12/5/2023 0 Comments Usher instagramGilby, by her own account, took a different approach and set about trying to understand the facts shortly after her arrival at the trust. And those questions – from the evidence that I’ve seen – were not asked,” she says. “There was data and there was evidence to be asking all the right questions. While Gilby says she is “not judge and jury”, she believes the biggest “omission” of the trust was “not having an open mind to thinking the unthinkable”. The crimes that have been committed are appalling and I am deeply saddened by what has come to light”.Ĭhambers’ response, and those of other NHS managers, will be examined in the statutory inquiry, announced earlier this month. “He said, ‘I’m just worried about a wrongful conviction’.”Īfter Letby was found guilty, Chambers said the trial and police investigation showed “the complex nature of the issues raised. “He was horrified, but not in the way that I expected.… he expressed concern about Lucy,” she says. He had presided over the hospital throughout the period of the nurse’s known killing spree, and she assumed he would be horrified. Gilby – who by that point was chief executive of the trust – telephoned her predecessor Tony Chambers to let him know “as a courtesy”. Some managers’ apparent reluctance to entertain the idea that Letby was a killer continued for years, even after she was charged in 2020. “There was a belief that there would be no charges and that the focus of our energies should be on what were we going to do about these paediatricians.”ĭuring Letby’s trial, the jury heard how a group of consultants in the neonatal unit had repeatedly raised the alarm about the nurse, but that their concerns were dismissed.Īccording to reports, they were allegedly forced to write a letter of apology to the killer nurse, and at least one consultant had to sit with her and apologise in person. “I couldn’t actually identify anybody whose concern was that murders had taken place in the neonatal unit,” Gilby, 60, recalls. Even after Letby’s arrest – just a few weeks before Gilby assumed her new role – she says she was shocked to find a “very fixed view that the police have got this wrong”. However, at the time that Gilby accepted her post at the hospital, Letby had yet to be arrested and senior figures at the trust seemed to believe she was the victim of a campaign against her. The police are currently reviewing the records of 4,000 babies, as part of an ongoing investigation into other infants she may have harmed. Last month, she was convicted of murdering seven children and attempting to murder six others, making her one of Britain’s worst serial killers. Gilby had just discovered a trove of papers about the neonatal unit which, to her mind, showed that the hospital had bungled its response to a series of unexplained deaths and collapses of babies in its care.Īs is now known, these disastrous outcomes were the work of Lucy Letby, a neonatal nurse who worked at the Countess of Chester, in Cheshire. “I remember sitting on my own in that office… and I thought, ‘What have I done?’” She gave birth to the youngest of her three children at the hospital, and spent part of her training there.īut within days of becoming its medical director and deputy chief executive in 2018, she was filled with dread. Joining the Countess of Chester should have been a kind of homecoming for Dr Susan Gilby.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |