at best will do nothing, and at worst will prevent other mentally ill people from getting help for themselves, AND thus will lead to more innocent people becoming their victims.
According to this article they never conclusively determined what her motive was. There were theories that it my have been Munchausen’s by proxy or simple sadism in response to seeing the families grieve, but nothing was ever proven. As for her methods, this article details them and I’ll leave you to read up on that, not going to detail it here. Suffice it to say, this woman deserves to never see the light of day again.
She used her position as a nurse to intentionally kill newborns.
Before reading, I initially thought that maybe there was a reason like she could have mental health issues or that she could be just someone extremely incompetent at her job… But the more you read, the more this makes me want to vomit… It’s truly sickening!
She’s essentially a serial killer so I was looking into her past. Her parents were extremely over bearing, clingy and guilt trippers who were always smothering her, so I’m sure that contributed, but there’s gotta be more in her past that led her to this.
Lol you’re describing probably a quarter of parents.
Some people can be born with effectively broken brains.
Take any trait, generosity, comedic ability, levels of empathy, etc. All of these traits can be modulated by DNA (and epigenetics of course). It only makes sense that out of the millions of babies born, some baby will come with little ability to experience empathy. That baby could grow up to take pleasure in sick things, to grow into a sadist.
To be clear, by broken brains I’m not referring to learning disabilities or people who disagree with me etc. I’m referring to brains that cannot function in society due to an accident of birth – brains that have effectively chosen a life strategy incompatible with with the stable society the rest of our brains have chosen.
Also to be clear, those people with broken brains?.. They are mostly in positions of power.
Some people are just born wrong.
That phrase is a bit of a grey area based on context and can be both highly bigoted and offensive if used in the context of hate speech and / or discrimination
Oh my god
I’d like to think that someone who’s born wrong can still be “right” if they have loving and nurturing parents who get them high quality mental healthcare. It’s much nicer than having to accept it’s totally out of our control.
extremely over bearing, clingy and guilt trippers
Yah, I don’t any parents like that. looks around the room
Yeah, I was looking for a reason and found none. She is just sadistic.
I mean. . . not immediately, right?
Whats it matter? We will all die in a prison of our own making.
I’ll be honest with ya, existential dread was not on the list of things I was expecting while browsing lemmy today.
Well that’s on you.
There isn’t a punishment anywhere close to severe enough for stains like this.
I wished it weren’t so but no amount of punishment will bring the dead back nor dissuade others who might do similar as her.
Serves her right
Well deserved.
