Madeleine McCann

[morningpaper]

Instead of starting lots of new posts about Madeleine, could I politely request that anyone who wants to post on the subject please post on this one thread? (N.B. Duplicate threads may be flamed hysterically.)

Please note that this thread is not to criticise Madeleine's parents or family, as this is not in the spirit of Mumsnet.

Please can I take the liberty to quote from this article:

"This is the real life of Kate and Gerry McCann, and it must now have become a place of agony beyond all understanding. Pity them, if you have any compassion at all, and demonstrate the minimum of grace: the ability to desist from judgment."

Well said MH. And if they were spending all their time talking about their responsibility in all this it wouldn't do a thing to lessen the awfulness of the situation or bring Madeleine back.

I had wanted to link to the article about the possible court action against the McCanns for neglect - while I was never "happy" with the idea that they had left their children alone, I'm not sure if I agree that they should (at this moment in time) face legal action.

SueW, the family of Vicky Hamilton were told that there were plenty of witnesses saying she was living in London and calling herself Fiona. What utter torture for them.

I think the problem some people have with the McCann's is when they come out with statements that they believed someone was in the room or that a "predator" was following them. In all seriousness would anyone leave their children alone and completely unsupervised, and continue to do so for several nights, if you thought that? It isn't so much about how much crying they do or whether or not they feel guilty it is about the constant denials, changing stories and other bizarre goings on that raise this above the level of a missing child tragedy.

It is a complicated mess and it is distracting from the fact that Madeleine is the one we should be thinking about. I dislike how racist the press are showing themselves to be, against the Portugeuse and Moroccan people. It is very much being set as "Johnny Foreigner" and very distasteful.

TwoIfBySea, I am convinced that a lot of the "changing stories and other bizarre goings on" are illusory.

Witnesses to a crime frequently give vague and even conflicting accounts. I've read a lot about the conflict between statements concerning the sighting of the man carrying a bundle that might have been Madeleine. There are those who think it is suspicious that Jane Tanner claimed to have seen this man at a certain time (reportedly) and another witness claims to have been in the same area that same time but saw neither Jane Tanner nor the man carrying the bundle/child. But, just how precise do they expect people to be about the time of an event, the significance of which they had no idea of at the time? Without looking at a clock or watch, how precise can you be about what time it is right now?

The language difference could also account for apparent discrepancies, too.

I do not say that the McCanns are innocent. I do insist that they are entitled to be presumed innocent until and unless they are proven guilty. To say what some people (elsewhere certainly and here too perhaps) have said about them is to heap insult upon injury and to twist the knife in the flesh of a family who might just be innocent of the crimes they are suspected of.

Finally, about the "constant denials", just what would you expect an innocent person to do?

Spot on post, TIBS.

I think the media should stop reporting on this case. There is nothing to tell. A child went missing, either she was abducted or her parents were responsible for her death. But the reality is, we don't know, the media doesn't know, the police don't know. And all reporting does is fuel the speculation.

And I think the family should quit talking to the media. If they want to hire private detectives/lawyers that's up to them, but by having a spokesperson they appear more like celebrities than people whose child has gone missing, and who also have two other children to consider.

The publicity has done nothing other than to alienate a lot of people from their cause.

In the beginning people had a lot of sympathy with the Mccanns, now, although people that believe they are innocent still sympathize, the majority are now sick of hearing about it.

whose majority tho. yours?

one thing the shooting in London has taught me is that what the press publish bears little relation to the truth that comes out in court.

And all the reports of people rushing to criticise make me sick. The McCanns have lost their daughter and if they made a mistake that contributed to that they have more than paid for it already. They are innocent of anything more until proven guilty and to date there does not appear to be evidence even to charge them with something else.

It seems the internet brings out evil.

here we go again!

my main sympathy is for that little girl, I could never condemn her parents without knowing the truth fo what has happened to her.
That is the forst ( well second time) i have posted on this subject. my heart leaps whenever I see something about this little girl.

tbh I don't think the panorama programme told us anything. Even if the friends were to change their stories, the Portuguese secrecy laws would mean that the police couldn't confirm whether that was/was not the case, and as for reporting that the parents were swingers, what utter sensationalism. Even if they were, that fact would have no bearing on their child's disappearance, so reporting it would achieve nothing.

But something Jane Tanner said struck me. When she was talking about the man she saw carrying the child, she said that she'd thought he looked out of place because he was warmly dressed and wearing a jacket, which wasn't something tourists did. She then went on to say that she'd noticed that the child didn't have any shoes on, something she thought was strange because "it was a cold night, I was wearing a big jumper.". She contradicted herself therefore, saying in the one sentence that she thought it odd this man was warmly dressed, and then in the other that it was cold, and that she'd had to wear a big jumper.

can i just ask a genuine, non-inflammatory question. has jane tanner said she thought it was madeleine at the time, or was it that she discovered she was missing and then retrospectively thought 'that looked a bit like madeleine?'

its just that if she did think it was her, why not do something? and plenty of times my dad carried me in when i was wearing no shoes and had fallen asleep in the car, so i don't necessarily think that's odd, either.

jane tanner would obviously have thought it was madeleine only afterwards...you only "think" a child is who they should be because of who's carrying them. ie if you saw gerry and then another man with a small blonde child, you would not think it was madeleine.

ok, twas only asking. just think its a bit odd if after the event she thinks it was. and i don't think you can claim you wouldn't recognise a child you knew well out of context.

" i don't think you can claim you wouldn't recognise a child you knew well out of context. "

why not?

if i saw my best friend's child being carried off by a stranger, i'm almost certain i know. esp. if i knew said child was unattended.

anyways, what started as me asking a simple question (however obvious you might think it is), has turned into yet another argument and that's not what i wanted.

I see no argument

I dont think you would recognise the child, remember Gerry was stood directly behind her chattin to some bloke, so you would assume all was well in the apartment.

think you can easily remember something in retrospect and equate it to the situation iyswim. e.g. when I was at school our hostel was broken into one night. I was up late studying and heard an almighty crash, a bit like someone bashing something, and did wonder briefly what it was but paid no further attention. Went to bed, and a couple of hours later a friend came running into my room to see if I was ok. Someone had broken in through a downstairs window by jemmying the lock. he had gone into the kitchen and removed as much food as he could carry and let himself out of the back door. After he had hidden the food (god knows where as it was never found) he came back, let himself back in through the kitchen door which he had left unlocked, went upstairs, and went from room to room until he found one where someone was sleeping on her own. Luckily she woke up and screamed and he ran off, but after the event I remembered hearing the noise downstairs, and thinking about it, it must have been him breaking in but I never thought that until I became aware we'd been broken into.

But the person Jane Tanner saw could equally have been someone carrying a sleeping child. she didn't recognize it to be Madeleine, she only remembered it because Madeleine went missing. It's highly likely several sleeping children were carried around that night, and every other night.

sorry bundle, tis pms [sorry emoticon]

i think wannabe expressed what i was trying to say very well

no problem, laurliemonkey. I just find the constant nit-picking wrt the family/friends of Madeleine in this case by the Portuguese police (and the media) a bit boring - and obviously it's not been a productive line of inquiry so far..

At least that hideous Anthony Bennett creature has had his attempt to privately prosecute the McCanns for neglect rejected by the courts. Hasn't he got better things to do?

news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,91210-1293569,00.html