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About LinkBacksThe kids should never ever have been left on thier own!! Just so the parents can go out and have a drink etc!! That is terrible parenting! They should be charged for neglect anyway!!
The kids should never ever have been left on thier own!! Just so the parents can go out and have a drink etc!! That is terrible parenting! They should be charged for neglect anyway!!
Excellent post. I couldn't have put it better myself. Just had a good chat with the old man and he says that in Britain the parents would have been the first people questioned under caution. Imho the whole campaign and publicity appeal was a bad mistake. It can't have helped the investigation. If she was alive she'd have been found by now.Originally Posted by Saracen
"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." Frank Zappa. ----------- "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." Huang Po.----------- "A drowsy line of wasted time bathes my open mind", - Ride.
Well, there may be objective and verified accounts ...... but neither the public nor the press have them, and I know my comments are based on nothing more than media accounts which may or may not be either accurate, comprehensive or representative, and I rather suspect that everything else said on here is too.
The Portuguese police seem to have come in for a fair bit of stick for not keeping us (i.e. not keeping the press) better informed. Personally, I'm wholly in favour of the police doing their job largely in secret, at least while the investigation is active. It is, IMHO, without a doubt far better than the tendency in the UK (and many other countries) for more or less hourly updates on what they're up to. The public, and especially the press, in the UK seem to think they have a right to more-or-less real-time status updates on the progress of the police.
To my mind, the purpose of an investigation is to find out what happened, apprehend and present those believed to be guilty for dealing with by due process of law. It isn't to feed the salacious appetites or expectations of 24/7 news channels. The police certainly need to be held accountable for their actions (or lack thereof) but NOT via a blow-by-blow account.
That's why, though I don't support the McCanns decision (as reported) to leave the kids and go out, in the absence of detailed facts about exactly what happened, it's difficult to draw much in the way of conclusions because we don't know if their decision to go out would have made any difference at all to what happened to Maddy. If, repeat IF (as those reports suggest) the apartment was in plain sight and the kids were checked up on every 10-15 minutes, then my point is simply that they may have been at no higher risk than in some of the other scenarios I've suggested, like the barbie or when the parents are asleep themselves.
Until (and if) we know what happened, I don't think demonising the McCanns, even for leaving the kids, is justified, and certainly not on the basis of what is, as you so correctly point out, not objectively verified accounts. I'd rather wait for facts .... then castigate them, if it's justified.
Whatever the facts are we've just got a horrible situation, we've either got parents who have lost a small kid and are being investigated as suspects, or something that i couldn't bear, parents who have been milking a huge amount of publicity when they are the culprits.
All i hope is that we get this case resolved one way or another soon, I personally hope the parents have nothing to do with it as i'd feel sick that so much has been made of this that it would harm any future situations where young children have been "snatched"
TiG
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Thanks. As I understand it, statistics show that in these kinds of cases, it OFTEN comes down to someone known to the victim. It's by no means a cast-iron rule, but stranger murders/abductions are, as I understand it, relatively rare. Therefore, any self-respecting police officer ought to be at the very least considering the relatives as potential suspects.
I also rather suspect your old man is right, and that an interview under caution would have followed very promptly here. But .... different countries have different systems and legal frameworks. We do not, for instance, have the sort of investigative magistrate that many, including several European, countries do.
As I understand it, under the Portuguese system, police will interview those believed to be non-suspects without caution precisely because it is a less formalised environment and because the interviewee has less rights and protections. It is, presumably, therefore a quicker way of getting a high volume of facts/accounts in a short period of time, as opposed to everyone "lawyering up", as most people (certainly including me) would do if cautioned in the UK, or treated as an arguido. It also gives them a chance to get people on the record with statements that, once given legal representation,they may not make, and that, once made, are hard to refute and impossible to unmake.
Personally, if caught up in something like this in the UK, and if I had the faintest suspicion I was considered as a potential suspect, I'd be saying very little at all without legal representation, even as a witness. And as soon as I detected a faint whiff of questions I didn't like the tone of, I'd be saying zip without representation.
I would, in fact, adopt much the stance that Robert Murat did (or seems to have done) which is that I'll cooperate fully provided I'm getting competent legal advice. Until then, nada.
They have raised an astonishing amount of money from well wishers and famous people.
David Beckham, Simon Cowell both put in over £100,000 to keep them in portugal and pay for the campain to find her.
Are they to be tried for fraud aswell?
The only thing that suprises me is with the complete lack of emotion shown by the parents the police didn't think this way sooner.
Whether they did it or not, they are not fit to look after children!
I have to say I've found the monetary aspect rather disturbing as well. In the immediate aftermath of the event there was a good reason for a high-profile campaign to encourage any witnesses to come forward. But the opportunity to gather useful leads has long-since passed, and since then the campaign has become a little self-indulgent, though obviously it's hard to criticise a family hit by such a tragedy.
As for the forensic tests that appear to lie at the bottom of the current turn of events, it's not unusual for parents to share genetic markers with their children...
Vodka
I think they did it, and i always thought that. I would definatly not be suprised if the child was made up and never existed. They have recived a stupid amount of money and seem to be after the publicity more than finding their child.
however how can anyone say it is neglect for a 4year old child to be left for a few hours whilst asleep. can you say your parents never left you for a short time whilst you were sleeping? becuase i bet they did.
The fact they say they checked on her every 10 mins sounds very suspicious to me - why should they need to?
If this were a younger child, then i would agree. I have no idea how old their other children are, so this might be why people say neglect...
Last edited by SilentDeath; 08-09-2007 at 02:38 PM.
Walked into Sainsbury's today to see the Sun running with a picture of the mother and the headline "You killed Maddie" or something to that effect.
Makes me ashamed to be a journalist sometimes, the sensationalism they come up with.
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Their twins are younger than Madeline iirc. We shouldn't judge the parents too harshly, they made a mistake leaving their kids unsupervised and it goes without saying that they are paying for it, in the worst possible way.
The idea that either of her parents killed her or had a hand in her abduction, to me seems absurd. To level such an accusation without even knowing the couple at all is ridiculous. You can't judge them by what little information we have and without hard evidence, nor should you. This is just speculation.
As for as pictures of the couple looking a little sour, its understandable. They must be sick to the stomach losing their child and a harsh, critical, invasive media presence must be very difficult to deal with. In addition to all that, a bunch of tabloid readers are now ready to string them up for murdering their own child.
well, they did want publicity in the first place... if it turns invasive harsh and critical of them, its then their own fault for chosing that method to start with.
police ALWAYS have to consider nastier motives with a childs disapearance.
i hope its not true - but it could be
Assuming you mean they were actively involved in the disappearance of their daughter, then I have to say this is the stupidest post I have seen since I joined these forums. On what evidence (that you've apparently seen in advance) should they have been charged?
The only thing that's struck me as odd is their seemingly over-use of the media. Almost like they're trying too hard to cover something up. I've said it myself a few weeks after Maddy's disappearance, but didn't think much of it. Then again it could just be guilt that they left their children alone, only checking up on them rather than being in the apartment.
Have to say though, there's nothing that any of us know which leads us to believe that the parents are guilty of anything other than possible neglect. All they are at the moment is suspects. Frankly half of Europe have been suspected since she went missing. It's just that the police are now officially looking at things.
They had lost their child and they were desperate. They would have done anything to get her back and the publicity must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Its worth noting that if you murdered your own child, you probably wouldnt want publicity.
How is it their fault that a bunch of money grabbing newspapers, interested only in selling more copies, have siezed upon this familys personal tragedy in order to suit their own agenda. Hmm not much news of sightings lately... i know lets write some sensationalist, speculative bs so we can flog a few more copies (thats the Portugese media and our own).
Intresting no one has taken this view of the situation.
assumption: None of us are well placed to make insightful judgements on this.
so, we make assumptions based on probability.
Odds are, that as i recall them claiming their daughter was abducted in a 30 minuite interval, whilst they where only seconds down the street. Now high likely is that? For that to be the case someone would probably have to be watching, did they leave the door open, how did the person get in? Its either negligence leaving the door open or letting the kid wander down to find the parents, or someone had already been coveting the young girl.
Now there are plenty of people around who stalk, but odds are with this type of thing its someone who knows the child (enless its a serial type) who was there in the forign country, which would sugest pre-meditation. This is rather un likely.
Or the parents did it, and lied to cover it up, given how rampant child abuse is (compared to abudction) this is by far the most likely option.
Ok, so its been a while since I read much criminal physcology, the assumptions might be a little wrong, but on odds allone, i'd have to say its most likely the parents, don't ya think?
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