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.

from ITV just now "join me and Katie for the latest on the abduction at 1" ... completely sensationalist - it hasn't actually been confirmed as an abduction yet but they just love a good story.

I think so Lucycat.

Similar thing was touted in the UK after Sarah Payne was abducted. don't think it took off though.

I think if they're going to find her they have to be very quick & rely on as many people as possible knowing she's missing whether its an estranged partner or not.

my mind goes back to the woman who stopped those two boys in Liverpool who took Jamie Bulger because she wanted to know why they had a very upset toddler with them. now that chills me, she has to live with the fact that though her instincts told her something was wrong they gave her a plausible enough explanation to make her feel she was wrong.she knows she could have saved that boys life.

Blu, possibly I would'nt be surprised as Lanzarotes history also claims that all 130 volcanoes errupted at the same time and no-one was hurt..........hmmmmmmm.

"She's very pretty and very blonde so wouldn't be a likely child to be with a Portuguese family or holidaymakers".. that quoted from the "family friend" on the bbc. ey? there are probably lots of holiday makers with pretty blonde toddlers?

also bbc said that police are not reporting all info as it's very sensitive - maybe more to this?

wannabe - I assume they mean families or holidymakers who are Portuguese maybe?

DYWFWT - I've just cried thinking about how that woman must feel now Poor Jamie B. I hope they find this little girl safe and well.

Hair-dying and other variations are definitely an urban myth

oops -warning - the article title in that link has a crass and insensitive title...not nice in the context of this thread.

worst nightmare for any parent.
I don't want to get into blame but I certainly wouldn't leave ds 100 or 200 yards away at night, babylistening service or not. We always took ds with us to eat at night when he was that age.
But I know Luz and it's a small place, and fairly quiet at this time of year.
Horrible business hope they find her soon.

arrghh thought someone would say that. Thing is, we don't know what set up they had there (re the baby listening/baby sitting).

and someone mentioned them 'questioning' the abduction, I assume they are doing this because there's a possibility she may have wandered off on her own.

Ghastly - poor parents.

Just looked on the MW website and they offer a kids' club-based evening baby sitting service - perhaps that is in lieu of babylistening ? Sky reckon the door to the apartment had been left ajar

Latest reports imply the door of her room wasn't locked so she could have gone out herself I suppose.
It sounds like they could see the room from the restaurant and were checking but once an hour?

sorry if I sounded unfeeling fox, I'm just slightly hysterical on the subject and have always been really strict about what babysitting means. To me it means an adult is a room or so away. That's just the minimum to me. Otherwise they are not actually being supervised are they?!
It's just my opinion and I don't mean to give offence really!

How bloody awful.

Friend says shutters were tamptered with, manager says there was no sign of a break-in. Inclined to believe the friend as she has no reason to lie afaik.
Also, they weren't using the babysitting service, even though one was available, probably because they could see the room from where they were.

"they could see the room from where they were", obviously not as their child disappeared from it?

Maybe it's wrong to judge but this does make me actually. Why would a parent leave their children unsupervised in a hotel room, on the ground floor of a hotel, with the door unlocked, while they went out for dinner? And if babysitting was available, why not use it? any of those children could have wandered out at any time, and it seems the parents would have been none the wiser.

Just caught the end of bbc news - her aunt says 3 kids were put to bed early, checked every 1/2 hour. At 9.30 they were all asleep - twins in cots either sie of the little girl's single bed. At 10 they found the door and the window open and Madeleine gone. MW due to issue a statement at 12.45. They were among a large group of families all of whom had a number of similar aged and younger children.

wannabe that is so easy to say after the event. They must have believed they could and would see.

so why take an older child if there were babies? this still doesn't add up. I guess it's possible the apartment was broken into, the little girl woke up and ran out of the door, and who knows from there - she would have had no idea where here parents were so could have ended up anywhere.

maybe lizs but surely it's common sense. most people I know won't even leave their kids in a car while they go and pay for petrol, let alone in a hotel room while they go and have dinner.

Sadly I can think of reasons why someone might take a slightly older little girl than babies, and why they would just take one child and not more But that is too horrid to contemplate right now until more details are known.

There could be 101 'might haves' in this.

I can see why someone would only take one child, after all it would be a lot harder to take three - you would need at least two people for that. but I do wonder whether someone would actually have planned to break in to abduct a child, in which case it would have had to have been planned, opportunistic abductors will normally abduct from a public place, but this was a closed room - which to me would indicate it was someone known to the child perhaps, or alternatively my previous theory that the child simply ran out on hearing someone break in.

I don't feel comfortable reading posts judging them before we know all the facts so I'll bow out now.

The parents are obviously devastated - whatever happens, I hope to goodness they find her soon. She's been gone for a long time.

oh god that's awful

we weren't far from there last week