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| - What was claimed
Lucy Letby is in critical condition in hospital after being attacked in prison.
Our verdict
The Ministry of Justice has confirmed this is not true.
Lucy Letby is in critical condition in hospital after being attacked in prison.
The Ministry of Justice has confirmed this is not true.
Thousands of people have shared posts on Facebook falsely claiming that convicted child serial killer Lucy Letby has been “rushed to hospital” after being attacked in prison.
The former neonatal nurse, Letby, was sentenced to 14 whole-life sentences on 21 August after she was convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six other infants.
Multiple posts, which have identical text, say: “BREAKING NEWS Baby killer Lucy Letby has been attacked in Prison. Reports suggest she's been rushed to an outside hospital, in a critical condition after being slashed and boiled kettle water with sugar chucked in her face [sic].”
They share a collage of two photos of Letby—one in a crowd and another on the hospital ward. One post has 26,000 shares while another has over 12,000.
The same account posting the above text also shared another post claiming it had been “officially validated” that Letby “now suffers from partial loss of vision in her left eye” and a “non-life-threatening cut on her neck”.
However, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed the claims in the Facebook posts are untrue.
It has been reported that Letby is likely to spend her sentence in high security prison HMP Low Newton outside Durham.
This is not the first time Full Fact has seen posts about high profile prisoners being attacked, including false claims about Philip Schofield’s brother, Tim Schofield, the police officer who killed Sarah Everard, Wayne Couzens, and the father of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes who was convicted for his son’s murder.
This type of misinformation can spread quickly and create confusion—it’s always best to verify information with official sources before sharing it online.
Image courtesy of Ian S
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the Ministry of Justice confirmed the claims in the posts are not true.
Full Fact fights for good, reliable information in the media, online, and in politics.
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