The parents of Lucy Letby asked hospital bosses for an urgent meeting over their “intolerable anguish” after police began investigating the serial killer nurse, a public inquiry has heard.
John and Susan Letby wrote to the Countess of Chester Hospital’s then board chairman Sir Duncan Nichol two months after Cheshire Constabulary was brought in to probe the increased number of baby deaths on the neonatal unit in 2015 and 2016.
The couple told Sir Duncan: “It is now one year since our nightmare began. There is a saying ‘innocent until proven guilty’ but it doesn’t seem to apply to Lucy.
“She is still the only one of all the staff on the neonatal unit to be singled out for punishment.
“Whilst we appreciate that things cannot be finalised until the police investigation has ended we have to have a way of moving forward in terms of her career for however long the investigation takes.”
Requesting an “urgent meeting” to discuss matters, they added: “We would appreciate the meeting to be as soon as possible as the anguish this situation is causing has become intolerable.”
Sir Duncan told the Thirlwall Inquiry into the events surrounding Letby’s crimes that he did not respond to the email sent on July 7 2017, which was also sent to then chief executive Tony Chambers.
Letby was redeployed from the unit in July 2016 to an administrative role in the Risk and Patient Safety department after consultant paediatricians voiced fears she may have deliberately harmed infants.
The nurse was said to have felt that two consultants, Dr Stephen Brearey and Dr Ravi Jayaram, had “orchestrated a campaign” against her and that some doctors on the unit referred to her publicly as “angel of death”.
Last week the inquiry heard that Mr Letby called for the “instant dismissal” of the two consultants when he and his wife, together with Letby, met Mr Chambers at the hospital in December 2016.
Giving evidence, Mr Chambers said Mr Letby was “very angry” and was “threatening guns to my head and all sorts of things”.
In another meeting Mr Chambers was noted to have said “Lucy, don’t worry, we have got your back” but he explained to the inquiry he wanted to try to avoid further escalation “particularly from her father”.
The families were not in the big picture. We did not exercise appropriate duty of candour towards the families and that was a failure. A serious failure
Giving evidence on Monday, Sir Duncan told the inquiry he now appreciated there was a “huge amount of sympathetic support” given to Letby by senior managers of which the board was “not sufficiently sighted of”.
The inquiry has previously heard evidence from the families of Letby’s victims that they were “kept in the dark” by the hospital.
Asked by Leanne Woods, representing some of the families, where they fitted in the “big picture”, Sir Duncan said: “The families were not in the big picture.
“We did not exercise appropriate duty of candour towards the families and that was a failure. A serious failure.
“We were in the middle of a hugely complex process that we had not finished but that should not have meant we could not have kept people informed along the way, and we didn’t do that appropriately.”
Hospital executives, supported by the board, opted to commission a series of reviews into the increased mortality rather than call the police who were finally asked to investigate in May 2017.
Sir Duncan apologised to the families as he said the Countess of Chester had “failed to keep babies safe in their care”
Letby, 34, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.
The inquiry, sitting at Liverpool Town Hall, is expected to sit until early 2025, with findings published by late autumn of that year.
