GIST: "Having watched The Killer Nanny: Did She Do It? I am now convinced of two things.
First, that Louise Woodward, the British nanny who was jailed over the death of eight-month-old Matthew Eappen who was in her care in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1997, is deeply unknowable – and almost as unknowable as Amanda Knox, who spent four years in an Italian prison following the murder of Meredith Kercher in 2007.
And, second, that I am now absolutely persuaded that there is no such thing as “Shaken Baby Syndrome” (SBS), which is sometimes also known as Abusive Head Trauma.
This second conclusion has influenced my first statement about the unknowability of Woodward, because watching this compelling documentary series on Channel 4 made me acutely aware that the science about SBS was nowhere near as definitive as the statements that were made by the medical experts at her trial in the case, and was far more equivocal and partial.
The so-called “triad” of “tell-tale” signs of SBS – brain swelling, bleeding in the eyes and blood in the dura, which sits between the brain and the skull – has come under serious scrutiny since 1997, with various medical experts now claiming these injuries are not actually caused by shaking at all and, if they had been, that there would be other injuries to the child.
Where, for example, are the bruises on the arms of the baby that we would expect to see if he or she had been shaken? Why does the baby not have fractured ribs, a dislocated, or even broken, neck?
Having watched the documentary and listened to a new generation of medical and paediatric experts, I am now on the side of the sceptics, and that creates new problems. I know from my applied work that some parents, step-parents – and, yes, nannies too – do want to harm children and, in extreme cases, kill them. In fact, Woodward herself admitted under cross-examination that she had not been as “gentle as I might have been” in her handling of Matthew, which only adds another layer of unknowability this case.
Every year there are about 250 shaken baby prosecutions in the UK but how are we to deliver justice to the children who might have been murdered or to their parents or carers who are accused of these crimes if the science behind proving SBS has become so compromised that it is no longer sustainable even as a working hypothesis?
Except in very unusual circumstances, no one will ever see a baby being shaken to cause their death – like Woodard, a person will be left in sole charge of the child, and therefore will be home alone when the problem occurs, and so we are therefore in a position of having to surmise what happened based on the child’s injuries or lack of them, as opposed to having witnesses to the crime.
That again makes it very difficult to determine whether the child might have had some underlying health problem – and there is now a great deal of research about what those problems might be, such as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome – to have caused the death, or if, in fact, something more sinister took place.
The courtroom does not seem to me to be the best place to test these matters.
A court might be able to reach a decision based on which expert was more persuasive to the jury but that is a very compromised form of justice and can clearly create miscarriage cases.
We determine guilt or innocence on the basis of proof that is “beyond reasonable doubt”, and not only am I now convinced that there was reasonable doubt in Woodward’s case but that same doubt must also exist for other cases of alleged SBS.
Woodward may be unknowable but I would answer the question in the title of the documentary by saying that she did not."'
The entire story can be read at:
dodgy-science-lies-behind-cases-25962913
