OMG. Anybody just seen GMTV? 3 yr old girl abducted on holiday on the Algarve.

[tiredemma]

kate said reports just in, cant find anything on bbc.

bloody awful.

Thanks Foghorn

Its sickening, it really is. Those poor poor parents.
I wonder if anything came up with the fingerprints.

I fear the worst has already happened to this child and that this missing person enquiry will become a murder investigation.

I feel that if this child was not targetted by child traffickers then she has been abducted by someone intent on doing her harm.

Some people will say the parents have been neglectful and others won't. In all news stories along these lines they always report on the circumstances and the 'what ifs' because they don't have any new info on the situation. All that matters at the moment is that there is a 3 year old little girl missing and her parents must feel like they are in hell right now. My heart goes out to them. I hope she is found safe and well.

If she was taken, then it was very coldly calculated, the child must have been watched for a day or so, and the abductor must have been hiding nearby so as not to co-incide with parental visits to the room.

It makes my blood run cold, I feel for these parents.

But I do wish the media would stop harping on about them being doctors/specialists.
If it had been shop assistant and milkman then would they have been treated so favourable?

Either way, I hope they get some sort of outcome soon, preferable a positive one.
The worst case would be if she was never found like that boy Ben. Personally that would be my worst nightmare, worse than a body

Those poor poor parents

I don't know Madeleine's parents but she goes to the same nursery as my dd and I have good friends who do know them and her. They are delightful, 'normal' thoughtful, very caring, parents.
Clearly, with hindsight, it turns out they were 'wrong' to do as they did here but which of us, as many people have said, have NEVER done anything that, however unlikely, could POSSIBLY have led to something tragic happening....It is truly hideous.

I hope she is OK. I'm praying for her.

hippi - I don't think they are being treated favourably, they are being treated compassionately
bayleaf - I really don't see that they were 'wrong' as you put it

Some of the comments on this thread are really upsetting

This was not an opportunist so I think the fact that she was taken from her room was probably as a result of her being watched.It could easily have been a playground as people who do this sort of thing are persistent.And how many of us have had a coffee at the park and not watched our LO's 100% This is so tragic I really hope they find her

I put wrong in inverted commas .... I simply meant that however safe she seemed - she clearly WASN'T. So I don't necessarily think the decision to leave her was wrong per se - simply that it turned out to have horrendous consequences, so with hindsight it was the 'wrong' decision.
BUt we can't live our lives with hindsight. Most of us make decisions everyday which, with hindsight, could be regretted and called 'wrong'.

Channel 4 news just said this was at a Mark Warner resort...

It is really scary, to think there are people out there, preying on our kids...

Am I assuming the search has now been widened to beyond the resort? Unfortunately nearly 20 hours on, they could be anywhere by now...

Yes, right from the start is said a MW resort.

The thought of someone watching a small child with a view to abducting them makes me want to vomit.

I so hope that she has just wondered off and shes curled up under something somewhere.

Am so with Rhubarb on this. It could have hapened to any of us, to any of our children. Lets just pray she is found unharmed and quickly. I can't imagine the hell the parents must be going through.

Sorry , behind the curve, just seen we already knew the tour operator

I really don't want to be the voice of doom, but if she wandered off, nearly 20 hours ago, and fell asleep, surely she must have woken up by now, started crying, and people must have seen/heard her...

The only way she can so completely vanish is to assume abduction

Cannot believe there is still no news. How quickly we forget that it's always possible for this to happen to anyone from any walk of life in any circumstance.

any thoughts

Intriguingly, one Briton who runs a company in the Algarve has told police he spotted a couple carrying a young child early on Friday.

George Burke, from Liverpool, was driving back home from nearby Lagos around 6am when he caught the two people in his car headlights.

"I couldn't see them clearly because it was dark and windy. They scurried down a side road and out of sight.

"I thought it odd to see a couple carrying a child at that time of the morning , but I didn't think anything more about it until I heard about the missing girl."

Our local paper says the shutters in the room were smashed it doesn't sound like she wandered off. That poor family and that poor girl if she is still ok she must be so frightened right now.

The parents must feel as though their heart as been ripped out. Still no news, still no sign and another night on its way.

I probably have smothered my dts with being over careful, I wouldn't leave them alone in a hotel room, particularly one next to a road like that. But that isn't saying that the parents shouldn't have done so, that was their choice to make and for whatever reason they didn't use the facility provided by the hotel. You can't have an issue like this and not expect people to discuss it and have differing opinions, that is a bit naive.

Every mother (and father) hearing that story will have all the emotions of the subject Every Parents Nightmare and should be allowed to comfort themselves even if some think that is being smug.

oh god it's all so more real when you see the pictures.

It is horrible. Re the shutters - was it not the police who damaged the shutters? (for reasons only known to them?)

And every news report is different, the restaurant is said to have been anything from 40 yards to 200 yards from the room where little Madeleine was sleeping.

And now the sighting of two adults carrying a child in the early hours of the morning?

I hope hope hope she is found soon, alive and well, albeit upset and hungry.
But it has been a while now

Keep watching the news for some good news but not happening

when they say a couple, do they mean a man/woman?

god it gets worse doesn't it