In England the McCanns would be arrested

[LostPuppy]

Off the bat, I of course hope with all my heart that Madeleine is returned safely

But her "parents" are a disgrace. They left Madeleine and two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie sleeping in the apartment ON THEIR OWN. They had taken turns to return from the restaurant to check on their children.

Now hang on! In this country that is illegal, for very good reason.

Even if they 'checked on them' every five minutes that's plenty of time for one of the kids to wake up and try to go to the toilet and crack it's head open slipping on the bathroom floor, or something equally disastrous. They'd never hear the screaming from a bloody restaurant down the road!

Obviously it's unlikely, but I just cant comprehend the mentality of leaving three children under 3 alone on their own, ever, let alone at night in a foreign country!

wannabee , I think you'll find that policy only applies to some of the restaurants not all and only after certain times ie. you can have a meal if you so choose. Almost certainly the case in Portugal MW which we looked into last year . Would n't have considered it otherwise.

Jacanne, thanks - I read the paper on the Tube the other night and think I still have it at home, but can't find it online.

when you are on holiday you are in the jurisdiction of that country....people may say they wouldn't break the law but as we seem pretty confused by the English law I've no doubt the law in greece, france, Antigua etc is even more of an unknown factor with regards to children...I would suspect more robust but may be wrong

the nspcc are interpreting the law too on their website not making it

This is the legal opinion given by Professor Carolyn Hamilton on the Alphamummy website. I think they strayed beyond the boundaries of UK law. My information is that Portugese law is much stricter than UK law in this regard.

"Scenario 4:You go out for dinner in a hotel complex on holiday abroad, leaving a child aged 3 and twins aged 18 months in a locked room. You return to check on them every half hour.

If the parents have taken all the risks into account and decided that it is safe to leave the children, this would probably be reasonable. If the children were awake or a bit older and able to wander around, or potentially even to open the door to an intruder, perhaps not. But asleep, with the door locked and people constantly checking up on them, it is likely to be reasonable.

You should be checking on them very regularly. I don?t think it?s any less safe in Continental Europe than it is here. Leaving children alone in this manner is not desirable, but parents have to balance the demands of life and will probably have to consider such issues regularly.

A parent needs to ensure that children are safe if they are left alone. Leaving them for a short while, asleep, in a locked room with regular checks is acceptable. Leaving them for two hours, or with unlocked doors, is not"

Blu, I am interested that you think their actions are perfectly reasonable. Where are your boundaries then?

Dolally, You comment what they did is not illegal (this is not true) ...THEY COULD ONLY BE ACCUSED OF NEGLIGENCE IF WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHILD COULD HAVE BEEN FORESEEN AND AVOIDED.

Well my experience of children is that it is not right to be out of eyecontact or earshot of a toddler. Leaving a toddler in an unlocked building and then going to a different building? All the risks are clearly foreseeable. The stranger danger is unlikely, but there are risks are fire, illness (choking etc) waking up with night frights, waking up and wandering out. All this is foreseeable.

We censor ourselves all the time FGS ? it?s called tact

Yes we do censor ourselves but there is very little that has been said that is not tactful. Most of it is actually reasoned debate.

There are people, some of whom have been quite abusive, insisting that somehow the subject is taboo. That doesn't make sense to me.

And, for me, the issue to arise from this is that paedophiles are going to be attracted to these places precisely because of the remote monitoring services as they create opportunities. The resorts described by the words child-friendly? will be their holiday options of choice.

The McGann's certainly don't deserve to be punished any more than they have been. They made a mistake, a dreadful, tragic mistake.

I agree the subject isn;t taboo - but it doesn't progress via reactionary comment, which is what the majority of the thread is.

I've no idea how the debate could progress anyway in a thread that uses this circumstance as its premise - take the McGann's out of it and it becomes a more open debate.

Monkey - you might not have seen this post - which I think is first class. Sadly I didn't write it ...

"I actually think though that there are two arguments here. One of responsibility, and one of deserved consequence.

Let?s say I walk to school every day with my ds. Every day I have to cross a busy road, and some days I?m in a hurry, so we hurry across the road without looking properly, and usually, there are no cars, or those cars that are coming stop to let us cross. Is that responsible? Absolutely not. Then let?s say one day I hurry across the road and a car coming doesn?t stop and my child is hit and sustains serious injury, or worse, is killed. Did I deserve for that to happen? Absolutely not. But it doesn?t take away from the fact that the way I acted in not looking properly when crossing the road was irresponsible.

The Mccanns absolutely did not deserve for their child to be abducted, but that doesn?t mean that it?s wrong to say that leaving three small children unsupervised in an apartment with the door unlocked and going to eat in a place where you can neither see nor hear them is irresponsible. Laying blame on the parents is not going to bring Madeleine back, but having the discussion as to whether it is/isn?t appropriate to leave small children may make some people stop and think and prevent someone from doing it which may prevent something like this, or even a child wandering out of an apartment happening in the future. "

SO Qu fdo you accept that you were completely then given that quote. He is not in any way saying it's illegal is he?

"You should be checking on them very regularly. I don?t think it?s any less safe in Continental Europe than it is here. Leaving children alone in this manner is not desirable, but parents have to balance the demands of life and will probably have to consider such issues regularly."

He says not desirable - in his view and in my view he's wrong but he is not saying it is illegal because it isn't.

It is possible you can get caught for actions abroad under English and foreign law atually, isn't it following when we changed the law to allow prosecution in England of sex tourists who go to Thailand for a holiday specifically to have sex with children and they used to escape prosecution because the offence which infringes English law had it been done here was committed abroad and now they don't. BUT it's not an offence to leave children sleeping like that in England. I don't think it's neglect

Xenia,
you forgot the last sentence of that quote:
"A parent needs to ensure that children are safe if they are left alone. Leaving them for a short while, asleep, in a locked room with regular checks is acceptable. Leaving them for two hours, or with unlocked doors, is not"

Hang on, you're not quoting the law. You're just quoting a personal view of someone who was trying to think what "neglect" means. No law says how long, how or why and I imagine that over time say between 1930 and 1960 what a court might regard as neglect will have changed and again between 1960 and 2007 but that writer couldn't quote any recent cases and not a single thing that actually said what amount in terms of leaving children alone etc amounts to. He has no more idea than any of us.

Weird really that there isn't a proper law, isn't it?
I mean, I know this is not a black and white issue....but some more guidance might be necessary...

This is from the NPSCC web site which quotes what the 1933 ACt says - the issue is whether the child is left in a manner likely to cause injury to health etc
Note the NSPCC say leaving a baby alone would amount to this. I wonder how far they meant that - presumably not that you break the law if you don't sleep with your baby so they are happy it sleeps in another room, floor, wing? Where do you draw the line? Can you mow the grass on a summer evening once the children are asleep?

I think the NPSCC are going a bit far to say if you see a child alone under the age of 9. You'd better all report me about my twins who I think have probably been here occasionally on their own and they're 8. I suspect the NSPCC answer below is about someone who every day is leaving the children for 5 hours whilst she works rather than the one off things.

"A neighbour works full time and seems to be leaving her children alone during the day. Is this neglect?"
There is no UK law stating the age at which a child can be left at home alone. However, parents can be prosecuted for wilful neglect if they leave a child alone or unsupervised "in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health" (Children and Young Persons Act 1933). Your neighbour may be having difficulties finding childcare. Perhaps the family is isolated and lacks the support of relatives and friends? As a neighbour, could you offer help with contacting local support services or with childcare? See People to talk to for organisations that offer childcare advice.

Babies should never be left alone, even for a short time. If you notice that a baby or a child under the age of nine has been left on their own, contact the police on 999. They will go to the house to make sure that the child is safe from harm.

Before leaving an older child alone, parents must take into account the child's age and maturity, their ability to cope in an emergency and how they feel about being left alone. Most children under the age of 13 are not mature enough to cope in an emergency and should not be left alone for more than a short time.

We recommend that children under the age of 16 should not be left alone overnight.

3, I think it would be clearer if there were a law actually but may be that would be inflexible and unfair. Compare some responsible eldest girls of 15, my daughters at that age included who can be better with babies than any number of much older drunken step fathers concaine addicts adults etc. or indeed are good mothers themselves at 15.

I disagree completely about the dog. The dog was an illegal dog - a deliberately bred fighting dog that NOBODY should have owned, not a family labrador. It was the equivalent of having a wolf in the house. Totally irresponsible.

QC - I think it was understandable that they did what they did because although the risks of a child waking and being distressed / having a minor accident were more likely, the possibility of this very dreadful outcome was, statistically minute. Some parents do take risks which may result in distress, they were 30m away, and that does sound cose enough to hear if they were screaming loudly. Also, they know their children - maybe thery really don't wake, once asleep - or very very rarely. They were also, presumably, reasonably well surrounded by other holiday makers in the same complex coming and going, and felt that someone would alert them to a problem.

Personally, I would not have done this, but I wasn;t there, have only seen the layout in diagram etc - and I know many parents do routinely do the 'adult dinner' set up within a small complex.

Yes, Aloha - the keeping of a dangerous dog is irresponible...have swerved back.

Something that does need to be considered here si what would happen if it were against the law?

(If this has been covered since this morning sorry just rejoined thread and kids bivkering so up and down today).

Social services are far too over stretched to take on cases like this, they don't even have the manpower to cope with the far mroe wilfully neglected kids they have to visit. I've known kids left to wander the streets at 3am hgaving no action taken because SS can't find anyone to do the work.

That's relaity in SS. If assessments had to be carried on many mroe famillies expect to see the whole system collapse. Visibly, I mean- it lardgely ahs anyway. The only way to survive would be to drain resources from elsewhere- where should they start? NHS? Disabled childrens services (the few that exist)? Disabled adults srveces?

Psychiatric care?

Passing laws that criminalise people who are not intentionally harming their kids, as opposed to having guidelines so professionals can identify the differences (as best they can- and I genuinely belive that the vast majority of SW are doing their best, and most of those that arent are burned out as opposed to lazy) will inevitably lead to a huge crises and services being taken from those who already are lacking.

Message withdrawn

If it were against the law? Well I think my NSPCC quote says it all - if there are lots of complaints about children being left day after day then eventually something is done. If it was say like the day the twins got out and went to a neighour and never happened again I wouldn't have thought a prosecution was in order. I think neglect is either something truly wrong done once or a regular pattern of neglectful conduct.

So in the US the cases where the occasional parent has been arrested for leaving the children sleeping and taking the lift downstairs to the hotel restaurant they were unlucky and probably mostly were let off with a warning (for breach of US law). A British sex tourist caught in Thailand with 3 8 year old boys I hope would seen a very serious and he'd get prosecuted here. So depends on how bad things are. If people were burning their children with irons on holiday you'd want intervention.

(mind you I did see one poor red haired child at sunsail one year not put in the chidlren's club (where they keep them out of the sun a lot, always use sunscreen and are really safe with the children) with, it must be said, a single father and I could see the boy was going to burn and I should have said something to him like get some sun cream on... during the holiday he had to have first aid and he coudln't even put his shirt on for the flight home he was so badly burned, poor thing... you can imagine what his mother would say on his return - he was about 10)

Trouble is the system here is different, it differs anyway but in this OCunty 2 complaints and they HAVE to visit, once you're visited your name is on the list forever.

So what do the disgruntled MIL brigade do?

Call twice, anonumously.

dolally - You're right. The fund was set up to provide "financial assistance" for the parents. It was the Aunt who mentioned legal fees during one of her many media interviews.

Someone mentioned that you could hardly equate keeping a dangerous dog - a wolf - in a house to this case. I disgree. In both cases, the children were put in harm's way by the negligent actions of the people responsible for them. People have to be held responsible for their actions. That's the point of the legal system.

lost puppy you should be ashamed!!

Xenia

The opinion given in the last sentence of the legal opinion clearly states that what the McCanns did was illegal. It is also contrary to NSPCC guidelines which someone else posted but I didn't want to refer to to complicate the matter. The practice of leaving young children alone asleep or awake is also contrary to guidelines local authorities provide to foster carers and prospective adopters.

Now I don't believe that the McCanns should be prosecuted for one minute. But equally I wouldn't want anyone to leave toddlers unattended like that. Ever.

By the way Blu, all the reports I have read state that the parents were out of earshot. The distance seems to have been variously quoted as 100 yards and 100 metres. I have not seen reports where the distance was measured at 30 metres. The patio doors were unlocked, it was a ground floor apartment, there was a main road next to it and a swimming pool opposite it. It was so risky it beggared belief.