The former chief executive of the hospital where Lucy Letby murdered seven babies ordered doctors who raised concerns about her to apologise, it has been reported.
Consultants warned for months that the nurse had been the only medic present during the sudden collapses and deaths of a number of premature babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
But they were told to apologise in January 2017 after two reviews found no wrongdoing against her, The Guardian reports.
After one of the reviews Tony Chambers, then the hospital’s chief executive, said he had spent hours talking to Letby and her father and believed she was innocent.
Mr Chambers then ordered the consultants to apologise to Letby and said she would return to work on the unit imminently, the paper said.
However, she did not return to the neonatal unit and a police investigation began four months later.
Earlier, doctor Ravi Jayaram, a consultant at the hospital, said he was warned against reporting Letby to police as “it would be really bad for the reputation of the trust” – calling it a “Kafkaesque situation”.
