If this had happened to unemployed parents in Hull or Moss Side or Toxteth then the likes of the Mail would have thrown the book at them. Even Rolando, above, who agrees in principle, seemed to think that they went out for 'dinner' worth mentioning. I'm a bit of an inverse snob I admit, but how long do you have to bite your tongue for? They were wrong, full stop.
Madeleine McCann
- Thread starter Fergies Gum
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Jamie (@Vault Dweller) are here to talk about United's dreadful home defeat at the hands of Big Ange's Tottenham Hotspur. Should this have been the end of Ten Hag? How long does he actually have left? And does Nik finally want ETH out?!
If this had happened to unemployed parents in Hull or Moss Side or Toxteth then the likes of the Mail would have thrown the book at them. Even Rolando, above, who agrees in principle, seemed to think that they went out for 'dinner' worth mentioning. I'm a bit of an inverse snob I admit, but how long do you have to bite your tongue for? They were wrong, full stop.
Watching that tonight I was taken aback by them leaving the kids alone like that, especially after Madeline had asked them where they were when they were crying the night before. Madeline being 3 is bad enough but how old were the twins?? Seems completely idiotic.
There is no 'in principle' about it.
I only mentioned the fact that they went for dinner as i feel it is important to stick with the facts of the case in question.
Yes.
Exactly, at least by my standard of neglect, or that of a few posters in the thread.
In a post just above one of yours, he says "OK I can agree with that, we look after an old guy who is dying of cancer and yes a couple of times we have had to run to his house, only 2 doors away. I would not say that was neglect or irresponsible."
This is my point. I grew up in a rural area so literally every summer was spent like this. A few others in the thread (Pauldy and Irwin, I think) said they had similar childhoods. Also, every other child on my area had this experience. Was the entire village guilty of neglect? No, because in our particular circumstance it was relatively safe. Yet by your standards this would be massively neglectful. I think that kind of absolute, black and white definition of neglect is wrong. Different circumstances yeild different standards, so what's permissible changes depending on the situation. Each parent has to make that judgement call based on their particular situation, that's what I meant by a grey area.
Just to be clear, I haven't been arguing over whether what the McCanns did was neglect or not. I was arguing over whether leaving your kids alone at any time for even a few minutes was neglect. If it is then a fair few posters are either guilty of neglect or victims of it.
That post wasn't aimed at you, tbh mate. 
Apparently, that section is followed by Jimmy Saville stuff. How very...um...subliminal.
Currently watching the Crimewatch episode. The quote by Gerry of 'We wouldn't like to think they would wake up, be crying and looking for us' The solution to your child crying because you aren't there, isn't to check a little more often than the night before, it is to either take the child with you or stay in.
Blue-green algae dumb
Then most people are idiots. Like the Portuguese Police who botched the case from day 1 with their amateur hour keystone cop act.
True - its not something you would necessarily remember without being prompted, but the article said it was when he saw Gerry carrying his child on tv that reminded him of what he saw. Your subconscious memories can often be triggered by different events.
There are still a few things that have no explanation for me. The fact that the sniffer dogs picked up the scent of a dead body on Kate's clothes, Madeline's cuddly toy and in the car is strange, as someone else has already mentioned. Kate's explanation was that, as a doctor, she had been in close contact with a number of dead bodies before the holiday. As for how the scent could be on Madeline's favourite toy, she said it was because she had taken that toy to work with her...Doesn't explain the scent in the car they hired after Madeline disappeared.
Also, the fact that Kate refused to answer a number of questions. Maybe this is down to having been in shock etc - I don't know. But still strikes me as strange.
I've just read some of the points on this site - and am not saying that I trust this sites accounts implicitly or anything like that, but in my mind it does raise some pertinent questions:
http://www.cwporter.com/mccann.htm
For example, some of the questions the link asks is why none of the Tapas 9 and their families helped look for Madeline?
How did Kate immediately know that Madeline had been abducted, and not that maybe she had wandered off?
Why are there so many inconsistencies in the accounts given by Jane Tanner - and why, after seeing someone outside/close to the McCann's apartment carrying a small child that evening, did she not think to pass on this bit of info to the McCann's until at least a day after Madeline had been found to be missing?
There are just a lot of inconsistencies in this case. That does not mean I consider the McCanns to be guilty, but it does mean that I think they should be suspects and investigated as such.
I think you corrected someone who said they went out to get pissed, saying they went out for dinner. They may have gone out to get pissed at dinner - we don't know that.
The facts of the case is that they left their children alone without any supervision.
I'm not disagreeing. I have already stated that I think the neglect of their child was disgusting.
What I didn't realise until i saw the paper this morning is that they had done this for the previous four nights as well.
It is absolute child neglect.
Just reading this article from the Sunday Mirror that is supporting the McCann's version of events:
I think the McCann's should have been considered as suspects from day one - not that they should have been assumed guilty, but they should have been fully investigated. Instead, the Portugal police's decision to place them as suspects was met with outcry over here, which is bizarre. I would have thought that in almost any instance where a child goes missing from their home/place where they were staying, that the parents would be investigated thoroughly, and not given the opportunity to shape the investigation.
I think the McCann's should have been considered as suspects from day one - not that they should have been assumed guilty, but they should have been fully investigated. Instead, the Portugal police's decision to place them as suspects was met with outcry over here, which is bizarre. I would have thought that in almost any instance where a child goes missing from their home/place where they were staying, that the parents would be investigated thoroughly, and not given the opportunity to shape the investigation.
I understand that mate, and I'm not judging your upbringing at all. I understand the grey area, but you used it in relation to the discussion at hand and my point is quite simple.
Whether the little girl was taken or not, what the parents were doing was neglect. There's no grey area there.
Can someone define neglect please?
Is leaving your kids asleep in another part of the house neglect and all?
Do you need to be physically able to see your child for it not to be neglect.
You'd want to be one seriously skewed individual to think that two parents who've lost a child should be prosecuted for leaving her asleep in a bed a couple of hundred yards from where they were sat. Never exactly sure of the motivation of people who call for them to be prosecuted for it.
Is leaving your kids asleep in another part of the house neglect and all?
Do you need to be physically able to see your child for it not to be neglect.
You'd want to be one seriously skewed individual to think that two parents who've lost a child should be prosecuted for leaving her asleep in a bed a couple of hundred yards from where they were sat. Never exactly sure of the motivation of people who call for them to be prosecuted for it.
You all seem more outraged that parents would leave kids in a locked room 50m away than you do that a little girl was kidnapped presumably for reasons that are best not thought about. Maybe this is why? You'd rather be outraged at a bit of sub-optimum parenting than considering what this little girl probably went through and may still be going through.
If this is a cross-section of the British public you and the tabloid press deserve each other.
If this is a cross-section of the British public you and the tabloid press deserve each other.
Maybe you're the idiot who has it all wrong?
How can you be so sure of yourself to call anyone who entertains the possibility of the parents being involved idiots?
Maybe if it is the parents fault then it is easy to believe that it can't happen to you?
Yes. That does seem likely.
In an unsolved case shrouded in mystery and littered with inconsistent reports, why is it idiocy to not rule the unlikely on the basis of it being unlikely? It seems to me that only a complete idiot could say with absolute certainty that the parents weren't the perpetrators.
Because the evidence makes so unlikely as to be bordering on impossible. No way could they have hidden this from their friends on the night. No way they could have disposed of the body. No way they wouldn't have just faded away once cleared. It just makes no sense and never did.
Good shout Wibble, maybe it's just people's desire to apportion blame.
So because you can't envisage how it might have occurred that the parents were involved, everybody else is idiots?
Again then, how can you be so sure that you're not the one being the idiot? You say 'no way this' and 'no way that', but what if there were ways, ways which you're just failing to consider through this stubborn assertion that it's impossible and only an idiot would think otherwise?
Are we going to debate a range of unlikely scenarios or are we just going to focus on the one?
It's not as if every time the story comes up you hear a lot of made up bullshit trotted out, most of which is easily disproved if anyone's bothered to extend their study of the case beyond what they see in the Sun.
I've always had a gut feeling that she wandered into the wardrobe and is now queen of some little known alternative dimension. Hey you can't rule it out can you?
Where is all this easily validated disproof then? I don't know why you're bringing the Sun into it, but you can examine the case in some detail and find much evidence to support the theory that the parents were involved, as likewise you can find evidence to support the theory that they were not involved. Neither theory has been proven or disproved.
What struck me was the information that there was a night creche down the road which the original suspect was presumably heading home from with his girl! If only they'd put the kids in there for the evenings, especially given Maddie being upset about being left alone!
The Sun / The Mirror they're all the same, if you're getting your information from them and basing theories on what you see then I think it's fair to say you conform to my own definition of what an idiot is.
As for the easily validated disproof, well lets take one example - you were the one who waded in claiming the parents are making fortunes on the back of it, 2 minutes on google will give you the audited accounts of their foundation and show you exactly where the money donated goes.
But who has time to actually research their opinions, theres bollocks to be talked on the Internet and only so many days in the week.
I'm not trying to blame them as some part of "it can't happen to me" rubbish at all. I'm simply stating that leaving your kids home alone whilst you piss off out to dinner is neglect. It baffles me how people could think otherwise.
Maybe some of us have seen actual neglect.
Leaving kids in a bed in a holiday complex while you have dinner 200 yards away and check them regularly doesn't come close to neglect. I guess it's a question of where you draw a line.
Is sending your kid to someone else's house for a night neglect? What if something happens? Is it neglect then? What about if they're playing unsupervised for 10 minutes and something happens?
They took a chance, that's about it, unfortunately the worst case scenario happened. But if she was abducted in a planned abduction then really the only way to guard against that is to never let your kid out of your sight.
Leaving kids in a bed in a holiday complex while you have dinner 200 yards away and check them regularly doesn't come close to neglect. I guess it's a question of where you draw a line.
Is sending your kid to someone else's house for a night neglect? What if something happens? Is it neglect then? What about if they're playing unsupervised for 10 minutes and something happens?
They took a chance, that's about it, unfortunately the worst case scenario happened. But if she was abducted in a planned abduction then really the only way to guard against that is to never let your kid out of your sight.
To me when they said that, it gave a lot of credence to the theory that they could have decided to sedate Maddy the next time they went out and accidental OD could have occurred but one thing that bugs me with that theory is, how did they dispose of the body IF that's what happened? I mean there were huge search teams, surely a body would have been found? Unless Maddy was killed a day or two before they reported it. I'm not for a second suggesting that any of this is what happened btw, just a theory.
I've only ever heard the parents being defended on here. Everyone I've ever spoke to about it was in as much disbelief as I am about them leaving their kids alone.
So because there are worse forms of neglect, this doesn't count? And how is a sleepover even remotely close?
Would you seriously go on holiday and every night leave your kids alone in a hotel room whilst you ate dinner? I'm not saying all these cases can be avoided completely, of course not, but by doing what they did they made it so much more likely right?
And look at the end result.
Would you seriously go on holiday and every night leave your kids alone in a hotel room whilst you ate dinner? I'm not saying all these cases can be avoided completely, of course not, but by doing what they did they made it so much more likely right?
And look at the end result.
I imagine most parents have at one point or another left their kids unsupervised, it happens. 24/7 adult supervision is impractical.
When did I mention reading the Sun or the Mirror? You're not making sense.
Did I say they pilfered money from the foundation funds? Celebrity status alone can attract wealth if played correctly, and the McCann's have shown all the signs of playing the role of celebrity quite correctly. If they're confident that the case will never be solved, which considering the facts at hand looks a quite reasonable assessment, then why couldn't they continue the facade of celebrity parents of a missing child obsessively searching? They're doing the exact opposite of all the other parents of missing children who hit the headlines for a brief period only then to fade from public view.
Sorry, Popper, I wasn't aware you were this master researcher whose opinions cannot be questioned on account of all the thorough research you do in between accusing anyone who disagrees with you of reading the Sun and the Mirror despite not researching whether this actually be the case or not.
Either you're telling me that I cannot say something without fully researching what I'm about to say prior to saying it, or else you're telling me that you do fully research everything you're about to say prior to saying it. Either way you're talking shit I'm afraid.
We treat the parents as suspects here every time if there is an element of doubt. In fact, the British polices favourite trick is to get the parents (alongside whatever close relatives they might suspect) on TV to release a statement and answer some media questions and the usual "we ask for peace and privacy in this difficult time" line.
What they are really doing is placing him in a very high pressure situation under massive scrutiny which is a police psychologists wet dream.
well that's not what I said.
A sleep over compares because it involves risk and uncertantity, something could go wrong. If it does is it neglect?
Leaving your kids alone and unsupervised for hours on end is neglect. Leaving them in an appartment 200 yards away, that you can see, and checking on them every half an hour isn't,
I doubt it but why does it matter, other than addressing people want to feel superior? The child was abducted and most likely killed, is the suggestion that they somehow had it coming or what?
The only way you can guarantee something like this doesn't happen is to never let your kids out of your sight. They took a chance that some of us wouldn't, but that's not to say we don't all take chances with kids every day. There but for the grace of god go all of us.
Its something I would never do and have never done.
Many people will say the same. Why do you think that is?