Lucy Letby -The Protection Pattern No One Wants to Name

People keep coming back to the Lucy Letby case with the same sensation:

“Something doesn’t add up.”

Sometimes that feeling is about evidence. Sometimes it’s about something else. So here’s a question that may sting - not because it’s cruel, but because it’s honest: what if the thing that “doesn’t feel right” isn’t only the evidence, but your picture of who is allowed to be guilty?

We are saying she was protected - not as a conspiracy, but as a pattern. And that protection has two phases. First, institutional protection: early reluctance, reputation-management instincts, warning signs softened into “conflict,” and pressure placed on the people raising concerns. Second, cultural protection: the organised doubt and sympathy that keeps re-forming in public, long after convictions and appeals.

The “forced apology” episode matters because it shows the pattern in black and white — clinicians who raised alarms were pressured and made to apologise in the early stages, while the organisation hesitated.

We don’t speak from virality or fragments. Equality 4 Black Nurses followed this case closely over time through courtroom reporting, evidence summaries, appellate judgments, and the way the story has been re-told and re-framed in public. We’re not saying people aren’t allowed to question anything. We are saying this debate has become emotionally unusual and it’s worth being honest about why.

We’ll also be plain about our position. In our view, Lucy Letby is guilty. We base that view on the convictions returned by juries, the sentencing outcomes, and the appellate decisions that have left those convictions standing to date. And we’ve watched too many conversations claim neutrality while drifting into sympathy-by-default.

Netflix has pulled the debate back into people’s living rooms again. Netflix describes its documentary as using “unseen footage and unheard insider accounts.” Reporting around the release says it includes footage of her arrest, and that it contains footage from her questioning.

Some viewers will watch that material and read her presentation as flat, dismissive, or emotionally detached. Others will read it differently. Our point is not to psychoanalyse her. Our point is to notice how quickly the public swings between “she seems ordinary” and “she doesn’t act like a killer,” as if harm has a fixed look, tone, or personality type.

When we say justice was lawfully served, we are not claiming infallibility, and we are not saying miscarriages of justice never happen. By “lawfully served” we mean procedurally tested and upheld to date - not that the system is incapable of error.

The timeline matters because the loudest public narratives often talk as if no legal testing occurred.

In August 2023, a jury returned guilty verdicts in the main trial and she was sentenced on 21 August 2023.

On 2 July 2024, the Court of Appeal refused her application for leave to appeal against conviction, noting it had announced its decision on 24 May 2024.

After a retrial on an unresolved count, a jury convicted her on 2 July 2024 and she was sentenced on 5 July 2024.

Then, in October 2024, permission to appeal against the attempted murder conviction (Baby K) was refused.

Back to the two phases of protection.

Institutional protection is not about “liking” someone. It’s about how organisations behave when the suspected person still fits the internal template of “safe”: reluctance to name risk, slower decisive action, and a tendency to treat safeguarding warnings as a management problem.

Lucy Letby was not “scapegoated” through a rushed or tokenistic internal disciplinary process. What has emerged through the Thirlwall Inquiry evidence is that she was not dealt with under a conventional trust disciplinary hearing route in the way many nurses would recognise when serious concerns arise. Instead, she was redeployed away from the neonatal unit and the dispute moved into other channels, including her grievance, rather than a straightforward employer disciplinary investigation culminating in a formal disciplinary hearing.

That matters, because “scapegoating” narratives often rely on the idea of an employer quickly finding a convenient individual to blame through a rapid internal process. Here, the picture presented by the inquiry evidence points in the opposite direction: prolonged hesitation, managerial caution, and process choices that did not resemble a swift disciplinary drive to blame her

For context, the NMC publicly confirmed that an interim suspension order was imposed on 20 November 2020, after Letby was charged.

Cultural protection is what happens next. After conviction and appeal refusals, the doubt doesn’t just persist - it organises. Sympathy becomes a movement. Doubt becomes an identity. And the same phrases get recycled: nice, quiet, ordinary, not the type.

But “not the type” is not evidence. It’s a stereotype. And stereotypes decide who gets time, patience, complexity, and the benefit of doubt.

When we use the word “whiteness” here, we are not saying all white people are bad.

We mean something simple that plays out in institutions and public imagination: white nurses are more likely to be assumed safe, normal, and trustworthy, so doubt comes more easily and compassion lasts longer. That cushions some people from suspicion and accelerates suspicion toward others, especially Black professionals.

If you want to debate Letby seriously, you can’t argue from vibes. A central strand of the prosecution case concerned findings interpreted as exogenous insulin in two babies, and the appeal judgment summarises the expert evidence relied upon at trial in relation to those allegations.  

Public critics dispute aspects of interpretation and methodology. That dispute exists. But even if someone focuses strongly on insulin, a serious discussion still has to deal with the wider case the jury heard - pattern, opportunity, and the full body of circumstantial and behavioural evidence tested through trial and appeal, not just a handful of

“this doesn’t feel right” clips.

Here is the question that makes people angry: why do some people treat the justice system as robust and authoritative most of the time, yet suddenly treat it as fragile or fundamentally unreliable in this specific case?

That question isn’t an insult. It’s a mirror. Because when a defendant “looks like us,” doubt can feel principled. When a defendant looks like “them,” doubt can feel unnecessary. Not always. Not for everyone. But often enough that you can see the pattern.

This is where selective empathy matters, because it exposes a moral inconsistency we pretend not to notice.

Selective empathy is when compassion reliably switches on for some people and switches off for others - shaped by race, class, accent, and “respectability.” You can see it in what happens next: whose ruined career becomes a national obsession, whose ruined career becomes “just another referral,” whose wellbeing becomes a public cause, and whose wellbeing becomes an afterthought.

You can see it in the language: in some cases the story becomes “system failure” and “what if we got this wrong?” In other cases it races straight to “risk,” “public protection,” “strike-off,” and “we can’t take chances,” with very little curiosity about process, context, or evidence quality. That’s not just difference of opinion. That’s difference of care.

We’ve sat with nurses who were restricted within days, on thin accounts, hearsay, or workplace dynamics dressed up as “risk.” We’ve watched reputations collapse before facts were properly tested. We’ve seen how quickly some people become “dangerous” in the public imagination. That’s not a slogan. That’s the work.

We also need to be fair. We separate what is documented from what we infer from casework. The NMC’s own published research has documented disproportionality affecting Black and minority ethnic nurses and midwives in fitness to practise pathways, including higher employer-referral rates for minority ethnic professionals and differences in progression through the process for some groups.  

Our casework experience aligns with that wider picture: faster escalation, thinner evidential thresholds treated as “risk,” harsher character framing, and reputational destruction long before facts are tested.

So when we ask, “Where is this energy when Black nurses are accused?” we are not saying all doubt is racist. We are not saying people should never question the justice system.

We are saying a particular pattern of doubt tracks “respectability” and whiteness. It gets louder, more patient, more publicly supported when the accused looks safe and familiar. It is far less available when the accused is Black.

If even a fraction of the energy being spent mobilising doubt and sympathy here were applied consistently to Black nurses facing far thinner allegations, nursing would already look different. So yes: question systems. But question them evenly. Otherwise what we call justice becomes something else - a hierarchy of whose innocence is worth imagining.

If this blog hit a nerve, you’re not alone. For some people it’s “just a case.” For nurses and midwives who’ve lived through complaints, investigations, suspensions, referrals, or public shaming, it can land like a flashback. If any part of this resonates or if it has stirred up fear, anger, grief, or that familiar feeling of “this could be me” please don’t sit with it in silence.

Equality 4 Black Nurses exists for exactly this. We support nurses, midwives, and healthcare workers facing workplace and regulatory processes, including disciplinaries, grievances, referrals, interim orders, and the emotional fallout that comes with them.

We can help you think clearly and feel less alone while you’re navigating it. And we also take the psychological impact seriously. We have access to therapeutic support through trained therapists, because racial trauma and process trauma are real and they don’t switch off when the meeting ends.

If you need support, reach out. Even if you’re not “in a case,” even if you just need somewhere safe to steady yourself and talk.