What I was allowed to see had been chosen by the media. So I have no way of judging this girl, reaching any conclusions on the basis of this programme. Is she the nanny from hell? Is she a cold blooded killer disguising her crime? Is she a young girl ill equipped to cope and who did something inadvertently with catastrophic results? Was she set up as a victim to explain something that was not her fault? As the music fades on the Panorama programme and I write these words a number of images leap from the screen and my memory. Another time, on that same Panorama programme, Princess Diana, the icon of warmth and motherhood. Now Louise, dressed not unlike Diana, appears, the Janus face to this media coin - the acclaimed mother and the convicted killer in a media-portrayed tragedy. I do not know this girl or the Eappens or any of the people who surround them. I formed the opinion that I am allowed to form depending on the questions that are asked by interviewers and the images that are presented on camera. And of course we bring our own stories.
Whether you view Louise Woodward as guilty or not guilty will depend on many factors. Whether you are the mother of a young baby, whether you are the parents or a 20 year-old daughter, whether you worked as an au pair or hired one, and whether this experience was good or bad.
What I do know is that this is as much a story about the media as about the tragic occurrence in February 1997. For example, the Eappens may have chosen an English girl to mind their children, seduced by the Mary Poppins image of English nanny and the competencies and promises that image would have held. Louise herself may have chosen to visit America seduced by the glamour and opportunity of life across the pond. Our world is filtered through the lens of the media and begins to attain the same level of reality. The words that we use are very powerful and some powerful words were used in the programme. Words like curfew, guilty, should, trial and "personal things".
Louise said that the Eappens felt guilty leaving their children and that they over compensated when they came home. She says that they felt guilty not being with their children, "as much as they should". In this sentence she allied herself with all those who believed a mother's place is in the home with her children. Alternatively she may invoke guilt or annoyance in people who think there are many ways to parent children.
Louise speaks about the Eappens' expectations of her as a young girl of 18. It would seem by her own account that they perceived her as someone who was selfish, who did not help in the frantic morning rush, was more concerned "with personal things", staying out late and leaving the children unattended at times during the day, while she made phone calls to her friends.
The Eappens say that Louise killed their baby. Louise implied that she may have been scapegoated and asked "if the parents did not do it, who did?"
At the end of the day there is only one thing that we know with certainty. A little boy called Matthew is dead. Parents have lost a son, a child has lost his brother, a young girl carries a stigma of convicted child killer.
We ourselves should perhaps now retreat from this story with dignity and sympathy for all those who have lost and been burdened.