A nanny kills two children, yet some still want to blame the mother | Emma Brockes

Marina Krim is blameless in the murder of her children, yet her working status and relationship with her nanny have been under scrutiny

A criminal trial opened in New York last week that, for many in the city, has been hard to think about and impossible to stop thinking about. It has been five years since Yoselyn Ortega, a nanny for a family in Manhattan, stabbed to death two of her three charges, and the trial is to establish if she knew what she was doing. Ortega’s lawyers argue she is not guilty by reason of insanity.

In 2016, the case provided the basis for Leïla Slimani’s best-selling novel, titled Lullaby in the UK and The Perfect Nanny in the US, which opens with a scene of carnage in a Paris flat similar to the one Marina Krim encountered on returning home to her apartment in 2012 to find her children dead in the bath and their caregiver stabbing herself in the neck.

The defence lawyers were fishing for blame … without blame, what happened is too terrifyingly random to bear

Related: Nanny charged with double child murder

Continue reading...

from Children | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2G7Db8l