Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Irish Nanny Faces Murder Charge of Mass. Baby; Prosecutors: One-Year-Old Girl Had Head Injury

An Irish nanny -- living and working illegally in the United States since 2002 -- is facing the prospect of a murder charge, after a baby was fatally injured while in her care, the Independent (British) website reports today (January 23, 2013).

Aisling McCarthy Brady, 34,  pleaded not guilty in Cambridge (Massachusetts) District Court on January 22 to accusations of fatally assaulting one-year-old Rehma Sabir while looking after the child at her employer's home in Cambridge. The judge ordered her held on $500,000 cash bail.

Prosecutors say the toddler sustained a catastrophic head injury as a result of an assault on her first birthday (January 14), and died two days later at Boston Children's Hospital. They are expected to charge Ms. Brady with murder once an autopsy is complete.

The case comes just over a decade and a half after a British nanny, Louise Woodward, was convicted of the murder -- a charge later reduced to involuntary manslaughter -- of Matthew Eappen while looking after the eight-month-old at his home in Newton, Massachusetts. A judge's decision in that case to free Woodward with "time served" -- after she was in prison for about a year -- shocked a plethora of Americans, including most legal experts, who felt that the judge was "over-lenient" and had a judicial responsibility to sentence the infant killer to a minimum of 10 years in prison.

No comments:

Post a Comment