Neo-natal nurse and serial murderer of the seriously ill infants under her care, Lucy Letby has been handed down a whole life sentence – one of only four women in the UK to ever recieve one. As reporters try to grapple with the horrors of the case, and the paradigm shifting threat to cultural constructs of safety a woman like Letby represents, some of the coverage falls into the same racist tropes that helped keep her from getting caught for as long as she did—with a total of 50 or more babies that may have been harmed over the course of her career.
So what does a serial child killer look like?
Writing for the BBC Judith Moritz keeps on asking what a serial child killer is supposed to look like. It’s a rhetorical question, not because she knows the answer (she says she doesn’t) but because her point, after ten months of watching Letby’s trial and interviewing her family and friends, is that whatever the answer is, it shouldn’t be someone like Lucy Letby. It’s not an uncommon response. Like Dr. Harold Shipman before her, Letby was popular and well liked in her community, and the truth of her actions was met with disbelief and shock by those who knew her and the world at large.
But what is it exactly about Lucy Letby that looks “nice”? What are the unspoken visual cues that afford her the privilege of being assumed a kind and reasonable person, the sort of person we can trust with our children? Why is the revelation that she’s not, that she’s someone capable of unfathomable brutality, such a shock that it’s left people scrambling to explain it away?
Would a nurse of colour have been given the same benefit of the doubt, to the point that the first staff who raised concerns about her actions were forced to apologise to her rather than triggering an investigation? Statistically, absolutely not. Nurses of colour face higher rates of unfounded accusations than white nurses, and, while the complaints that are made against white nurses are far more likely to be dismissed before any investigation has been made, nurses of colour are more likely to be found not to have been at fault after one has been completed.
“Cases brought against nurses and midwives of white, other or unknown ethnicities are more likely to be closed at screening than are cases brought against Asian or black nurses and midwives, whose cases are more likely to be closed at the investigation stage.”
The Progress and Outcomes of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Nurses and Midwives through the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s Fitness to Practise Process
Given the number of concerns and complaints raised against Letby, only for them to be repeatedly dismissed and the staff members who raised them penalised, it’s difficult to argue that this particular set of biases—whether conscious or active and deliberate—played no part in Letby’s success and the duration of her killing spree. As much as we like to pretend our society is colorblind and post-racial, white nurses are still afforded a greater level of trust than nurses of colour. It’s this presumption of competence and innocence that’s granted to white nurses, yet withheld from their non-white peers, that created the environment where Letby was able to assault and murder child after child and get away with it while those who raised the alarm were punished instead.
No one, at least not in the mainstream press, is openly citing Letby’s whiteness as the surprise factor—but they never do, no matter how many times we see the pattern play out. It’s the same thing that happens every time a “respectable” white family man annihilates that family, or a white man shoots up a school, or a mall, or a concert. People in the press and online express their shock over how he never seemed the type, and then they go in search of other, marginalising factors about him they can blame his deviance on in order to feel comfortable again.
For a white woman to murder babies instead of nurturing them, especially one who is young, pretty, and feminine, who seemingly conforms to the normative standards we have for that type of woman, threatens the narratives white society tells itself—and that’s what’s so shocking to people about Lucy Letby in particular. That’s why they’re scrolling through photos of her, talking about how normal, sociable, and popular she was. That’s why she doesn’t make sense to them, it’s why they can’t understand how someone who looks like her could be a serial killer. And, as political activist and commenter Femi Oluwole points out in his analysis of the coverage, its these unexamined, foundational beliefs, that even many well meaning people haven’t acknowledged or deconstructed yet, that put people in danger.
Until we learn to stop associating whiteness, particularly gender conforming whiteness, with goodness, and viewing white women in particular as harmless, nurturing, and safe (and by we I do mean white people here, because people of colour are already more than aware, and have been speaking out about it for centuries) these cycles of violence will continue. White people will continue to literally get away with murder. They’ll be excused and exonerated by the press and public when they do get caught. “Oh, it must have been mental illness (never mind the mentally ill are statistically less likely to commit violent acts than abled people). Oh, she must have snapped, oh, he was a good man, a family man.” Meanwhile, people of colour will continue being abused over a presumption of guilt that is, statistically speaking, far less likely to apply to them.
The first step is to stop acting like every violent atrocity committed by a white person is some kind of shocking aberration, to take accusations laid against white perpetrators seriously, and to stop assuming innocence lies with whiteness. Because what should we expect a serial baby killer to look like? Exactly like Lucy Letby.
(featured image: Cheshire Constabulary via Getty Images)
