Mother A and B: “After losing [Baby A], not only were we absolutely traumatised at what had happened, we were riddled with fear for [Baby B].”

“What should have been the happiest time of our lives had become our worst nightmare.”

Mother C: “We have suffered immeasurably from the moment our son collapsed. The trauma that we faced from then until now is thoroughly incomprehensible to anyone who has not endured it.”

“Following on from the criminal trial, we have had to try to rebuild life and regain some normality for ourselves and our family, which has been very difficult. As a family, we have endured years of anxiety and stress … the knowledge we gained about the events leading up to our son’s murder and the methods that were used by Lucy Letby has been indescribably traumatising.”

Mother D: “I feel not only I lost [my daughter], but lost all those years of my life too. Since [she] passed away I live beside my own shadow.”

“[T]he heavy load constantly on my mind has deeply changed me. My heart broke into a million pieces the second [our daughter] lost her battle against evil and that is when hell broke loose for us … I felt so guilty and questioned if any of this was my fault. Did I miss something? Did I do something wrong? Did I fail my daughter?”

Mother E and F: “The impact that [the murder and the attempted murder of our sons] has had on us has been enormous. It changed the course of our life completely and we’ve had to try and grieve in so many different ways. We tried to grieve at the time, and then we had to endure what was going to be happening when that [the RCPCH] report arrived on our doorstep, and then that brought everything back up. We had to grieve for the life that we thought we were going to have with [our son], with his learning difficulties.”

“I feel guilty for not requesting [a post-mortem], because if that had been requested and that had come back and something — well, something would have been on it, you know, there’s a lot of babies that could have not been involved in this case and it could have stopped there. And that weighs very, very heavily on me, because that decision was ultimately ours, and that’s painful to think about. So I carry our grief, but the sadness of the other families, because it should never have gone past that point.”

Mother G: “I feel that Lucy Letby has ruined our lives. She has ruined everything. Our daughter needs 24-hour care because of Letby, we don’t know how long she will live and it affects every single minute of all of our days.”

Father G: “We now know that the attacks by Lucy Letby caused a lack of oxygen to our daughter’s brain resulting in a massive brain injury. Prior to the attacks, our daughter’s repeated brain scans looked OK and her brain was seen to be maturing well. After the attacks, her brain scans changed and clearly showed a brain injury which had wiped out most of her brain … She can’t be left unattended due to the risk of her choking. My wife and I provide the majority of her care and do so lovingly. She is our little girl, our fighter and our star. I have been besotted with her ever since the day she was born.”

Mother H: “[The impact of the events at the Countess] changed me fundamentally as a person. Among other things, it has really affected my ability to trust people, especially when it comes to anyone taking care of my children. You know, they — the people in the neonatal ward, you put your whole trust into them to take care of your baby and that has been completely abused.”

Mother I: “The first year after our baby’s death was a blur and I don’t know how we as a family got through it. I wore sunglasses constantly to hide the pain and tears from my other kids as I didn’t want to upset them as they were also struggling.”

“[My husband] wished that he was dead instead of our baby. We even separated for a while as neither of us could deal with what happened. Our other kids also suffered. They gave up things they enjoyed and my older daughter stop[ped] speaking. Eventually we got back together.”

Mother J: “I cannot emphasise enough the impact of this on our whole family. Who we are as people, parents, work life, spouses, children.”

Father J: “It’s hard to describe the stress of any parent on a neonatal unit when they’ve got a sick child and when things aren’t quite happening in the way you expect them and then you have an unexplained collapse, that stress is almost incomprehensible.”

Mother K: “For myself and my husband, the ripples are unbelievable … it’s scarred your life, it’s changed you. You look back and you don’t only just grieve your daughter, you’re grieving who you were. I grieve who we were as a husband and a wife. It just completely destroys what’s around you and you have to pick yourself up and find out who you are again in this new world and it just doesn’t stop, it doesn’t go away and we live with it every single day.”

“I only hope that I do [our daughter] proud within this statement and raising her siblings with her name continuing to be a great part of our family unit and remembering that she was the one that made me a mum for the first time.”

Father K: “They brought our baby in and handed her to me as she took a breath. That was it. Child K only took one breath on her own in my arms … I wish I could have held Child K for a little bit longer. I can’t talk about what happened to Child K, it scares me to remember and I don’t want to think about it.”

Father L and M: “I was first on the scene when one of my [sons] had his collapse, and that image has been forever etched in my mind and this case has been going on for … years.
…
The stress and strain has been unbearable at times and my mental health has suffered as a consequence of this case. I had to take time out of work and seek counselling. I have also had to take a course of anti-depressants to help me cope with this … I had a seizure for the first time in my life as we approached the criminal trial. This happened in front of my children and was very distressing for them. The doctors attributed this to the stress and the pressure of what had happened to our children.”

Mother N: “The day we were called to the neonatal unit was the worst day of our lives, from waking up that morning being prepared to take home our son to the utter catastrophic scene we arrived at has left a lasting imprint on us, seeing our tiny baby fighting for his life, medics doing CPR on his tiny body and not knowing if he was going to live or die with no obvious cause. We have often heard of people dying from a broken heart, this is how we can describe how we felt that day the pain was immeasurable and we didn’t want to leave that hospital without our son, we both relive this every day because not a day goes by without thinking about that day.”

Father N: “This has caused us massive trust issues which have remained with us to this day and we don’t think will ever leave us.”

Father O, P and R: “I have visions and nightmares approximately every other night, of being back at the hospital. They tend to be about the boys and are a mix of specific things I remember happening at the time; the colour of their veins and their veins pulsating is something which comes up a lot. I also have angry dreams where I tell myself I should have done more. I have also had angry dreams about Lucy Letby. I cry a lot more than I used to before all of this happened.”

Mother Q: “This has left me with massive anxiety with a lot of health professionals … over the years the slightest thing with Child Q has caused me to panic … I am in [a] constant state of worry and panic, I’m hyper vigilant with him and it is so draining for me.”

I repeat my thanks to all the parents. As is plain from the pages of this Report, their insightful and thoughtful contributions to the Inquiry have been invaluable.