The American au pair agency which employed British teenager Louise Woodward will no longer pay for her appeal against a manslaughter conviction for the death of a child in her care.

Instead, some of the estimated £200,000 raised by her supporters will be used to fund her upcoming appeal, her parents have said.

Miss Woodward's legal fees to date have been covered by EF Au Pair, which placed the 19-year-old, from Elton, Cheshire, with the family of eight-month-old Matthew Eappen in Boston.

She was convicted by a jury on October 30 of second-degree murder for the baby's death. A judge later reduced the verdict to manslaughter and the sentence from life in prison to the time she had already served - 279 days. Both sides have appealed.

The teenager has been ordered to remain in Massachusetts pending the prosecution's appeal of the sentence reduction, which is scheduled to be heard before the state's Supreme Judicial Court from March 6.

Legal bill "estimated at £300,000"

EF Au Pair had long insisted it would support Louise Woodward and pay for her trial and appeals. In a statement, her parents said the agency already had spent a "substantial amount" of money and had "expressed a wish that Louise fund the rest of her legal case".

The agency, which did not comment on the news, has not revealed how much the defence has cost, but legal experts have estimated the bill at £300,000.

When EF Au Pair agreed to pay for the defence, her parents said, the Woodward family was unable to afford even a small portion of the legal costs. Since then, supporters in their hometown of Elton, England have raised more than £200,000 for the family.

A statement issued by a Liverpool lawyer representing the family said: "Louise is enormously thankful that so many friends and supporters have been as generous in making it possible for her to defend herself against charges that have not a grain of truth to them."

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