‘Maybe I have done something wrong to the babies’, Lucy Letby told support worker

Lucy Letby
Lucy Letby

Lucy Letby emailed her occupational health advisor saying “maybe I have done something wrong to the babies”, the Thirlwall Inquiry has heard.

Kathryn de Beger told the inquiry that she was appointed to support Letby by the Countess of Chester Hospital after the nurse was removed from the neonatal ward amid concerns babies were dying and collapsing during her shifts.

The inquiry, which is looking into how the deaths might have been prevented, was shown emails between the pair in which Letby said she blamed herself.

In one email from April 2017, just weeks before police opened an investigation, Letby wrote: “I feel as though this must be my fault and maybe I have done something wrong to the babies and blame myself.”

However, Ms de Berger said she had been unconcerned by the email.

“I believe that mediation between the clinicians and Lucy Letby had broken down and she was very distressed about that,” she told the hearing.

“It was a plan to return her to the neonatal unit at the beginning of April and that had been paused and she was very upset about that.

“She was very very distressed, very confused about why she couldn’t go back. So I felt that was an explanation of all those mixed emotions.”

‘She thought they must hate her’

Andrew Bershadski, counsel for the inquiry, asked whether, with hindsight, Ms de Berger felt she should have mentioned the comments.

“No, I don’t, because she says ‘maybe I have done something’, she doesn’t say she has, and I know she was very distressed and stressed,” she said.

“All the conversations that we’ve had previous to this, she had always told me that she’d done nothing wrong, why were people doing this to her? and why did the consultants hate her so much? I heard that many times.”

The hearing was also shown a section of Ms de Beger’s police statement in which she said that Lucy “asked for meetings on anniversaries of some of the babies’ deaths as she was particularly distressed”.

In the statement, she said: “During these meetings, Lucy did speak to me about the parents of the babies. She felt distressed and upset, but how much more distressed and upset the parents must be feeling because they had lost their babies.

“These conversations were around the time of the anniversary dates, probably July 2017. She also talked often about the consultants involved; she couldn’t understand why they were accusing her. She thought they must hate her so much to do this to her.”

Mr Bershadski asked whether Letby’s distress was “unusual” compared to other nurses who were being supported by human resources because of the high number of deaths on the neonatal unit.

Ms de Berger said that she could not recall another situation when a member of staff had become distressed on the anniversary of a patient’s death.

But she said she was not overly concerned about the behaviour.

“She spoke about being particularly distressed that week because it was, as she recalled, an anniversary of one of the baby’s deaths,” Ms de Berger said.

“She said she was feeling particularly distressed but how much more distressed would the parents be at the loss of their baby? That’s how she framed it.

“But then we would have had a meeting that was just about her managing her feelings, her symptoms and talking about coping strategies.

“I see members of staff who are under investigation for all sorts of reasons. It could be they’ve allegedly committed theft, fraud, been racist, whatever it is, and I offer support.

“That does not influence what I do in my practice, because it’s impartial, it’s non-judgemental.”

Letby was convicted of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven more at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.

The nurse is hoping to appeal her conviction for the murder of Baby K and is also planning to take the case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.