To be shocked at this woman's lack of parenting concern?

[jojane]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2346481/Tragedy-girl-murdered-Florida-church-just-hour-mother-let-recently-released-sex-offender-McDonalds-befriended-family-Walmart.html

I can't believe that a mother would let her child go off with a man she has JUST met in the supermarket!! I am all for not thinking every person is a peado and will happily let my children talk to people if I am there but no way would I let a complete stranger take one of my children forma burger!?,

[Kytti]

Jan49 you clearly don't have four children, or have ever taken your children to a park. You're going to lose sight of your children sometimes, just sometimes, even for a few seconds. If not, you may as well lock them up and have done with it. You are judgemental and horrible.

[TheRealFellatio]

That's very true TheHuman - sometimes no amount of common sense and vigilance is enough. that doesn't mean you should not continue to exercise common sense and vigilance though. What this woman did was incredibly stupid.

[Boomba]

real fallatio yes probably the mother is in circumstances that make her more likely than most people to lake bad decisions. Still not her fault.

I think her 'allowing him to take her dd to the maconalds counter' is actually besides the point. Most of us wouldn't have even gone to Walmart with a stranger who offered to buy our kids some clothes, in the first place.

[cory]

I agree with Boomba that the dodgy thing the mum did was to take up with a stranger in the first place.

I would happily have let my child go into a shop alone at age 8. But I suppose I was trusting to my teaching about safety issues in the past and to the good example set by myself and discussed with dd. So yes, the mum went wrong: she was modelling unsafe behaviour.

Having said that, I still don't see the point in pitching into this mum. She was clearly in a bad place and when you are stressed or exhausted or very unhappy your normal safety radars don't always work very well.

dh was very nearly taken in by a con artist earlier in the year when we were worried out of out minds about dd's health- there is no way he would have reacted that way if he had been in his usual state of mind. It doesn't mean he can never be trusted with decisions again.

[cory]

"Hopefully you let your child do things alone when they are old enough to know not to go off with a complete stranger or get in their car or to get in the car even of someone they know when mum/dad think you are playing just outside. "

No, you let them do things alone when you think they are old enough to know what to do. There is never any guarantee. My parents thought I was old enough to be sensible when I was in my early twenties. I made some very silly decisions that nobody who knew me could possibly have foreseen (though they didn't turn out as badly as they might have done).

[pinkballetflats]

Ive been a vulnerable, poor, exhausted, down-on-my-luck single parent. There is no way Id let someone walk to another part of the stir either my child...even if they'd offered to buy us food.

I've not read the article because its likely to be very inaccurate but I do know that Walk Parts are vast abduction generally the McDonalds are right next to the exit...as in a few paces away, so basically easy to be out the door before the either could dial 911.

I feel for her but IMO she was negligent.

[zippey]

I don't think the mums actions were all that negligent. She had fallen on hard times and a kind gentleman offered to buy her family clothes and feed them.

To me it sounds like a story from one of those lovely MN threads about experiences of people doing kind things for one another. This obviously had an awful twist but the killer had gained her trust.

I love those threads but I hate these ones in which people put on their perfect parent hats amd put partial blame on the victims.

This girl, April Jones and Madelaine Mcann were all taken away by evil people who exploited a situation. I wouldn't like to blame a parent for a situation that could have occurred to any of us.

[thecatfromjapan]

It's worth reading some of the links below.

I feel nothing but absolute sympathy for this family and this child.

[cory]

I think the truth is that none of us have any idea how many lapses of concentration and judgment we have committed that might potentially have been fatal to our dc but which we haven't even noticed because nothing happened.

[somewherewest]

I don't think anyone in these situations is in any sense absolving the perpetrator of any responsibility. But it is legitimate to say that some parents make choices which unnecessarily increase the risk to their children. I don't get the response here - if someone had their one year old's ears pierced or put their new born to sleep in a separate room MNers would be all over them like a fecking rash. But to suggest that getting into a complete stranger's van with your three young children in toe is all kinds of stupid - nope, not allowed. I will be shot for this, but I don't think the April Jones or the Madeleine McCann situation 'could've happened to any of us' (try starting a WIBU to leave my three young children alone in a hotel apartment while I went out to dinner in the Tapas bar across the pool thread if you don't believe me). To say otherwise normalises bad parenting decisions, which just puts more children in danger.

[working9while5]

April Jones was a five year old playing outside her house.

[RhondaJean]

April jones could have happened to any of us.

[KobayashiMaru]

Watch your children at all time when in the park? Maybe if you have one pfb. I don't have four eyes to keep one on each child at all times, do you?

[Boomba]

I was walking in town at the weekend with my 8 year old dd and her friend, 1 on either side of me. Dds friend was chatting away, telling us a story. I was listening but looking straight ahead as it was busy.

The chatting stopped, so I looked round. She was gone!! Completely out of sight! She'd seen summat in a shop window, and gone to have a look. It's SO easy to 'loose' them

[working9while5]

"the world is very different to when we were children so no, they aren't going to be able to have the same freedom"

Is it, though? Is it really that different... two children in my year died when they fell through a roof they were climbing on at 9 or 10. Nowadays their parents would be pilloried for negligence but then it was accepted that kids got up to mischief but tragic outcomes were rare.

We know the names of April Jones, Holly and Jessica, Madeleine McCann etc because these are rare and isolated incidents.

As someone with OCD I have been taught through therapy to consider risks in terms of a) probability and b) perceived awfulness of the feared event... when it comes to our children, (b) is always going to be beyond huge but it seems to me that the probability of these things happening is being blown out of all reasonable proportion with respect to the measures parents are expected to take to keep their children safe.
Not allow them go off with a strange man? Fair enough. Watch them at all times no matter what the context? Excessive to the point of being a clinical anxiety disorder if you ask me.

[CalamityJ]

Astonishing. What must the mother have been thinking? Children get taught stranger danger. Do we need to teach parents?

[JenaiMorris]

Some posters ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Nobody here knows the half of what happened, yet feel in a position to point the finger at the mother of a murdered child.

Grow up and learn some humanity.

[fanjoforthemammaries7850]

Hear hear

[ThisReallyIsNotSPNopeNotAtAll]

A young child was murdered by a horrid creature. Someone not fit enough to even be called human and there are people actually trying to blame the mother?!

That mother has just lost her child in one of the worse possible ways and yet people are wanting to blame her for it?

Dont you think she will be sat blaming herself as it is? She doesn't need people blaming her as well

I have nothing but sympathy for the mother and the family.

[NandH]

eyesunderarock ...bit pathetic to state that 'no, I will not make the artical clickable'! 1. I didn't specifically ask you to do it and 2. Just pathetic!

Thanks bluebell for clickable link :)

I don't understand why people are blaming the mother, he obviously came across as a decent man and unless sex offenders had a sign across their heads saying 'I'm a sex offender' how is anyone to know! I hope he rots in hell, personally!!!

[LittleNoona]

Seriously, how many of you would do the same as this mother did?
Honestly?

[ParadiseChick]

Awful story.

It's there something about laying the blame on someone who you think you would act differently to that makes these stories easier to handle for some people?

Like you know you're not a murderer. But you are a mother. But you wouldn't make the mistakes she did would you?

[Oblomov]

I'm with savoy. I have done lots of things, that maybe in hindsight, we're just too lax.
And pre Madeleine McCann lots of people left children or were much more lapsi-daisy-call then they are today.

[xuntitledx]

For those comparing this to thr April Jones tragedy and asking if we would blame the parents then I'm going to go against the grain here and say YES!

April was a 5 year old girl, at that age I don't think it's appropriate to be playing outside with zero supervision. Completely understand that ultimately blame lies with the disgusting creatures that commit the crime but the parents cannot negate all responsibility and for a 5 year old, my concern wouldn't just be with stranger danger but also cars and water and anything else dangerous that a 5 year old wouldn't be able to understand.

The mother in question in this story was completely naive to expect that a strange man just wanted to 'help the family out' without that raising any eyebrows or concern.

Unfortunately the world is a scary place but it's our job as parents and respectable human beings to be vigilant and protect the vulnerable.

[Boomba]

but the point is, yes the woman is likely to be in a situation where she would accept help from this man. Whilst 99.5% of us wouldnt in a million years of gone with him.

There are people who don't make good decisions and arent good at safe guarding themselves.

Paeophiles are good at recognising these people/the vulnerable children and targeting them

its not their fault they are vulnerable