It’s just propaganda that the families have said they want this to stop and it’s a disservice to the families that you are pushing one agenda instead of allowing open discussion. The families themselves want a full investigation and other people where required to be held accountable. That is the reason the inquiry is now legally enforcing witnesses to attend
The status of the inquiry into Lucy Letby’s murders has been changed to statutory, meaning witnesses will be compelled to give evidence under oath, the government has announced.
www.nursingtimes.net
Have you been following that Statutory Inquiry?
LADY JUSTICE THIRLWALL: [...] Pg.5 Day 1: In the months since the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment, there has been a huge outpouring of comment from a variety of quarters on the validity of the convictions. So far as I'm aware, it has come entirely from people who were not at the trial. Parts of the evidence have been selected and criticised, as has the conduct of the defence at trial, about which those defence lawyers can say nothing.
All of this noise has caused enormous additional distress to the parents who have already suffered far too much.
Transcript of Opening Statements: Counsel to the Inquiry
thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk
MR SKELTON: [...]
My Lady, I represent the Families of Children A, B, L, M, N and Q. [...] page 25: My Lady, finally I must make a request to the public and to the media. As you've said in your opening remarks on Tuesday, of recent weeks and days there has been a great deal of speculation about Lucy Letby's guilt and there are strongly held and articulated questions in some quarters that she may be the unlucky victim of a miscarriage of justice. You rightly said that those raising those questions would not have been present at Lucy Letby's trials, and so
unlike the juries that convicted her, they are not in a position to weigh up the evidence and reach an informed view. They are not, for example, aware that Lucy Letby was not convicted on the basis of questionable statistics but because the factual and expert medical evidence demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that she had harmed the children at the hospital. You are not conducting an assessment of all the available evidence about Lucy Letby's guilt, and this Inquiry will not consider those matters over its forthcoming evidence. But she was assisted at the time by a first rate defence team, and it is important for the public to understand the decision-making that occurred within that trial about the use of expert evidence, for example, before coming to a view about what may now amount to a miscarriage. It is also important that people monitoring the Letby case don't demonstrate precisely the type of mindset and fallibilities that I have described in this opening statements; fallibilities that demonstrated closed-mindedness when it comes to facts that don't support your own opinions. I would urge those people as a starting point to consider the Court of Appeal judgment that has rejected outright Letby's application to appeal her convictions. It takes about 90 minutes to read. It is the result of very careful analysis by very experienced senior judges; in the clearest terms it upholds the convictions and arguments that continue to underpin speculation about her trial. Finally I'd also urge you to follow the evidence that will be given to this Inquiry. As you, my Lady, stated in your opening remarks, you are not investigating her guilt. But you are investigating those that worked with her, those that knew her, and ultimately those who suspected that she was committing murder.
Those witnesses who give evidence to you will be seeking to explain why those suspicions arose and why she was not caught sooner. That, not Letby's conviction, must now be the focus of everyone's attention. Thank you, my Lady.
MR BAKER: [page 27]
My Lady, I speak on behalf of the Families of Child C, Child D, Child E, Child F, Child G, Child H, Child J, Child K, Child O, Child P and Child R. I am also instructed by the Family of Child U, a child not named on the indictment, but whose Family are assisting the Inquiry. [...] page 28: My Lady, the position of the Families in this Inquiry is unique. They are anonymised by ciphers, as are their children. Some are concerned that this has the effect of dehumanising them in the eyes of the public and media, and has cultivated an environment where people feel able to express vile opinions through social media, an environment where the serial killer who murdered or attacked their children is, by contrast humanised or even venerated. My Lady, you have met the Families. You will know that they are real people. You will understand that they have a simple and reasonable aim: to live normal lives as disconnected from the monster who harmed them as possible. They have no interest in becoming permanent attractions at a ghoulish sideshow. Their request is to be allowed to grieve in private or for their surviving children to never know of the role that they played in this story. More tragically still, they feel that revealing their identities would cause them to become the focus for ill-will. My Lady, what has society come to, where the parents of murdered or injured children should live with this fear?
Everybody who recklessly promotes conspiracy theories, or who parrots without questioning the same tired misconceptions about this case, should be ashamed of themselves.The Families, along with the jury, collectively sat through ten months of evidence and in the case of Family K, two trials. They did so with impressive dignity. They heard the evidence against her and have no doubt that she was guilty. The jury had no doubt that she was guilty. The trial was overseen by an experienced High Court judge and reviewed comprehensively and with care by the Court of Appeal. This process conducted with scrupulous fairness and with exhausting detail is arrogantly ignored by those who criticise the outcome. Those individuals offer superficial opinions based upon second or third hand accounts, expressing conclusions that it might be generous to call on occasion "half-baked". In the meantime, the Families, the jury, the judge, the Court of Appeal, and even the team who represented Letby at trial, must remain silent while others use the losses suffered by those Families as currency to build their own reputations. This is an intolerable burden for the Families to bear, and as I have said before, it is harmful and toxic to them.
Transcript of Opening Statements: Legal representatives of Core Participants
thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk
