ONE MOTHER'S STORY

By Terry McCarthy

Eleven days after a Cambridge, Mass., jury found British au pair Louise Woodward guilty of second-degree murder in the death of eight-month-old Matthew Eappen last February, Judge Hiller Zobel turned the verdict on its head. In a rare and controversial act of judicial veto, he reduced her conviction to involuntary manslaughter and deemed that the 279 days she had served in prison would suffice as a sentence. Woodward was free. The decision elated her supporters--among them the entire village of Elton, England, her hometown--and devastated Matthew's parents, Deborah and Sunil Eappen. On Friday, Deborah Eappen emerged from seclusion to speak to TIME's Terry McCarthy:

TIME: What are your feelings about the judge's ruling?

Eappen: Right now I am very stunned. I can't even process what happened in the last two weeks, in the last nine months. Right now my biggest concern is getting through the day, focusing on Brendan [her other child] and Sunil [her husband]. We haven't been living at home for 2 1/2 weeks; we have been going from place to place, living out of a car, scrambling for clothes. It is hard to know what's important. I feel I'm the judge's victim. Louise took away Matthew, and the judge took away justice. What are we telling people in this case? That if you commit a crime and lie, you get away with it? It really belittles and diminishes the value of Matthew's life. [Is this] a society that views children as dispensable? Children of abuse cannot take the stand, so who is going to speak for them? I was brought up [to believe] that there is right and wrong, that there are actions and consequences.

TIME: Do you think the judge was affected by the publicity?

Eappen: The judge was not sequestered. He was reading papers; he's on the Internet. There is some ego thing going on there--you have to wonder what his underlying biases are. He showed a total lack of understanding of child abuse.

TIME: How do you feel about the negative press coverage of you?

Eappen: I don't think anyone knew the Deborah Eappen they were talking about. People didn't care to find out what I was like; they didn't know who I really was. People are projecting their own guilt and fears onto me. Who can you feel safe to leave your kids with? You cannot trust the people you trust--the day-care attendants, the teachers, the summer-camp minders. It is a reaction that protects them from the fear of something happening to their own kids. We felt it was the best thing to have someone in our house where we could control the environment, where we knew the person, knew her family, knew her friends.

TIME: But in the end you didn't really know her.

Eappen: Right. In the end she pulled a big one over us, and I feel like she's done it to the American public and maybe to the judge himself. The truth is horrible. It is too much to deal with--that someone could be abusive intentionally and, above all, to a baby. You can give excuses for this behavior, but it is still murder. No one can imagine what she was thinking--I wish I could understand it. It is nothing a normal person would do. And it was not a one-time event. She is also responsible for his broken arm. It makes me wonder what else she did to him that didn't leave a mark. This was no accident--a baby who is not ambulatory, who is not walking--there's no other way for him to break an arm.

TIME: Your feelings about Louise?

Eappen: I wanted to be sympathetic at the beginning. At the hospital, I was making excuses for her. I wanted to believe Louise didn't do it. I asked the doctors 10 times if there was any other explanation. But Louise did it. There was no previous skull fracture. She doesn't seem to have a conscience. She has lied so much, she probably even believes what she's saying. It is incredible. Everyone else was lying but Louise? I was horrified. The whole thing [in court] was so orchestrated it was disgusting.

TIME: Would your feelings about Louise be different if she had apologized after Matthew died?

Eappen: The fact that she showed no remorse is very offensive. I really wonder whether she cares about anyone else but herself. You know, after she was found guilty, she said, "How can you do this to me? I'm only 19." Well, my response was, 'How could you do that to Matthew? He was only 8 1/2 months.' Now Louise is living in a presidential suite in that hotel. She is a convicted felon, and it has turned into the biggest opportunity in her life.

TIME: How much of the public response has been negative?

Eappen: About 1% of our mail is hate mail; the rest has been very supportive. We have put up with so much abuse--of ourselves, of our home, our kids. We are not vengeful people, but we have a strong sense of right and wrong and of justice. It makes you come out stronger than you wanted to be. Our innocence is lost. We will never trust the same way again, and we were very trusting people.

TIME: What about the statement you made saying you hoped Louise never had the joy of having her own kids?

Eappen: She had told me once she did not want kids of her own. So that was why I said that. And if she ever had that joy, I don't think she deserves it. I can have a bad feeling about her. That's an honest feeling I have.

TIME: Why did you decide in 1995 to give up the offer to become chief resident and pass up the fellowship for pediatric ophthalmology?

Eappen: It was a great opportunity to be chief resident. It was a prestigious position, leading to an academic career, and there is a lot of pressure to stay on track. But I had decided to have children, and I wanted to work part-time--but you know you're giving something up with a decision like that.

TIME: Your future plans?

Eappen: For the moment we are going to stay in Boston. I am going to work two days a week. I am really exhausted. I most look forward to going to bed. But I think it is helpful to help people. It's a good way to channel some energy into something positive. When I was working, I felt good about myself--good self-esteem--and a happy mother makes happy children. I don't want to feel like Louise can defeat our happiness.

TIME: Do you want to have more children?

Eappen: I definitely plan to have more. But child care, that's going to be a difficult issue. I don't have as many options as other people now. Before, we had had two wonderful au pairs, but you really don't know what someone is doing when you are not there.

TIME: How do you feel about the case now?

Eappen: I just feel like, how did Louise become the hero and I become the villain? What is the real issue here? It is child abuse and child murder. I strive in a lot of different directions in life, and now suddenly that striving to be good seems to be bad. The only decision I wish I had made differently was [the decision] not to fire Louise. I wish we had.