Letter: Woodward trial

Sir: When I was five and my sister was six (in the mid 1930s), we had a 19-year-old au pair from Germany living with us. On one occasion my mother dispatched us to the nearby park for an hour or so with "Nanny" in charge. On the way back, my sister was hit by a car. I still remember every detail of the incident vividly. The driver was in no way to blame; only the impatience and inexperience of our au pair. But my parents blamed only themselves for the awful loss of their daughter - most especially my mother, who never entirely recovered.

Whatever Louise Woodward did in frustration to the crying baby in her (unqualified) care, it was not - by any stretch of the imagination - murder as we know it. And the baby's parents, poised in their loss under the televised eyes of the world, refer to this distraught child as "a little actress" and, by implication, a murderer. Does America and its justice system have no shame?

Professor DEREK FABIAN

Strathclyde