'I don’t want it to happen to anyone else’

The Cavan nanny, wrongfully accused of causing the death of a child in her care in Boston, is considering taking legal action over her wrongful detention for more than two-and-a-half years in a US prison.
Lavey native Aisling Brady McCarthy (37), who just celebrated Christmas with her whole family, gave an interview to the Boston Globe newspaper in the past week. She indicated that she wants the doctor, who first implicated her in the death of one-year-old Rehma Sabir back in January 2013, held accountable.
Mrs Brady McCarthy also wants prosecutors, who a judge found withheld exculpatory evidence in the case, to answer questions.
Both Dr Alice Newton and Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan have defended their actions.
Mrs Brady McCarthy is planning to use the civil courts to expose what she feels happened to her in a criminal court.
Now living in Ballincollig, Co Cork, with husband Don, Mrs Brady McCarthy said: “They weren’t just wrong in my case, they were reckless.”
She continued: “And they never lost a minute’s sleep. They just moved on to the next case. I want to expose this because I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”
Mrs Brady McCarthy was charged initially with assault, but later murder in the first degree, connected with the death of the infant in her care.
However, in a stunning reversal in August last year, prosecutors dropped the charges against her after the medical examiner’s office said it could no longer stand by its ruling that the child’s death was a homicide.
The revised ruling review of the alleged shaken-baby case found that baby Rehma’s medical history “could have made her prone to easy bleeding with relatively minor trauma,” raising significant doubt that the child was a victim of abusive head trauma, as alleged.

Wants to 'move on’
Mrs Brady McCarthy told The Boston Globe reporter that, after she first landed home in Shannon, reporters followed her everywhere. While reporters camped outside her mother’s house in Cavan, she and her husband snuck away to her sister’s house in Galway where they celebrated their third wedding anniversary, the first one she hadn’t spent in jail.
Christmas also marked an important moment for the Brady family in Ireland. One of 10 siblings, with two brothers in Australia who travelled home, it was the first time in 15 years the whole family was together for the festive season.
She still gets recognised, however, which she says makes her want to change her image dramatically, but overall Mrs Brady McCarthy states that she wants to “move on” with her life.
“I have no choice but to move on. I have changed. I don’t trust people like I used to. You’re nearly afraid to get to know people because they’ll say, 'Oh, you’re the girl from Boston.’ It makes me want to cut my hair off and dye it black.”
While in prison in Boston, Mrs Brady McCarthy received cards and letters from well-wishers all over the world, and from the families of children she had taken care of down through the years.
“That’s what kept me going - that and the support of my family,” she said, while admitting she cannot see herself working as a nanny again in future.
But with renewed perspective, Mrs Brady McCarthy says: “When I was in prison, I had a loving family that came to see me. I called my husband twice a day. Some of the girls had nobody. Some people have nothing. No matter what, your life is always better than someone else’s.”