I will not allow evil to taint the love for my son – victim’s mother
The mother of one of Lucy Letby’s “defenceless” victims described how she has resumed wearing mementos of her child, saying “they represent the love that I have for my son and I will not allow evil to taint that”.
Child C’s mother told Manchester Crown Court how she had her son’s hand and footprint made into a pendant after he died in 2015 and she wore this round her neck as it “made me feel closer to him”.
She said: “On July 3 2018, when Lucy Letby was first arrested, these few tangible memories I had of my son felt tainted.
“She took those hand and footprints. I felt so conflicted as to what that meant, so I stopped wearing them.
“I needed to understand what part Lucy Letby had played in the death of my defenceless baby boy.”
The woman told the court in an emotional statement: “Now we know as much about (my son’s) death as I believe we ever will, I feel able to wear his hand and footprints for the first time in five years.
“I know now that they represent the love that I have for my son and I will not allow evil to taint that.”
She said: “They represent justice and the truth.”
Letby was found guilty of murdering Child C by forcing air down a feeding tube and into the baby boy’s stomach.
His mother told Letby in her absence: “To think that you could get any kind of gratification from inflicting pain on (my son) and from watching our suffering in the aftermath goes against everything I believe it is to be human.
“I am horrified that someone so evil exists.
The woman said: “There is no sentence that will ever compare to the excruciating agony we have suffered as a consequence of your murder of our son. But at least now there is no debate – that, in your own words, you killed them on purpose. You are evil. You did this.”
Retelling the horrific story of her son’s death, the mother recalled her joy when Child C was born.
She said: “I understood right there and then the bond and immediate love between a mother and their baby.
“That moment I will never forget. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. The way he smelt, the feel of his fine blonde hair on my chin. My tiny feisty boy, my first-born, my son.”
The woman described the terrible day her son died, telling the court: “The trauma of that night will live with all of us until the day we die – knowing now that his murderer was watching us throughout these traumatic hours is like something out of a horror story.”
She said: “I miss (my son) every day.
“I miss everything that we should have had – first smile, first word, birthdays, Christmases and the physical feeling of that bond. I think about what his voice would have sounded like, what he might have looked like now, who he would have been.”