Dear All,
TW: REFERENCE TO VIOLENCE, ABUSE, AND MURDER OF CHILDREN
Unless you've been distracted by something very important or living under a rock, you'll probably be aware of the recent trial of Lucy Letby. If anyone isn't familiar, this is the general run-down.
Lucy Letby is a former neonatal nurse who was imprisoned for the murder of seven premature babies in the intensive care neonatal wing of the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester. She was also accused of the attempted murder of six others, through injecting air, insulin or milk into her victims, or in one particularly grotesque case, ramming a metal instrument down the throat of one of her victims. Not only did she leave the families devastated and traumatized, but many of those victims who survived her assaults on them are left with life-changing injuries and disabilities.
The case has deeply shocked the UK, and possibly, the world. To the vast majority of human beings regardless of race, gender, sexuality and so on, tiny babies are helpless little lives to be cared for and looked after, much like one would small animals such as puppies and kittens, similarly small and defenceless creatures. Premature babies even more so, since some are so small, they could fit in the palm of your hand. And being premature, they are especially vulnerable to illness, deformities, health issues and even if not handled carefully. I myself was premature when I was born, according to my father (who told me when I was 11), I was the colour of a lobster when I came into the world, and even then with infection and breathing problems I had a fight on my hands in order to stay alive. I have only my family and the doctors and nurses present at the time to thank for my survival.
The idea that anyone would want to do lethal harm to any such tiny creatures is something that appalls us to our very core.
What's really telling though, is the reaction to the killings. While with the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by PC Wayne Cozens in 2021, the reaction was anger, which boiled into anti-male hatred in some cases (such as the Green Party in the House of Lords), or hatred (and already growing and in some ways understandable distrust) of the police in others. Further "measures", including punitive ones, were suggested to tackle so-called "toxic masculinity" as if that was the cause, rather than being fundamentally broken and disconnected with reality, and trapped in a cycle of violence.
With the case of nurse Letby however, the reaction is so strikingly different it's like water and oil.
"I don't know what Britain's most prolific child killer should look like. However, this isn't it."
That was one of the opinion-piece responses from a mainstream newspaper from the UK.
There seems to be a disbelief that a woman, a white woman, and one who is middle class, conventionally attractive, with a benign appearance and a nurse to boot, would be a murderer, and a child killer. They prefer to think of a killer as male, or poor, or non-white or ugly, just a nasty piece of work. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, most killers and rapists look very ordinary and more often than not get away with what they do not through being "powerful" but simply hiding in plain sight.
The truth is that female abusers and murderers are usually much more subtle than their male counterparts. While you do indeed get your Jolene Dohertys, Courtney Clenneys and Amber Heards out there, some of whose violence is brushed off by so-called "feminists" as being compared to male abusers to defend the indefensible. Female abusers are cited by skeptics of their existence as less likely to cause serious injury, or act outside of self defence or retaliation. Part of this is because said skeptics are uncomfortable with their assumptions being challenged and are lashing out, sometimes they feel that it ruins their theory about "patriarchy". Part of it is a failure to understand that intimate partner violence isn't always physical OR lethal, and distorting the picture of using the majority of male abusers being represented in high numbers in regards to physical and lethal violence.
Unfortunately for them, even the flawed and outdated Duluth Model refers to:
1) Emotional abuse
2) Isolation
3) Minimising, denying and blaming
4) Using children (see 'parental alienation')
5) Using coercion and threats.
All of these things are cited as being used by female abusers against male victims.
So what has this got to do with Lucy Letby?
Well, the answer to that question is that firstly, what female abusers and Lucy Letby have in common is that they are subtle. She was able to hide in plain sight for at least a year to carry out her despicable crimes. Her male counterparts are more obvious due to their less subtle, and more blatant and physical crimes (and so wider society is much more willing to accept their existence and consider tarring the male population as wholly evil without moral concerns). Is it really so far-fetched that female abusers don't also camouflage themselves in a similar way? And with statistical models carrying built-in biases, is it similarly inconceivable that female abusers wouldn't also fail to be picked up by stats in the same way that Letby wasn't picked up by hospital management?
Secondly, what's noticable is that Letby's victims were mostly male premature babies. Two girls did indeed fall victim to her, but it fits the pattern that abusers and predators mostly (though by no means exclusively) target the opposite sex. Predatory men mostly target women, predatory women mostly target men. And female abusers are the most commonly represented among child abusers according to U.S DHHS Child Maltreatment Reports 2001-2006, up to 70% of them.
Am I suggesting that we should treat women with contempt the same way we've treated men with contempt 'for mere suspicion of that kind will do as for surety'? No. It's morally unacceptable to do that with anyone, understandable if in a situation where your safety or that of someone else might be compromised otherwise, but in general society, absolutely not.
What I'm saying is that Lucy Letby proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that anyone can be an abuser, a predator, a killer. We need to stop stereotyping people as potential dangers by crossing the road to avoid someone who's a POC (especially a male), treating every man as a "potential rapist", or completely overlooking people with evidence of terrible crimes because they happen to be female.
Personally, I just feel saddened that the benign picture of a nurse who cared for little babies, of a fashionable young lady who went out partying with her friends, was all a facade to hide someone who could've given Batman's Joker or Harry Potter's Voldemort a run for their money in malevolence.
I don't focus too much on the families in this case, because for one thing, picturing her horrible violence and the effect on those small children, and the grief of their families is something my mind just won't let me picture, it just shuts down because the picture is too awful, and secondly because frankly, I think they've been through enough.
I'd like to end this though, by saying that my heart goes out to the parents and families of the victims. There's nothing more painful in this world than a parent losing a child, and something that just shouldn't happen. I can't imagine what it must've been like for them, to lose their son or daughter after possibly seeing them develop and be born, and struggling with the curse of being premature just to have the chance to live, only for that chance of life, and that chance to become a mother or a father being cruelly snatched away. And all because of one selfish, narcissistic, and utterly pathetic human being.
Sincerely,
The Invisible Man
