The Trials of Lucy Letby@LucyLetbyTrials
Last thing I'll point out for now about the successful outcome of Lucy Letby's grievance complaint, against Drs Stephen Brearey and Ravi Jayaram, for bullying and harassing her, which the jury never got to hear about.
The trial judge didn't just object to jurors being told that Letby won her grievance. He objected to the defence making any mention at all of the fact that, months after Drs Brearey and Jayaram succeeded in forcing Letby out of her job, the hospital gave her the all-clear to come back to work.
The judge's reasoning (see screenshots) was clear: if the defence told jurors that Letby was due to return to work in March 2017, then jurors could end up deducing that Letby had won her grievance. And worse, they could end up sussing out what actually happened behind the scenes: the hospital gave Letby her job back after determining that the accusations against her were baseless.
Any chance of any hint of any inference on the part of any juror along these lines had to be foreclosed.
And so when all was said and done, the jury only got to hear the first half of the story.
They heard that Letby filed a grievance. They heard that she did so after doctors succeeded in forcing her out of her job, to keep her away from the babies. They heard the prosecutor describe Letby's "frustration at the fact that she was not being allowed back onto the neonatal unit." They heard she was raring to come back.
But, rightly or wrongly, the jury never got to hear the rest: that Letby won her grievance; that a months-long investigation found the doctors had bullied and harassed her; that the lead investigator had this to say about them: "I was disgusted by their behaviour. It is likely that they lied."
The jury never got to hear about how the hospital set a plan in motion to get Letby back on her feet – to get her working on the unit again by March 2017.
They never got to hear about the senior nurse who told the grievance investigators, "we would be delighted to have her back."
They never got to hear about how Drs Brearey and Jayaram were forced to apologise for their behaviour.
And they never got to hear how, halfway through March 2017, with Letby counting down the days until her return, Dr Jayaram demanded a meeting with the head of HR. And that in that meeting, he dropped a bombshell.
On 15 March 2017, Dr Jayaram told Sue Hodkinson, the hospital's head of HR, that he had once caught Lucy Letby trying to murder a baby.
A huge revelation, and yet the first anyone remembers hearing about it. Even though, according to Dr Jayaram, the incident had happened all the way back in February 2016.
In other words: Dr Jayaram says he caught Lucy Letby trying to murder a baby, and he sat on the information for over a year.
No matter. His account was disturbing, and it prompted the hospital to call the police.
With that, the plan to give Letby her job back collapsed. She never stepped foot on the neonatal unit again.