Mother of victim Lucy Letby tells interviewer she feels ‘betrayed’ by hospital managers

The mother of a baby boy murdered by Lucy Letby has said she feels “betrayed on every level” after being “left in the dark” over his death by hospital management.

The mother of the baby who died at four days old, known only as Child C, told the Thirlwall inquiry her family had been “misled” by supervisors in a way that “increased our grief”.

The witness said she wanted a personal apology from Ian Harvey, the former medical director of the Countess of Chester Hospital, who she accused of covering up the sudden and unexpected death of her son in June 2015.

Letby, 34, was convicted of murdering Child C by injecting air into his stomach at the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in north-west England. The former nurse is serving multiple life sentences after also being found guilty of murdering six other babies and attempting to murder seven more.

Giving evidence to the inquiry, chaired by Lady Justice Thirlwall, Child C’s mother said she was “really shocked” when she only discovered last year that other babies had died or collapsed unexpectedly around the same time as her son. She said it was “incredibly distressing” to read in the Chester Chronicle in July 2016 that an investigation had been launched into a rise in deaths on the neonatal unit, dating back to the time her son had died a year earlier.

The witness said she had asked the hospital’s bereavement department to explain why they had not been informed. She was told that a member of staff had tried to call the family’s landline once. Child C’s mother called it ‘outrageous’.

She told the inquiry she had made several attempts to find out the details of the investigation into her son’s death but felt “left in the dark”. She said she had met Harvey, the then medical director, who told her there were “small learning points” raised but nothing that would have changed the outcome for her son.

She said she left the meeting feeling that “there was absolutely no evidence that anything criminal was being investigated” and that Harvey had told her that “a line would be drawn” in the investigation.

She told the inquiry: “It really shocked me how misled we had been in that meeting and how untrue the information was that we had been told. I felt completely betrayed on every level, quite frankly, as a human being sitting with another human being.”

Questioned by Rachel Langdale KC, counsel for the inquiry, Child C’s mother said she wanted a personal apology from Harvey: “I now feel very strongly that Ian Harvey was desperate to dissuade us from asking further questions by giving a glossed over version of a report and just hoping we would take his word for it and not ask any further questions. I feel hugely betrayed by it and it has only added to our distress at an already stressful time.”

In a opening statement In a report read to last week’s inquiry, Harvey and other senior managers said none of the independent expert reports prepared after Letby was removed from the neonatal unit in July 2016 indicated criminal wrongdoing. They said they believed they provided “the right amount of information at the right time” to parents, but that “in hindsight we should have communicated much better than we did”.

Child C’s mother also described how she felt Letby had tried to put the baby in a “cold cot” too early before he died as they spent their final moments together. She said this was “horrible, knowing what we know now”, adding: “My concern now is that she wanted us to leave him there (with her), which to be honest we don’t really have to think about. It just adds extra horror to what we already have to think about.”

The investigation is still ongoing.