Madeleine Mccann

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Colin Phillips

At the Start
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I may be wrong but I can't find any reference to this sad case on here, which is a little surprising.

I can't imagine how desperate the parents must feel.

Is there any hope of the girl with those beautiful eyes being found alive?
 
I just pray to God, that she is safe and is soon returned to her parents.

The case has really caught the public imagination (if that is the right phrase) and there is certainly plenty of publicity about her disappearance - almost worldwide. She really is a gorgeous looking girl.

The kidnappers, assuming she is still alive, may be able to cut and colour her hair but she has a very distintive eye colouring in one eye which would be impossible to disguise. Let's hope there is some news, and I hope it is good news for her grieving family.
 
You of course have to feel tremendous sympathy for the family but I am truly amazed at the 'celebrity' responses that have been generated over the past few days and the money offered. Is it because they are such a photogenicaly perfect family unit? Would this sort of response have been generated on some Costs del Sol drug-infested rave with a single mother leaving her child alone while she partied nearby? Am I an utter cynic?

There can be no excuse of anyone taking a child but I do wonder why anyone would leave three children under the age of four alone in a rented appartment on a holiday complex. Sorry but maybe I am simply out of touch with raising children as mine is now 24 but no way would I have left him in an unoccupied house - even if I was in a restaurant a short distance away - at that age without a babysitter. Maybe Madelaine would have been snatched anyway but with an open door from their bedroom ?

I know that's a harsh view and I do feel so sorry for the parents because they will never be able to forgive themselves and, even if Madelaine is found alive and well (please God), their previously 'perfect' lifestyle has now gone forever.
 
Mrs Orchid and I used to argue about this when we took our daughter away. I was for tucking her (the daughter) up and going out to dinner but my wife would have none of it.

Like I said before, I married Miss Right, I just didn't realise her first name was Always...
 
Of course they are, Colin - hindsight is a wonderful thing but you can't get away from the facts of any case. I do feel for them but I feel for their child more and I do wonder why it is that society today finds it acceptable to want to have it all without making any personal sacrifices. We live in an instant gratification culture, sadly.

Guilt doesn't achieve or solve anything and makes the situation neither more nor less aceptable.
 
These parents have to live with that decision for the rest of their lives. They made an error of judgement and I am sure it is one many parents have done. The 3 children were asleep and were checked every 30 minutes. I agree, alot of people wouldn't do it but on this occassion this couple did. It still gives no one the right to kidnap their child. I was hoping she may have just been sleep walking as that is one hell of an opportunist to go to a patio window, find it is open and then take a 3 year old. Perhaps Madeleine's parents were seen in the restaurant and someone spotted an opportunity. It is a horrendous crime, and yes they are a perfect looking family but I hope that had it been any family in the same circumstances the reaction from the public and the media would be the same.

A lot of the profile of this case is down to the extended family of Madeleine who has worked tirelessly to ensure that they get as much publicity as possible which in turn has created this swell of public and financial support.

It's a crime and a horrendous one that is yet to be solved in a foreign country. The priority is clearly to find her and prosecute those that kidnapped her.
 
I'm afraid it's turning into a sentiment-fest, and I realise I'm probably sounding very unkind saying this. At Saturday's raceday briefing at Lingfield, we were told that there would be people on site handing out little yellow ribbons and photo flyers of the kid - so that everyone could 'share the anguish' (yes, those were the words used). It's a dreadful thing to have happened, no-one is denying that, but at the same time there are hundreds of children in the UK dying in hospices, fighting awful childhood diseases in hospitals, and overcoming all kinds of disabilities to get by in life.

While we're being pushed towards an almost Diana-like state of national grief for the child's abduction, I don't think it does a service to these courageous parents and children.

Even if there's a good outcome, one positive purpose that the event might serve is to improve Portugal's police reaction and search procedural if there's ever a similar incident.
 
I am saddened, too, for the community at Praia da Luz

My parents owned a villa in Luz for a number of years and I spent many very happy holidays there. The people are lovely and they adore children - my sister and her husband also holidayed there many times with their daughter, who was a toddler at the time, and wherever they went little Helen, with her very blonde hair, became the centre of attention. Madeleine's disappearance will have impacted on everyone there.
 
Originally posted by Songsheet@May 14 2007, 09:21 AM
You of course have to feel tremendous sympathy for the family but I am truly amazed at the 'celebrity' responses that have been generated over the past few days and the money offered. Is it because they are such a photogenicaly perfect family unit? Would this sort of response have been generated on some Costs del Sol drug-infested rave with a single mother leaving her child alone while she partied nearby? Am I an utter cynic?

There can be no excuse of anyone taking a child but I do wonder why anyone would leave three children under the age of four alone in a rented appartment on a holiday complex. Sorry but maybe I am simply out of touch with raising children as mine is now 24 but no way would I have left him in an unoccupied house - even if I was in a restaurant a short distance away - at that age without a babysitter. Maybe Madelaine would have been snatched anyway but with an open door from their bedroom ?

I know that's a harsh view and I do feel so sorry for the parents because they will never be able to forgive themselves and, even if Madelaine is found alive and well (please God), their previously 'perfect' lifestyle has now gone forever.
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I agree with everything you've said. I've found the media reaction bizarre. If this were a single mum who'd left her three children alone while she went out on the razzle she would've quite rightly been castigated by the press. Her remaining children would be in care by now. Because she was neglected, somebody was able to abduct Madeleine. From what I've read (and who knows how much that's been reported is true) there is no reason at all why one adult could not have been in the room looking after those children. Her parents were with a group of eight or nine other adults with children on this holiday. To ensure the safety of all of those children just one adult would've had to remain inside with them that night. Or the babysitting services provided by the hotel staff could've been utilised. This situation was caused by the selfishness of the adults around her. I don't claim to be the perfect mother, but I have never and will never leave my children alone, and most of all not in a strange place surrounded by strange people.

I truely hope that Madeleine is found soon.
 
If a babysitter was available, she should have been engaged. If one wasn't, then Griffin's solution is next best, or even rotating the adults half an hour at a time. But I guess that wasn't thought about, and the McCanns were complacent. Sadly, people confuse the good time they're having on a holiday with the idea that everyone else around them is only out for fun, too. Hence so many stabbings on the beaches of Thailand, rapes of young women drunk in foreign bars, and murders of young backpackers in Australia. Not everyone is as warm and friendly as the travel brochures would have you believe.
 
As I understand it, even babysitting services only check up on kids periodically.

I'm very much in the same kind of mood as Krizon over all this. I don't want to come across as unfeeling or uncaring either but I found all the mass hysteria over Diana's demise disturbing and I'm feeling pretty similar about this.

I don't think other family circumstances would make that much of a difference, though, to how it's been presented in the media. Nobody blamed the family of the little girl who was taken from her bath in England last year. Nobody blamed the families of Jamie Bolger or the Soham girls for allowing their very young kids to be out and about unaccompanied. Yet that was the first thing that crossed my mind.
 
"Nobody blamed the family of the little girl who was taken from her bath in England last year"

I'm with you there, DO.

I just couldn't see how it was possible for a stranger to walk into a house which was occupied and take a young child from the bath.
 
All of those cases point to people feeling safe about the community in which they live - I suppose if one were unkind, one would even say complacent. If you feel you KNOW your neighbours, know your locality, have probably lived there all your life, you don't see why you should lock your back door when you're bathing your child, or why two 11 year-old girls shouldn't be out and about together. You wouldn't imagine someone murdering TWO kids in one go, would you?

But as long ago as the 1950s, there was a horrendous triple disappearance from an Australian beach. Two sisters, the eldest nine, and one younger brother all disappeared and were never seen again. The case is still cold, never solved, although one or two killer paedophiles were later thought to be involved. It was a case which, the newspapers said, changed the way in which Australians had taken for granted what they thought was the country's sunny, open, friendly way in which kids would be safe. Just the sort of attitude on which predators thrive, I'm afraid.
 
I believe that she was six, Colin. I wouldn't have left my kid unattended in a bath, either, but perhaps it was one of those awful 'just a sec' moments - didn't the mother go to answer the phone? I'd have let it ring, but hindsight's a wonderful thing!
 
If these parents have anything to feel guilty about, they have been punished for it a million-fold. I think all parents have had one of those just a sec moments.
 
Absolutely, HT. How many, every time something like this happens, say under their breath, "There but for the grace of God go I"? I'm always astounded by how much care, ATTENTION, and constant vigilance kids need. It takes only a mo for Dad to go back in to get a drink from the house, for a wean to be drowned in a goldfish pond at his Gran's, something like that. Parenthood is the single most unrelentingly responsible position in the whole wide world, I truly do think. It's why I swerved it, and salute all who didn't!
 
It's not one of those 'just a sec' moments though is it? The children were left unattended for a considerable length of time, ranging from being checked on half hourly or not being checked on at all, depending on which paper/website you read.
 
I am very aware of those moments.

A memory that will always stay with me, my wife and I were bathing our six-month-old daughter in one of those baths on a stand, in the living-room in front of the fire with the television on.

Something must have drawn our attention on the television because as we looked down at Bethan she had slipped under the water,..................oh so very easy.

She was OK by the way, but as I say, the memory of that event sends shivers through me but it has made me aware of how careful you need to be.
 
Griffin: no, unfortunately not in this case, it wasn't. Poor judgment, poor decision, as the result bears out. But, as I say, on holiday and in what one thinks is a safe locality, complacency is easy enough. There again, thinking of childminding on holiday, my parents went off for a jolly while on hols and left me with the chalet site's creche service. When they returned from a couple of hours of sightseeing, the child-minding lass had disappeared, so had I, and no-one was on duty. They went rushing around all over the site, asking anyone if they'd seen me and the girl, searching pools, bushes, huts. They eventually found a manager, who went to the girl's own chalet, and there we were, playing away very happily. She'd decided I was pretty good fun and as there were no other kids on her hands, taken me to her place to play. My mother still goes pale when she remembers the search they made of the site, calling out my name, and not thinking the girl had squirrelled me away with her.
 
Originally posted by Griffin@May 14 2007, 11:26 AM
It's not one of those 'just a sec' moments though is it? The children were left unattended for a considerable length of time, ranging from being checked on half hourly or not being checked on at all, depending on which paper/website you read.
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Griffin, was it not the case that the were eating within sight of the chalet door. Had they been out on the veranda it might well have still been possible for someone to have went through the rear window and take the child. I suppose though, the kidnappers might not have risked it then.

Colin, I remember my wife and I had our daughter out at my grandad's when she was two or three. We took our eyes off her for a sec and she disappeared. Luckily, after tearing all over the place in a blind panic, we found her in the next close. My mother also told me that, when I was a toddler, she let go of my hand in the butchers one day to put something in her bag. I took off and tore accross a busy main road.
 
Originally posted by Songsheet@May 14 2007, 07:21 AM
You of course have to feel tremendous sympathy for the family but I am truly amazed at the 'celebrity' responses that have been generated over the past few days and the money offered. Is it because they are such a photogenicaly perfect family unit? Would this sort of response have been generated on some Costs del Sol drug-infested rave with a single mother leaving her child alone while she partied nearby? Am I an utter cynic?

There can be no excuse of anyone taking a child but I do wonder why anyone would leave three children under the age of four alone in a rented appartment on a holiday complex. Sorry but maybe I am simply out of touch with raising children as mine is now 24 but no way would I have left him in an unoccupied house - even if I was in a restaurant a short distance away - at that age without a babysitter. Maybe Madelaine would have been snatched anyway but with an open door from their bedroom ?

I know that's a harsh view and I do feel so sorry for the parents because they will never be able to forgive themselves and, even if Madelaine is found alive and well (please God), their previously 'perfect' lifestyle has now gone forever.
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I totally agree.
 
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