This is the first project which our foundation is working on, intensively, for more than a year. Our aim is to disseminate reliable information about the case, in particular concerning the science which could (and in our opinion, should) have been brought to bear on it, both medical and statistical. But history, sociology, psychology also give many insights. The founders of Science for Justice – NL, are scientists, but not medical scientists. One of us (Richard Gill) is a statistician with long experience in the use of statistics in medical science and in forensic science. He has been deeply involved in several past serial killer nurse miscarriages of justice. Certainly, the similarities with the famous case of Lucia de Berk in the Netherlands are large, and once one knows more about both cases, horrifying.
For the time being, by way of introduction, we refer the reader to a blog post by Richard Gill on his personal blog: https://gill1109.com/2023/05/24/the-lucy-letby-case/. That blog contains several other posts on the Lucy Letby case, and there are two further posts on the case in this blog.
Things have been moving very fast in recent months and we hope to present a summary of the present “state of play” quite soon.
The initial aim of Foundation Science for Justice – NL is to help in the fight to obtain a fair re-trial for Lucy Letby, the nurse convicted of murders and attempted murders of 15 babies at the Countess of Chester hospital, in the UK. The case is shockingly similar to the famous Dutch case of Lucia de Berk. After that, we hope to help in similar cases where miscarriages of justice seem to have occurred due to misuse of scientific and statistical evidence. Several projects are in the pipeline.
We are interested in truth and justice and interested in achieving Justice through uncovering the truth as much as possible. Science gives us tools for that purpose. The purpose of science is to get a closer understanding of the truth about the world around us through the use of scientific methodology and the powers of reason.
The foundation has been incorporated under Netherlands law (ie, it is a non-profit stichting). Presently we have a chairman, Richard Gill, and a Secretary/Treasurer, Engel Wichmann. We plan to expand to a regular five person board, supported by an advisory council. For the time being we have an unofficial four-member “sounding board” with whom we meet several times a year to get feedback and advice. Our statutes are based on a standard Dutch model and formally registered through a notary and with the Netherlands tax authorities. Our accounts will be published and audited annually. We will publish our statutes on this website at a later date.
Chairman Richard Gill is an emeritus professor of mathematical statistics at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He was born (11 September 1951) at Redhill, Surrey, lived successively in Godstone, Surry, and Frieth, Buckinghamshire, a small village high in the Chiltern hills near Marlow-on-Thames. He studied mathematics at Cambridge University from 1970 to 1974 (Bachelor of Science degree, followed by master level Diploma of Statistics). He then moved to the Netherlands to marry his Dutch girlfriend, now his wife of more than 50 years. The couple have three children and five grandchildren. Richard got a PhD in mathematics from the Free University, Amsterdam in 1979. Within a few years he was head of the department of statistics at the mathematical centre, Amsterdam, later renamed as the centre for mathematics and computer science, CWI, and a visiting professor at Leiden University. After this followed full professorships in the mathematics departments of Utrecht University and then Leiden University, taking mandatory retirement at age 65. He is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and a former president of the Dutch Statistical Society. He has worked in the mathematical foundations of statistics, in medical statistics, and in forensic science. For the last 10 or so years before his retirement he has advised police investigators, courts, defence and prosecution lawyers, in various cases, as an accredited forensic scientist.
em.Prof.dr. Richard D. Gill
Secretary and treasurer Engel Wichmann was born in Velsen, North Holland, on 21 February, 1984. He grew up in Velsen, in a family of 6 children. He went to the local “gymnasium” (grammar school) for three years, but left school at age 16 soon after his Father unexpected died and he determined that he had to earn money to support his mother and siblings. Very soon he was buyer for a fish wholesale merchant and his business talents led to his setting up a very early internet based company selling Dutch products to expats in the US. At its peak the company had 70 employees. He then sold the company and the concept to one of his first employees and partners and moved on to develop other new businesses. Presently he and his wife and business partner have an in- and export business for wellness products. The couple live in Burgerbrug, also in North Holland. An earlier marriage led to an acrimonious divorce and Engel was legally prevented from any contact with his first son for many years. He has a strong instinct for truth and justice and became very concerned about some famous Netherlands miscarriages of justice. He has always been an avid reader (as a child he devoured encyclopedias rather than novels or strip cartoons) and is hungry for knowledge in science, philosophy, and psychology. He is presently an external part-time student working towards a bachelor degree in philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, with a focus on philosophy of science. Before that he had followed the first year of the mathematics Bachelors, and has followed courses on theoretical physics given by Gerard ‘t Hooft.
Mr Engel Francisus Wichmann
Would you ike to donate to our Foundation? Please follow this link:
