Parents share guilt with inexperienced au pair in infant's death

Most of us have followed with a great deal of interest the trial of Louise Woodward, the 19-year-old English au pair who was convicted of the second-degree murder of baby Matthew Eappen. The jury, as everyone now knows, decided that Woodward killed Matthew, who was just eight months old, by violently shaking him and hitting his head against a hard flat surface, which resulted in damage to his skull. This qualified as killing him with malice, but without premeditation-hence the verdict of second-degree, rather than first-degree, murder.

It is still unclear whether Woodward will receive the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment with a minimum 15 years without parole. Judge Hiller Zobel appears to be trying to get the verdict reduced to manslaughter, or killing a person without malice, a lesser charge that does not carry a mandatory sentence, so that he does not have to sentence her to life imprisonment. Part of the problem here is that the defense team, confident that a jury would not convict Woodward of murder, originally rejected the offer of having Woodward tried for manslaughter; now they are tripping over themselves trying to get the murder verdict reduced. A member of the jury, Jodie Garber, has spoken to the English press and told them that the jury would have convicted her of manslaughter if they had had this option.

This case raises a host of interesting questions. If the defense lawyers were so confident that Woodward had not done anything wrong, then why did they gamble on a murder verdict and not a manslaughter verdict? Presumably because they, like the rest of us, do believe that Woodward was at least guilty of panicking, and at least guilty of violently shaking an eight-month-old baby, whether or not that baby was unconscious at the time of the shaking, before she dialed 911.

That is about the most charitable interpretation of Woodward's conduct which can be given, including as it does the assumption that the baby's head injuries had been caused earlier and that Woodward did not bang the baby's head against a hard flat surface. Even according to this most charitable interpretation, then, she was not innocent of irresponsible behavior. Hence, she could be said to be guilty of manslaughter. I think that this is why the defense team did not allow for that option; as the juror who spoke to the press revealed, the consensus among the jurors was that she was guilty of manslaughter. The defense team must have figured as much. After all, a baby should not be treated like a maraca.

The deeper question is whether Woodward should be convicted of manslaughter, due to her panicking and violently shaking the baby, if she was merely a young inexperienced au pair in the United States caring for a four-year-old boy and an eight-month-old baby, the latter of whom had stopped breathing in his crib. That is, should Woodward have ever been placed in a position of responsibility such as this?

Discussion in the United States has focused on the issue of whether or not the Eappens should have entrusted the care of their young baby to a 19-year-old foreigner, as opposed to either staying at home with him themselves or hiring a professional nanny. The Eappens, it seems, are guilty of irresponsibility, exploitation or both. There is also the suggestion that it is only Deborah Eappen who is at fault, a sexist charge that I think we can dismiss. These are very serious accusations, and I do not want to go into all of them here. What does concern me, however, is the issue of Woodward being an au pair.

Translated from the French, to be an "au pair" means to be "on equal footing," that is, to be on equal footing with other members of a household. It originally meant a young foreigner, usually a female, who received room and board in return for housework, with the intention of learning the native language of the family.

The meaning has since been broadened and now seems to include being any teenage, live-in, non-professional nanny from another country. But it seems to me that this is precisely where the problem begins. Indeed, this sort of occupation description is a recipe for disaster. It is known that Woodward had arguments with the Eappens about her going out "on the town" with other teenagers in Boston. But she is only 19 years old! This is what teenagers do-it is a common experience with au pairs all over Europe, the majority of whom are not being asked to mind eight-month-old babies. Inexperienced teenage au pairs should not be taken on as live-in nannies for young babies, and anyone with a modicum of common sense would not have done so.