Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 22, 1995 TAG: 9503220063
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LEESBURG LENGTH: Medium
They bade a harried goodbye to their infant son, Brenton Scott Devonshire, and to Anna-Corina Peeze, the 19-year-old Dutch au pair the family had hired to look after their baby, as they rushed off to work Aug. 2, 1994.
They had no reason to suspect that harm would befall 8-week-old Brenton.
Beginning Thursday, Peeze faces trial before a Loudoun County Circuit Court jury on a charge that she inadvertently caused the boy's death by shaking him violently when she could not stop his crying.
Doctors have testified in hearings leading up to the trial that the baby's brain slammed back and forth inside his skull, fatally bruising it and causing it to swell.
The baby's death shocked American parents who have brought some 13,000 foreign nannies - most of them young women - to the United States every year under a program overseen by the U.S. Information Agency.
The charges against Peeze, and other isolated stories of infants harmed at the hands of young au pairs, prompted the federal agency earlier this year to tighten regulations governing the program.
Peeze has pleaded innocent to involuntary manslaughter in the child's death. Since shortly after the death, Peeze has lived with another Northern Virginia family.
When the Devonshires arrived home from work Aug. 2, the baby was asleep in his motorized swing. He slept through dinner, and didn't wake when his mother and Peeze left the house to run errands at 7 p.m.
During the October hearing, the Devonshires described in halting, emotional voices how they slowly realized something was amiss. They have declined requests to talk about the case outside the courtroom.
Stephen Devonshire said he tried to wake the child for a feeding, and found him clammy and ashen. One eye was closed, the other stared blankly into space. Devonshire called the pediatrician, but the office was closed.
Uncertain what to do, Devonshire wrapped the child in a blanket and held him until his wife and Peeze got home, he said.
Later at the hospital, after Futterman diagnosed the baby's injury, Peeze repeated ``I don't understand, I don't understand.''
Soon, Brenton was on life support and police were asking questions. When the baby died four days later, Peeze was charged.
She faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Peeze's case has fascinated and outraged observers in the Netherlands.
Many Europeans, accustomed to generous maternity-leave policies, wonder how a young woman with little training could be left with a child so young. And they wonder why American police surrounded the woman and her father on the street, forcing them to lie on the pavement while she was arrested.
They wonder, too, about a judicial system that kept Peeze in jail for several days and would not allow her to leave Virginia, even for her mother's funeral late last year.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB