• @[email protected]
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    1012 years ago

    It’s weird to me the level of deranged guilt her diary entries show.

    We are responsible for our actions. I just wonder wtf was going on in her head that allowed her to keep doing it. She hated herself for it. Like a lot.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      I don’t think it’s possible to really understand a person that is that level of abnormal. Or rather, when you have empathy in a somewhat normal range, I think it’s really hard to understand how not having empathy works.

    • Guy Ingonito
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      562 years ago

      That’s the sort of evil I understand and can cope with. There is something wrong with her we don’t have the capacity to understand. Some chemical imbalance or growth pushing on her brain in a certain area.

      It’s the people with nothing wrong with them but allow evil to happen like the hospital administrators that gets me.

      • @[email protected]
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        52 years ago

        A lot of time there is nothing visibly wrong with them and their background doesn’t explain it

        • @[email protected]
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          2 years ago

          Sadly, we don’t understand the brain yet. Otherwise perhaps certain things could be visible. I know that there is some research how activity patterns in brains of “psychopaths” difffer from other people. But it is all still on shaky grounds.

      • @[email protected]
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        62 years ago

        “I am evil I did this”.

        The note added: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them.

        “I am a horrible person.

        “I hate myself. There are no words. I am an awful person. I pay every day for that.”

        “I panic I’ll never have children. I don’t deserve mum and dad. The world is better off without me. I did this, why me.”

        “No one will ever know what happened and why . . . I’m a failure.”

        “I am a problem to those who do know me . . . it would be much better for everyone if I just went away. I just want to be happy.”

        “Kill me” and “Help me” along with the names of some the babies she murdered.

        In one, Letby scrawled: “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t live like this.

        “No one will ever understand or appreciate what’s like.”

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      You’d have to look at what she got out of it emotionally. Other hospital killers did it for a combination of “They were a burden”, “I was putting them out of their misery” and a sense of godlike power of life and death. Some started doing it for seeming mercy reasons but got so comfortable with doing it that they started killing patients because they annoyed them.

      • @[email protected]
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        62 years ago

        I think you’re perhaps ignoring what I said about the content of her entries.

        She suffered from her actions, emotionally. A lot. It’s quite clear she got nothing positive emotionally from it:

        "I am evil I did this”.

        The note added: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them.

        “I am a horrible person.

        “I hate myself. There are no words. I am an awful person. I pay every day for that.”

        “I panic I’ll never have children. I don’t deserve mum and dad. The world is better off without me. I did this, why me.”

        “No one will ever know what happened and why . . . I’m a failure.”

        “I am a problem to those who do know me . . . it would be much better for everyone if I just went away. I just want to be happy.”

        “Kill me” and “Help me” along with the names of some the babies she murdered.

        In one, Letby scrawled: “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t live like this.

        “No one will ever understand or appreciate what’s like.”

        • @[email protected]
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          92 years ago

          She got something out of it though. No one was forcing her to do it so regardless of her entries at the moment of choice she wanted to do it. She may have felt regret or self-hate after the fact but it is clear that those feelings eventually passed.

          • @[email protected]
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            2 years ago

            Regret or self-hate can just as well turn into driving factors to continue doing harm to others. When you are mentally ill, logic starts completely bending and finally making a 180 degrees turn from normal

    • PeleSpirit
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      2 years ago

      This is a mental health issue, do they have free mental health care in the uk?

      • @[email protected]
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        122 years ago

        There’s a big fucking difference between “i hate myself and want to die” and “might murder a half dozen babies this month”.

        I think you might be asking a bit much of public mental health care, yeah?

        • @[email protected]
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          62 years ago

          It’s interesting to me just how rare the underlying mental disorder has to be. Millions of people have mental health issues too but aren’t committing unspeakably vile acts. The incidence rate has to be 1 in several hundred million births.

          My other thought is that mental health played a role but isn’t the underlying cause, since mental health problems generally don’t drive people to do this. That said, with the complexities of genetics and epigenetics, it’s perfectly possible it could happen.

          • @[email protected]
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            42 years ago

            That’s because the mental health excuse is just that: an excuse. They don’t actually have the evidence to back up the notion that she’s mentally ill other than her diary entries. Those entries could have been forged for all they know.

            They not only undermine the very real damage that woman caused by using mental health as a cynical attempt to try to give her an out, they also are being extremely ableist. Committing egregious crimes != mental illness and for them to draw that equivalency caters to the stereotype that mentally ill people are dangerous.

            These are people who know that and who would call others out for being ableist, yet do so freely in threads like this without consequence or a second’s thought from anyone else. Ask yourself why that is.

            • @[email protected]
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              22 years ago

              Aye. Not to mention, there’s a very distinct possibility that the diary entries are true, but are a result of the evil acts. I think it’s possible for someone to fall into depression and suicidal ideation after commiting truly heinous acts. We don’t have any indication what the causation is here.

              It’s foolish to think that everyone who does evil just twirls a mustache and thrives on it. I’m guessing that most people who do something like this end up with mental illness or more severe mental illness as a result. It’s far more likely to me that these people are tortured and guilt ridden, evil souls than unrepentantly evil.

              Anyhow – The first time I really had my eyes opened to how offensive this sort of language is was actually from David Harbour. As someone with mental illness, it really resonated when he pointed out that labeling mass shooters as simply mentally ill was a disservice to the millions of people who struggle with depression and anxiety and etc and it was incredibly stigmatizing. I’ve tried to be cognizant of that ever since, and the language around this story set off alarm bells for me.

              • @[email protected]
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                12 years ago

                It’s clear everybody labeling her as mentally ill are doing it with an ulterior motive in mind. They’re almost as bad as she is.

                Have you ever read The Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt?

                • @[email protected]
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                  12 years ago

                  I have not, but I’ve heard about it. I remember discussing it in world history class, just the concept.