Like everyone else in the UK, I've spent the last half a week unhealthily fixated on the disturbing case of Lucy Letby, the smiley and seemingly kind young nurse who was found guilty on Friday of being one of the most prolific child murderers in history, seemingly without any motive or any history of any kind of criminal behaviour. The case has baffled psychologists, and shines a light on the inherent problems within NHS hierarchy, where doctors' concerns about Letby's conduct were repeatedly ignored.
This is clearly a deeply disturbing case for many reasons. Stories involving people who hurt children will always be emotive, and when the perpetrator is in a position of trust and looks to be what we think of as a 'normal person' it's even more so. Letby herself was quite rightly sentenced to life for each child she was found guilty of murdering, and ordered to serve what is called a 'whole life tariff', meaning her case will not be considered by the parole board and she will therefore never be released from jail. I'm not entirely sure I agree with whole-life tariffs; since their introduction in 1983, it seems like they've benefitted politicians more than anyone else. But on the other hand, so many violent criminals are released from prison when they clearly have not been rehabilitated and go on to reoffend that I wouldn't say I exactly object to Lucy Letby getting one. Let's just say that of all the improvements I would make to the criminal justice system, the abolition of whole-life tariffs would not be in the top ten.
I've been intrigued though that the part of this case that we seem to be focussing most strongly on is the fact that she decided not to come to court for the last few days of her trial, meaning she missed her guilty verdicts, the victim impact statements and her sentencing. There have been howls of outrage from the media and from the general public over this, and calls for the law to be changed so that murderers are forced to attend court and hear these things. In a recent poll in The Mirror, 95% of respondents said that they believed murderers should be forced to attend, 4% said they shouldn't and 1% weren't sure. That is an astonishingly high level of agreement in this day and age.
I was one of the 4% who said they shouldn't, as although I understand the impulse, I'm really not sure that this idea has been thought through, for a number of reasons. Firstly because how realistically would this work? If the person was determined not to come, it would take a lot of manpower to physically drag them from their cell. Even if they were forced to appear in the dock, how do you make them be respectful? How do you stop them from struggling to escape, or singing loudly so no one can hear? Charge them with contempt of court? Where's the deterrent in that, if they're never getting out anyway? Gag them? Tie them up? Sedate them? More? Is that the best use of taxpayers' money? Even if we did work out some way of forcing a convicted criminal to sit quietly, wouldn't all of this be far more traumatic for the victims of the person's crimes? This is meant to be about them, not about the perpetrator.
Some people have suggested that rather than forcing someone to appear in person, to have the impact statements transmitted to their cell via a video link, in a way that they cannot turn it off. This is a slightly more reasonable suggestion, however it's still fraught with flaws. It's still possible to zone out and ignore what you're being shown; you can't force someone to really take in what you're saying to them. And also, I think in the Letby case specifically, there's a massive elephant in the room that we aren't taking into account. Lucy Letby is a grief addict. Her only motive for these horrific acts seems to be that she enjoys being around people who are suffering. It wasn't enough for her to simply kill the babies; she wanted to be around the victims afterwards, watch their grief, dress the children in their funeral outfits, search for posts on social media. Wouldn't forcing her to hear the impact statements actually have the potential to be pleasurable for her? It's sickening to think of grieving parents reading their impact statements and the person who caused that grief to be listening and getting off on it. Not that I've ever been in that situation, but it seems far more appropriate for these people to be reading this stuff in a room full of people who care and have empathy for them.
Although the idea of forcing murderers to hear their sentences isn't very practical, I can't blame individual members of the public for thinking it. The idea of a beloved nurse, someone who has been entrusted to care for your baby, abusing her position in such a hideous way is obscene. It's natural to be deeply upset, and a bit reactionary, when you hear about something as horrible as this. We aren't thinking straight, and that's to be expected. What isn't right is the fact that the media has taken advantage of people's grief in this way. The media should be our beacon of social responsibility; to present the news in a factual and logical way, and for us to be able to rely on what we're being told. In constantly reporting on the calls to force murderers to attend court, journalists are deliberately exploiting the victims of Lucy Letby, and the human compassion that society feels for them, to sell their product. I find this deeply offensive.
And then there's this.
Look at these reactions from the Prime Minister, the Justice Secretary and the Leader of the Opposition.
Are they looking to create better bereavement services for families who have lost a child? No. Are they looking to fund the NHS more, so that more babies can be saved? No. Are they looking to improve NHS training and reporting procedures, in the hope that staff members like Letby can be noticed and stopped sooner? No. Their primary interest is in forcing murderers to attend their sentences - something that actually, in the grand scheme of things, is not the most important thing about this case. Deciding not to come to court was undoubtedly one last cowardly fuck-you from Lucy Letby to the people she hurt - but that's just the kind of person she obviously is. It's not going to make any difference, either to her punishment or the ability of her victims to come to terms with what has been done to them and move on with their lives, whether she's there in person to hear the sentences or not.
Let's be clear: over the last two decades, both the Labour and Conservative party have spent prolonged periods in Government. They've both had plenty of opportunity to change the law to force murderers to come to court, especially given that they're in such strong agreement about it. But they didn't, because they didn't care. And they don't care now. That's not what this is about. This is about opportunism. The only reason that senior politicians from both the main parties are in such strong agreement with each other is to win votes from the reactionary public. That is literally it. Their senior strategists were probably rubbing their hands with glee at Lucy Letby's behaviour. It's a great opportunity for them. Immediately scramble to be the first one to condemn Lucy Letby and complain about the processes that mean she was allowed to stay in her cell and not look her victims in the eye. No one can possibly disagree with them about this without looking like they're on the side of one of the worst human beings on the planet. They're exploiting the grief of families, and the human empathy of the general public, to add a few brownie points onto whatever sour version of neoliberalism they're cooking up this week. That is disgusting. I don't even have words for how grotesque that is.
The most insulting part about all of this is that neither of the two main parties actually care about children. If you think politicians' sympathy for families in the Lucy Letby case is the slightest bit sincere, look at what they're actually doing that is harming children and families now. You know what Keir Starmer's nickname is since announcing he won't backtrack on the two-child benefit cap? Sir Kid Starver. This system is causing children to grow up severely malnourished. Teachers report that kids are coming to school so hungry they are eating rubbers. And what about non-white children? Where is the concern for the children on refugee boats? Where is the concern for children in Palestine? Do they count? I consider both the Labour and Conservative parties to be culpable for these things - the Conservatives have actually done it, but Labour has not sufficiently stood against it, or reassured me that they'd do much better if elected. Thankfully, I will say that a lot of the comments on these politicians' posts have been calling them out for this behaviour; at least it doesn't seem to be working as well as I'd feared it would. If there's one good thing about cases like this, it's that it shows how caring most people are, how shocked and upset we become on behalf of people who have lost a child in this way.
There will always be Lucy Letbys. Unfortunately, for some reason we don't know yet, some individuals just seem to have an insatiable desire to harm others, often the most vulnerable people. Those people are often drawn to professions such as nursing where they'll have easy access to victims. Thankfully, these people are quite rare, and even when they do turn up there are usually red flags we can look out for. A big part of the reason this particular case has been so newsworthy is that she doesn't fit the typical profile of someone who commits these acts, and that is highly unusual - plus, because she's an attractive middle-class white girl, which highlights our inherent racism, sexism and classism as a society. We can learn to spot these people, and to come together to support the people they've hurt. Using their crimes as a publicity opportunity does not help. Quite the contrary; it makes it far harder.
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