To think the Met spending £5 million on Maddie McCann is unfair on others who have missing children

[Ilovemyself]

I know how retched I would feel if I were in the McCanns position, and would want no expense to be spared in the hunt for answers.

But I can't help but think that this case has been so high profile that other cases must have funding cut or not even be followed up as the budget is limited.

I honestly don't know what the answer is, but it does seem this case has benefitted in ways others wouldn't.

I feel bad for thinking its unfair on others, but just can't help wondering how other victims of serious crime feel.

Sorry. Those that don't have a voice or are not being investigated suffer. It's not about the McCanns. It's about all the others.

I think YABU. They might be onto a wider child trafficking ring which could save agony for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of families. I am not sure how many Britons are aware of the issue of "los ninos robados" which has been big news in Spain over the past few years as the extent of it is beginning to be revealed. It is absolutely terrifying and the Church is heavily implicated in cases from the 1940s at least up until the early 80s, sometimes even later. Like many countries, including Britain, single mothers were persuaded and sometimes drugged or had signatures forged to give up their babies for adoption. That in itself is scandalous and deserves investigation but with these Spanish cases, even married couples were told their babies were stillborn or had complications which led to their deaths within hours, were often shown a frozen corpse if they insisted on seeing the child (they claimed it was frozen for autopsy) and the babies were sold, many for the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of Euros today. Church officials and health workers told families that they would take care of the funerals. It is estimated that there are up to 300,000 suspicious cases. Many families who have exhumed their dead child/siblings graves have found no remains or remains which are not linked by DNA to them. Of course, many adoptive families had no idea - they were falsely told that the child had been voluntarily given up by someone who was a prostitute, young mother etc. Lots of the children were sent overseas. Some who knew their adoptions were not entirely above board (but probably believed the stories they were told about the mothers) were extorted for years by nuns etc. You can imagine the compounded grief of the parents, many of whom are still alive.

It's worth googling this but makes for devastating reading. If you have a sibling whom you know to have been adopted from Spain, I would very strongly urge you to encourage them to look for their birth mothers as the stories your parents were told about their origins may be entirely false.

Jessica I meant RedHelen was wrong about the police, actually!

I am not even going to bother commenting on the rest of what you said!

I dread to think what Madeleine has been through, if she is still alive. But hats off to her parents for not letting her abduction be forgotten.

For those making comments (based on tabloid speculation and poor policing from Portugal), had the McCanns been involved in her disappearance, do you seriously think they would have worked as hard as they have to keep this case in the public eye? They would have wanted it to die down as quickly as possible.

I did hear one comment last night, that although in the UK we are very aware of this case, it is not so well-known in Europe and elsewhere, hence the reason for highlighting now as people disappear off to other parts of the world on holiday. Don't forget her - keep looking.

landofsoap - I didn't say I believed any of those theories. I was merely pointing out that, strictly speaking, what Red said is correct. But a child going missing from an unlocked apartment does NOT automatically mean abduction and ALL avenues must be explored and it doesn't do anyone any good to assume one thing and ignore the others.

Yes strictly speaking Red is correct.
I don't think the mccanns have helped their cause by repeatedly stating as FACT that MM was abducted from the apartment. This may have been what happened, but there are other possibilities and these need to be considered

Blimey, do you think you should let the Met know? You know, remind them it might not be abduction? Bet it's not even occurred to them

Get off your high horse, Nerf, we were only pointing out what Helen said because in her earlier post landofsoap seemed to be suggesting Helen was incorrect but she apparently meant she was wrong about something else.

Well it seems to have passed by some of the posters on here nerf. And the McCanns don't seem to accept any other possible explanation

Maybe the McCanns won't accept any other explanation because they know Madeleine wasn't accidentally or even purposely killed by her own parents on account of them being her own parents!

What crashdoll said.

I third what crashdoll said.

She may not have been abducted from the hotel room. She may have wandered off. At some point though, she was abducted.

One thing I don't think it is to do with is child traffciking. If a child wanders out of an unlocked apartment & falls into a river then a crime hasn't happened for example. If a crime has happened it needn't have been abduction from the hotel room, it might have been abduction from another place. No one knows what happened that night apart from definitely Madelaine & so the police had to look at every possibility. Everyone has a theory but no one KNOWS but I would be surprised if it came out in the wash that closing the borders would have enabled her to be found.

Sorry but YABU

I agree there isn't enough resource put into these cases. But the Portuguese investigation was such a righ cock up how could they not investigate?

I am praying it uncovers something - anything

It's not the money. It's that it's just such an epic waste of time.

They will not find her alive. Even with all the different theories about what happened, its the same ending.

Of courseas a parent you would never want to give up but I don't think all these official agencies should be buying into the hysteria. It's all just PR and spin.

The money would be better used supporting living children existing in hardship

Can't agree. If someone had said that about Susan Maxwell and other little girls in a case that took years to solve, Robert Black would still be driving the country in his white van abducting and murdering children.

I get the concern about whether resources are fairly distributed across cases. I remember when Jill Dando died the Met took officers off several serious Operation Trident investigations, including a young mother shot dead in front of her children, to put on her murder case which I was aggrieved about.

But, but, we don't know what they know. The Dando case had potentially dynamite implications, if someone was lurking around London shooting women, famous or not. We couldn't know what danger might unfold.

We know nothing of what the Met now know, or think they know in the McCann case. Perhaps it is worth reopening precisely because the child may still be alive, and/or there is evidence of a real danger to other children. PR and freemasonry sound like inadequate explanations for this new investigation to me.

The Egypt case is tragic. We know who abducted the child, but not where she is. Dad is in prison for contempt because he won't say. His family are very unlikely to assist, I suspect. And in case OP hasn't noticed, Egypt is in turmoil at the moment and has been for 2 years, so any notion of an Egyptian/British or joint police operation there to find this girl is completely fanciful.

< very patiently explains>
Yes of course MMs parents will know whether they harmed her or not.

The point Red, myself and others have made is that there are OTHER possibilities apart from the parents having harmed her, and her having been abducted out of the apartment. Yet the parents INSIST that she was taken 'from her bed'. I think it's wrong to state that as a fact when it hasn't been proven. There are other possibilities... Her leaving the apartment for a start, and then various other possibilities leading on from that.

Personally I don't feel the mccanns have helped their cause by insisting that someone came in and took her from her bed. Though I can see that it may feel a little less awful for them to believe that, than that she wandered off.

For the record I don't believe the parents harmed her. But that doesn't mean they have carte Blanche to state things as fact which are unproven

Just to clarify that last point- ANY of the possible scenarios are Awful. What I mean is, it might be slightly easier for the parents to convince themselves that someone entered the apartment and wilfully took her, than that she wandered off from an unlocked apartment

I agree Janey, and I think that blaming the Portugese police is an easy option - look how long it took to find the Yorkshire Ripper (& all that sidetracking of the hoax Geordie caller) My gut feeling is that she wasn't checked as often as stated & events happened earlier than stated. I certainly findit hard to believe an abductor was hiding in the appartment whilst an adult was there checking the children. I also know how heavy a sleeping 3 year old is & can't believe Maddie was carried the way the friend said she had seen.

I think the parents should pay, it was their negligence in leaving her alone while they were out enjoying themselves that brought about this whole sad situation. I feel that if you go to a foreign country you accept that any problems you have will be dealt with by their police under their systems.

Why do you all care so much that the McCanns believe she was taken from the apartment? You think if they were more open minded she would have been found? Or that the police always only investigate based on the parents version of events ? (Clearly not, as they were made suspects) what does it matter?

Exactly RedHelen

What's clear on this thread is that some people can't get their heads around the fact that there are myriad possibilities between the 2 extremes of 'parents harmed her' and 'events happened exactly as the parents state they did'

I also think this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with wilful distortion of facts... It's entirely plausible that events have become blurred or misremembered. Hand on heart how many of you would be able to recall precise timings of things, and the precise detail of whether a door was an inch open or 4 inches open? Especially when you factor in that this was a holiday, the adults were in relaxed mode and had been drinking [NB this does not mean I am accusing them of being drunk !]

Experiments have proved that you can put a group of people in a room and then later question them about details, eg what time did someone enter, what colour shirt was someone wearing.. There is HUGE variation in the responses.

That is why many people are sceptical of the mccanns claim that they know MM was taken 'from her bed'. That is not proven. It may have happened but its not known fact.

And for some weird inexplicable reason it seems almost sacrilege in some circles to say so

Nerfmother it DOES matter because someone could have seen something but dismissed it because it doesn't fit in with what has been said about the time & that she was taken from the apartment.

This wasn't meant to be about the McCanns it was meant to be about all the others that don't get the publicity or the resources