We all hope that our friends will stick by us through the worst life has to offer. But, thankfully, few of us will be confronted with the sort of nightmare faced by the loved ones of Lucy Letby — the neonatal nurse found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others.
It’s hard to know what to say about this awful case. Every detail of the suffering caused to the infants and their grieving families is heartbreaking. But what I also found shocking were the reactions of some of Letby’s friends, particularly a school pal called Dawn. Speaking to the BBC’s Panorama before Letby’s conviction, Dawn seemed to speak for a wider group of friends, when she said “we stand by her”.
“I grew up with Lucy and not a single thing that I’ve ever seen or witnessed of Lucy would let me for a moment believe she is capable of the things she’s accused of. It is the most out-of-character accusation that you could ever put against Lucy,” she said. “Think of your most kind, gentle, soft friend and think that they’re being accused of harming babies…. Unless Lucy turned around and said ‘I’m guilty’, I will never believe that she’s guilty.”
Unfortunately for Dawn, this week a jury turned around and said that her friend was guilty multiple times over. The judge sentenced her to spend the rest of her life in prison, following a gruelling 10-month trial, which she had asked her friends not to attend. Which is, I suppose, one way to ensure they don’t have to confront the truth of your actions and can carry on believing what they want to believe.
Yet that sort of denial — however bewildering it might seem — is an instinct we all have, thanks to one of the biggest myths in female friendship. In my book on the subject, I write about the false narrative that young girls are sold, from the moment they start school, about what it means to be a ‘good’ friend. The message drummed into them is one of ‘best friends forever’: that the pinnacle of perfect female friendship is to always have each other’s back, no matter what. It’s this encouragement to be unquestioningly loyal, I think, that stops us from asking hard questions about our friendships — particularly in our younger years, when having a BFF is judged to be more important than who that person actually is and whether they’re the right sort of friend for us.
Women are encouraged to be unquestioningly loyal
And we can carry this blind devotion through into adulthood — I know this because of the number of women who told me they felt ‘trapped’ in friendships with pals they’d known for decades, with whom they no longer had anything in common, out of a sense of duty (“she’s just so boring” said one, although being dull admittedly isn’t a crime).
It’s also why many of us struggle to see our childhood friends as they are now, instead mentally freezing them in time. It can be uncomfortable to acknowledge that the person you spent your formative years alongside is no longer the “gentle” or “soft” person you met in the playground. Much more reassuring to keep them in a box; pressing pause on a bond made in a more innocent time, in the hopes that it will remain that way forever and preserve your happy memories with it.
Of course, most of us will never be faced with a friend having done something so horrific that the watching world questions your loyalty towards them. None of us wants to imagine that a person we think we’ve known for many years, is actually someone else entirely — let alone, the most prolific murderer of babies in Britain. What does that say about your own ability to be a good judge of character?
There are some things the human brain simply cannot wrap itself around, even when the truth is staring us in the face. It’s partly why Letby was able to get away with her crimes for so long and surely helps to explain why some of her friends can’t imagine that the person they thought they knew was able to do something so unbelievably cruel and awful. No wonder they’re in denial — at least, that’s the generous way to look at it.
As one of Letby’s college friends put it to a tabloid newspaper: “We didn’t want to believe it, but she’s done it hasn’t she?”
