Louise Woodward The Killer Nanny. did she do it?

[HeckinMiffed]

This was such a huge case when I was younger. Anyone else watching?
I always thought she didnt deliberately kill the baby.

@Daimari

I’m not really. I’m just not convinced that people do actually snort and splutter and giggle their way through funerals and the like.

I mean - imagine your friend tells you, crying, that her eight month old died. Nothing on this earth would make me think laughter was an appropriate response, no matter how involuntary it was. I think people are exaggerating.

Nobody thinks it’s appropriate. That’s the whole point. You seem to be under the illusion people are saying they’re sitting howling with laughter at a funeral. That is not what anyone is describing, more an involuntary laugh on hearing something shocking or upsetting.

It must be fantastic to be in full control of your reactions at all times even in moments of utmost stress and tragedy. The rest of us are unfortunately humans and therefore will sometimes react unpredictability to shocking events we aren’t prepared for.

Tbf people have said as a young person I always got horrible hysterical laughter at funerals and Then he told me his dad had died 2 years prior. I laughed uncontrollably and couldn’t stop.

That’s a bit more than a nervous sort of smirk. I do take on board extreme social awkwardness though.

@Kanaloa most of us are in control of our emotions though. I mean of course I sometimes snap when annoyed or want to laugh in a serious meeting but I don’t go round screaming at people or calling them wankers or laughing when their loved ones die because you just don’t. Not if you have any friends at all anyway.

[quote Daimari]@Kanaloa most of us are in control of our emotions though. I mean of course I sometimes snap when annoyed or want to laugh in a serious meeting but I don’t go round screaming at people or calling them wankers or laughing when their loved ones die because you just don’t. Not if you have any friends at all anyway.[/quote]
Ok congrats. You’re obviously a very good and superior person.

Any tips on how to control the limbic system @Daimari?

Most of us are in control of our emotions. But none of us are 19 year old LW in a foreign country being interrogated about the death of a baby which is what is being discussed here.
That's why I don't understand all the talk of hypothetical laughing at funerals. I don't know what it adds to the discussion.

@Daimari

I’m not really. I’m just not convinced that people do actually snort and splutter and giggle their way through funerals and the like.

I mean - imagine your friend tells you, crying, that her eight month old died. Nothing on this earth would make me think laughter was an appropriate response, no matter how involuntary it was. I think people are exaggerating.

You obviously wouldn't think it was appropriate but if it is involuntary it has nothing to do with what you think.

I think it is a bit like I blush, when I was younger it was a source of great embarrassment to me as I'm pale and I'd blush deep red. I didn't want to, I couldn't control it, it just happened. It still happens now but not often as I get less flustered because I'm old and I couldn't care less but even now it does happen.

[quote EssexLioness]@ancientgran that would make sense! In that case completely reasonable. I took it literally to mean any phone calls from the house[/quote]
I just had another thought, she wouldn't have had a mobile phone back then so maybe she was making long calls home and they wanted to limit it because of the cost. You'd be right then as long calls even when she wasn't working would be an issue.

I was referring to UK qualifications, we don't have associate degrees, or 4 year degrees - well we do but don't call them that.

@sashh
In the context of a discussion of how appalling it was that this pair of doctors hired an 'unqualified' nanny to take care of their children, I felt it would be useful to point out that there is no such thing as a 'qualified nanny' in the US, that you can get a qualification in early childhood development or education, but you are not likely to use either a bachelors degree or an associates degree to get into nannying.

Applying UK criteria to the decisions made by the Eappens and assuming circumstances in the US would be the same as in the UK is not fair to them.

They worked with what was available to them. What was available was unqualified young people between jobs whose main attraction was fluent English.

Fair enough Sparkling but while I reserve judgement on LW I really do think anyone who honestly laughs their way through a funeral is probably either exaggerating hugely or lives life as a virtual recluse.

Why are they dragging all this up now? Does she have a book due out by any chance?

Blushing and laughing are not the same, just as a sort of resting grim expression and punching someone aren’t the same at all.

How many people do you know who blush? Loads.

And how many giggle through funerals?

There you go.

Don't think she's allowed to talk about it publicly someone said upthread I think?

Re the phone calls, the parents said she was on the phone for up to 2 hours at a time. I would assume that they had evidence as it would have been their landline as there were no mobile phones then. She was asked in court if this was true and she said yes, she was asked if the baby was awake during the calls and she replied yes.

I thought the parents putting the 5 minutes on a phone call was for times she was looking after the children, obviously in her own time she can spend as much time as she wanted on a phone.

I can see the logic in this, you can't be 100% aware if on the phone for 2 hours, you will be distracted and not able to give full attention to the children. It also means you're getting paid for chatting to mates and family.

@AlternativePerspective

Why are they dragging all this up now? Does she have a book due out by any chance?

The 25th anniversary is February.

@Daimari

Fair enough Sparkling but while I reserve judgement on LW I really do think anyone who honestly laughs their way through a funeral is probably either exaggerating hugely or lives life as a virtual recluse.

Psychologists and neuroscientists have studied this you know !!! and conducted studies, written articles and books etc.

It's not a made up thing

@Daimari You might find it hard to believe, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

I’ve always been aware of nervous laughter and I am aware that some people may find it to believe that the laughter didn’t sound joyous.

I remember when I was about 12 or 13 years old, a few of my close friends burst out into laughter spontaneously during a minute’s silence in assembly and the sound echoed in the hall. I remember after we were told to open our eyes, our Head Of Year looking at them disapprovingly and kept them back to speak to them privately. They couldn’t explain why they laughed, they just said the whole room felt very tense and they suddenly felt the urge to laugh. I remember I asked them afterwards why they laughed and they just thought that our head of year looked quite silly because she had asked us to close our eyes and bow our heads and apparently she was just looking around the room with a stern face and this image made them laugh. I of course didn’t find it funny and our homeroom teacher acknowledged that it was probably a case of nervous laughter and chose not to punish them further. Amongst this same group of friends, I have only kept in touch with one of them and even to this day she still has the propensity to laugh in stressful or serious situations and recently she’s even been rebuked by her family members, but she feels as though she can’t help it. I know a few of my friends actually fell out with her over this and she’s since then tried to work on it. She just says that she doesn’t know what to say and the nervousness that she feels makes her feel very stressed and she just can’t help but laugh at herself, but it looks as though she’s laughing at other people’s pain. So as much as it’s something I do not condone as it is inappropriate, I do understand it’s not always within one’s control how one reacts when feeling nervous etc.

Every time I think of Louise Woodward I think there but for the grace of God. I took a gap year to work as an au pair in America at the age of 18 in 1995, a year before Louise did. I looked after three children under five. I was supposed to "only" do 45 hours of childcare a week but in reality most weeks it was well in excess of this. We were paid $100 a week.

As an 18 year old it struck me as strange that two professional people would leave their children with someone that they had only spoken to on the phone and then spent a day with when I first arrived. When I became a mother I found it even harder to understand!

The youngest child who was only ten months old when I arrived broke her leg and then a few months later broke her arm Both times it was at the weekend when I wasn't there and the parents were taking care of the children. Both incidents were genuine accidents - there's no suggestion the parents were at fault. Whilst I was very upset for the child I also felt very relieved it hadn't happened on my watch. My host mother as well as several other people even said to me at the time that it was a good job I wasn't looking after her as people would be getting suspicious 🙁

I have no idea whether Louise was at fault or not. I met some fantastic au pairs and unfortunately a couple of awful ones. However I can see how people can be quick to jump to conclusions and automatically think the babysitter is to blame.

Every time I think of Louise Woodward I think there but for the grace of God.

Oh, me too. I turned eighteen on the first day of my au pair job in France, having never before left my home country, speaking only basic school French, with plenty of babysitting experience with my own younger siblings, but not having sole care of a difficult four year old with additional needs and a young baby in an unfamiliar setting.

In fact it turned out to be a great experience, but it could easily not have been -- the four year old was a bolter, we lived right across a major road from the beach, where we spent a lot of the days (I was not a confident swimmer) and my blood runs cold at how many things could have gone wrong.

It really is a mad decision to leave your very young children in the sole care of a very young, inexperienced, untrained, foreign au pair who, in my case, they'd never even spoken to before I arrived, and who struggled with the language.

@Daimari

Blushing and laughing are not the same, just as a sort of resting grim expression and punching someone aren’t the same at all.

How many people do you know who blush? Loads.

And how many giggle through funerals?

There you go.

I think they are more alike than you think, it is a reaction to something you can't control, well maybe you can but not everyone can.

I don't know anyone who blushes like I did as a teenager, I positively glowed and if you put your hand near my face you could feel the heat. I'm not talking about a fetching pink here.

I can't imagine the trauma she went through.
We'll never know what happened to baby Matthew.
I don't think she did it, if they could have thrown the book at her they would have, I'm sure the questioning was intense, many in the US choose guilty over fighting a hopeless fight just to get better deal.

@ancientgran

I wondered if she was on valium or something to calm her down as she seemed very flat most of the time. Regardless of that you can't convict someone of murder because you don't think they have responded correctly whatever correctly is.

She was told not to show any emotion while on the stand.

@ENoeuf

Was this the one where people were really sorry for her? In the UK, thinking she was too young to be in charge and she was innocent?

Yes I vaguely remember this because a neighbour was on the news talking about it saying she was innocent and putting yellow ribbons up around the town. I'm not sure why she was so sure she didn't do it I was only young.

That laugh tells me all I need to know. That’s more than a nervous slight half giggle that was pure joy and delight. Gave me chills. Not normal at all.
She may not have meant to do it but she did.
Even more mysterious is the willingness and obsessiveness of her supporters who decided she was innocent before they even had any facts at all and just ran with it.

I hope you never get to do jury service @Strawberry33.