A group of specialists in child abuse injuries has challenged the medical testimony used by the defence in the recent trial of the British au pair, Ms Louise Woodward, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The defence had claimed that the severe head injuries to Matthew Eappen had occurred before the day in February of last year when Ms Woodward was said to have shaken him and banged his head.
In a letter to newspapers yesterday, 50 doctors specialising in the diagnosis and treatment of victims of child abuse say they are "compelled to speak out" on the scientific evidence presented by the defence that the injuries had occurred days or even weeks before the baby was brought to hospital.
The letter says: "The hypothesis put forward by the defence that minor trauma caused a `rebleed' of an earlier head injury can best be characterised as inaccurate, contrary to vast clinical experience and unsupported by any published literature. The rebleed theory in infants is a courtroom diagnosis not a medical diagnosis and the jury properly rejected it." The specialists say: "Infants simply do not suffer massive head injury, show no significant symptom for days then suddenly collapse and die. Whatever injuries Matthew Eappen may or may not have suffered at some earlier date, when he was presented to the hospital he was suffering from head injuries incompatible with any period of normal behaviour subsequent to the injury. Such an injury would, and did, produce rapidly progressive, if not immediate, loss of consciousness."
The doctors, who are from Canada and Australia as well as the US, say: "The shaken-baby syndrome - with or without evidence of impact - is now a well characterised clincial and pathological entity with diagnostic features in severe cases virtually unique to this type of injury."
One of the defence lawyers, Mr Barry Scheck, has suggested that a panel of experts be appointed to examine the science and the possible over-diagnosis of shaken-baby syndrome. Ms Woodward has expressed the hope that such an inquiry will give her the total vindication that she seeks. She has consistently denied that she played any part in the baby's death.
In a revised judgment by Judge Hiller Zobel, Ms Woodward, from Elton in Cheshire, was convicted of the manslaughter or accidental killing of eight-month-old Matthew Eappen.
Medical experts say the shaken-baby syndrome has already been widely examined clinically and been the topic of perhaps 200 research papers. Research has shown that the syndrome may be responsible each year in the United States for as many as 300 deaths and hundreds more injuries among children under the age of two.