Madeleine McCann #5

[50sGirl]

...... thats exactly the point I was making? It WAS a thing our parents did, parents of the same generation the McCanns were from. So saying that "It wasn't something everyone did" seems disingenuous. We wouldn't do it now, but that doesn't mean that the journo and everyone of that time who said "Everyone did it" were lying when our experiences were to the contrary.

Smacking your kids with a belt for not eating their dinner was something that happened during "different times". Leaving your young kids home alone at a young age was something that was done during "different times". Smacking the label "different times" on something doesn't make it any less abusive or neglectful IMO. You might not agree, and that's fine.
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I sorry but imho that is complete and utter rubbish!

My husband and I ARE of the same generation as the McCann’s and I can assure you it certainly was NOT a ”thing” we did and neither did any of our friends.

To put it bluntly, ”everyone did it” is complete and utter bollocks.

My children were born a few years before theirs and it wasn’t something that was done when my children were toddlers so there is zero chance of it being acceptable to leave your toddlers alone just a few years later.

So it is disingenuous to imply that is what parents did in 2007. It most certainly was not.
60s, 70s, were a completely different era so yes back then it would have been different but in 2007 no way was it acceptable or what parents would have done.

There was NO justification for it. There wasn’t in 2007 and there isn’t now.

 

[Facehugger]

I believe that the door was unlocked and I don't believe they were checking them as well as they stated.
I don't believe that she died of a head injury and they covered it up as I think if you were innocent you wouldn't think that far ahead. If it was an accident it was an accident... As horrible as it is toddlers fall and hurt themselves all the time.
If they did think it all out surely common sense would prevail and you would more likely get sympathy from a child hurting themselves then telling the world you left your kids alone and someone came in and took her. In fact, if it had been an accident it wouldn't have even made the news.

I still say she woke up and wandered out of that unlocked bloody door to try and find her Mum and Dad, and someone lurking nearby took her. I'm convinced of it.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

Ask yourself what sort of people can knowingly leave their children to cry in the dark on their own in a foreign country. There’s got to be something wrong with them right? Like cluster B personality indications. Which fits with who is attracted to becoming a surgeon and similar professions. People who can make cold, clinical decisions under high pressure situations.

Remember that Madeleine said the night before she went missing: "Why didn't you come when we were crying last night?" and those parents still left them that evening. And the night before that, the neighbour heard crying for over an hour.

So there’s zero point thinking “surely no parent could [fill in the blank]” eg keep up such a huge lie all this time or conceal a body. You can’t apply logic to these people. What a normal person would do in their shoes is irrelevant. That’s why it’s so hard to fathom the entire situation.

Why lie about how often you were checking on your children when being honest will help locate your missing daughter? Whatever it is the McCanns covered up (‘just’ neglect or something more horrendous) - the lies were told to preserve their status, careers etc. What would be the point of coming clean now? Madeleine was never the priority to them and being honest now could lead to fraud charges, perverting the course of justice etc.

 

[LifeOfMog]

I am I being a little cynical in this situation? 16 years on and they're only just doing this?!

 

[Hbeau93]

But if that's the case why keep pushing Maddie into news? Surely if you are guilty and/or negligible, why keep promoting the lie?

Moneeeyyyyy
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What blows my mind is if the McCanns have had a hand in what happened to Maddie is how someone hasn’t blurted it out. Now I know it’s not the sort of thing you would go round telling everyone but other people will know what happened to that wee girl if Kate and Gerry were involved. Imagine all the drunken nights people will have had, the topic never came up and someone has never run their mouth to the wrong person?! Not even being drunk just a slip of the tongue. Or have they and theres just a big cover up?! It’s almost 16 years now. The whole thing makes my head whirl purely because right at the root of it parents who were seemingly intelligent people were absolutely fine with leaving 3 kids under the age of 4 alone and possibly under the influence of something. If my child went missing due to my negligence alone I don’t think I could live with myself. Makes me sick that they have never faced any repercussions for leaving their kids alone.

You can bet your top dollar that if I, a single mother on benefits, did that kind of thing I'd be locked away and never see my kids again. Angers me so much that they were never punished for the complete lack of care they had for their children

 

[Tofino]

The McCanns were wrong for leaving their children alone in the apartment, but a lot of people forget their whole friendship group were also doing the same thing and they don't get slandered half as much.

It’s not slander if it’s fact. And the other children didn’t end up dead or missing. Of course the focus is going to be on the McCanns.

 

[50sGirl]

If they are involved - Tell me what type of parent could just dispose of their small childs body and move on?
I am certain that every one of us here would one hundred percent want our child to be at home and buried somewhere we could be with them when we needed.
Don't have a concrete idea in my head of what happened that night but this thread is certainly food for thought.

What type of parent leaves their children alone in an unlocked apartment?
If they weren’t bothered about her being nearby when she was alive then why would they suddenly want her nearby if she was dead?
I’m certain that every one of us here would not have left our children alone.
They are not like most parents thank goodness.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

I’ve only seen qualified regret, for example 'We made a mistake, but we are paying more for it than anyone could ever possibly imagine.' https://www.archive.is/oldest/https...r-mistake-leaving-Madeleine-Gerry-McCann.html

Well for a start nothing someone says before ‘but’ counts. Also it’s interesting to frame it as a (singular) mistake seeing as it was something they did over and over. Why wasn’t the mistake to leave them crying for over a hour on at least two previous evenings? Even though Madeleine herself brought it up, the poor lamb - and yet this “mistake” still wasn’t corrected. They kept doing it.

Leaving babies to cry because you fancy tapas and wine, night after night, it’s not a mistake (or even several mistakes), it’s some seriously fucked up parenting. And it’s not like they’d spent the daytime with them either.

I don’t think I’ve ever read any apology or regret for the lying/obfuscation in the immediate aftermath of Madeleines disappearance even though there’s no logical reason for it and it’s extremely counterintuitive to finding your missing child. Why knowingly lie about the unlocked door when it wasn’t “a mistake” to leave it unlocked, you did it deliberately for your own convenience. Why let everyone traipse through the apartment if you thought it was a crime scene. Why say checks were being done every 20 minutes when it soon became apparent they weren’t. If you are going to lie that much when your child’s life is supposedly at stake, why shouldn’t the spotlight swing firmly on you.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

You weren’t in that situation and you actually don’t know what happened, regardless of any singular pieces of evidence, what body language experts have to say or any general assumptions.

It wouldn’t hurt to have a holistic view point, not everything is black and white. Regardless of what happened, those parents have been through hell and back.

The post was about a possible scenario where the parents knew a child had died and then lied and scammed the world for millions in cash so not knowing precisely what happened is irrelevant. As the saying goes there’s the crime and then there’s the cover up.

Even stripping it back to what we do know - parents leaving three babies in an unlocked apartment for an evening of food & wine after having parked them in a crèche day after day in a foreign country - is the most black and white situation I’ve ever heard. And then lying about the unlocked door and how often they were being checked on makes it 10x worse.

My heart will always be with vulnerable children first and foremost. Those poor twins and Madeleine

 

[Lady_H]

I see today that information has been received from a reliable source and it is in fact Maddie's pink Eeyore pyjamas that they are currently searching for in the wooded area near the reservoir.

But who is the source telling you that this is a reliable source, and how reliable are they? This is the McCann case. There are no “reliable sources”. The sources are the U.K. police (attempting to justify the ongoing investigation and show that something is actually being investigated), the German prosecutor (keen to build a name for himself apparently with sights set on Bruekner) and/or the McCanns and latterly Clarence Mitchell (keen to demonstrate innocence, obfuscate, manipulate, confuse and/or generate more funds to use in whatever way they see fit). Anything you read comes from one of those parties all of whom have invested interests in public perception. It is all a cynical exploitation of Madeline’s disappearance and the media do very well out of it too.

There is no, none, zero evidence linking Brueckner to this crime despite years of digging by the German prosecutor who is always just about to announce charges against Bruckner but somehow never quite gets around to doing so.

The fact that the reservoir was “one of his favourite places” means absolutely nothing. As ever the way this is reported in the press is entirely biased in tone. The unspoken implication is that it was one of his favourite places to drop the bodies of small children into the water, which in nonsensical.

Anyway they are now searching a reservoir they’ve already searched before. And unless they find “Maddie’s pink Eeyore pyjamas” (yet more biased / highly emotive reporting and impossible given the passage of time), or indeed the remains of Maddie in a bag with the name “CHRISTIAN BRUECKNER” clearly labelled on the outside, there is no way to link anything found to Breuckner. You cannot make a case that someone murdered a person based on the fact that they liked going somewhere the body was found, and I am sure that the Germans know this very well. It is all smoke and mirrors.

All that said I think eventually someone will find a way to pin this on Bruckner or another random pedophile, probably through some kind of “confession” at which point they can close the case and back away from the whole fiasco. Amaral referred to this ongoing attempt to pin the disappearance on a convenient local as “pedalo of the month”, shifting the public focus to various dodgy shadow characters over the years and completely avoiding the most obvious line of investigation.

Bruckner should never have been the “primary suspect”, as reported by the ever-reliable MSM. The primary suspects should always have been the McCanns.

 

[SundaysChild]

If I was in a uni flat with either of them I think I'd last approx 0.00456 seconds before asking them about their sister. Pathetic I know but I'd love to hear their side of the story!

 

[BigMavis]

It's all so grim. But it would be great if she was found, the child deserves a proper burial. We have people called the disappeared here and those who still haven't been found families live in torment..

 

[Princesst]

Shocked to see the positive comments on the article in the daily Mail . How can anyone say anything positive about any of the people involved? I think they’re extremely suspicious but at the very least they should be disgusted at their own child neglect. Whatever happened there’s no doubt poor Madeline would haven’t experienced any of it without being neglected

 

[CabalofBolorneaise]

I fucking hate the McCanns. Ultimately they are responsible for this. If they’d taken proper care of their children this wouldn’t have happened. I’m sick of seeing Kate’s simpering face walking around with ‘cuddle cat’ when her gross negligence as a parent was to blame.

There are so many people missing- why do they not get the same level of attention and money put into their searches?! Because Kate and Gerry are middle class they’ve always been viewed as respectable and beyond derision and people merrily chuck thousands of quid at them to find Madeleine.

Andrew Gosden is the perfect example of another missing child- and his case hasn’t had a tenth of the the coverage theirs has.

If I was to leave my house unlocked and fuck off down the road to eat tapas and drink, and some sick fucker walks in my house and takes my kid, I’d be to blame because I should have locked them in and stayed home to take care of them.

Fucking McCanns.They boil my piss.

The Gosden case is quite different in fairness because he was older and, at least on the surface of it, left of his own accord. He should have had more publicity absolutely, but a younger child who has almost certainly been taken by someone else is always going to get more coverage than an older child wandering off under their own steam.

Shannon Matthews got more attention than Andrew for the same reason, it was very unlikely she'd gone anywhere of her own accord (obviously it turned out how it did but the press didn't know that initially).

Ben Needham is also a better comparison to Maddy I think - the ages are much more similar and both happened abroad. That's where you can the difference in the McCann's middle class (as well as Maddy being a blonde haired girl and having the same boost of "missing white woman syndrome").

 

[Imjusta_Teenage_Dirtbag]

Ask yourself what sort of people can knowingly leave their children to cry in the dark on their own in a foreign country. There’s got to be something wrong with them right? Like cluster B personality indications. Which fits with who is attracted to becoming a surgeon and similar professions. People who can make cold, clinical decisions under high pressure situations.

Remember that Madeleine said the night before she went missing: "Why didn't you come when we were crying last night?" and those parents still left them that evening. And the night before that, the neighbour heard crying for over an hour.

So there’s zero point thinking “surely no parent could [fill in the blank]” eg keep up such a huge lie all this time or conceal a body. You can’t apply logic to these people. What a normal person would do in their shoes is irrelevant. That’s why it’s so hard to fathom the entire situation.

Why lie about how often you were checking on your children when being honest will help locate your missing daughter? Whatever it is the McCanns covered up (‘just’ neglect or something more horrendous) - the lies were told to preserve their status, careers etc. What would be the point of coming clean now? Madeleine was never the priority to them and being honest now could lead to fraud charges, perverting the course of justice etc.

This 100% - you don’t leave kids that young home alone in the safety in your own home, so why the F would you do it in a foreign country. My sympathies are with that poor little girl and her siblings, and it would be an absolute miracle for her to turn up now but my gut lies with those parents every time - can’t put my finger on it but they just don’t sit right with me and never have

 

[Shinealight]

I can quite see why the PJ thought she was probably sedated in some way. If you know your kid gets out of bed at night but you really want to go out and party you have 3 choices: someone stays with the children, you just leave and hope for the best, or you give her something to encourage sleeping which in a weird sort of backwards double-think is the most “sensible” of the last 2 options.

Clearly they weren’t going to sacrifice an evening out, so there really is only one logical conclusion.

I’m convinced that the whole group were all giving their children some kind of sleepy substance to keep them in bed and that this contributed to a kind of fear about allegations of negligence and therefore collusion about Madeleine. I can imagine Gerry having a “if we go down, who do you think they’ll look at next” mentality which actually is quite a persuasive argument.


The middle-class thing is interesting. I remember in the early days of this case there were a lot of supportive middle-class Guardian type articles about not judging others and “don’t we all make mistakes we regret with our kids” and feminist stuff about how misogynist it was to judge Kate as a mother based on her apparent lack of empathy and bizarre interview appearances. (Were all middle-class hacks also Calpol-ing their kids on holiday?) I must say I fell for the whole thing

But after having my own child I could not understand how parents would leave their children in this way. Sedating / calpol aside, even the safety issue aside (which is an absolutely massive issue) I just couldn’t bear the thought that he might cry and I wouldn’t be there to go to him. And I couldn’t understand how at least one of them would not have felt that way.

I can only imagine that they had done it before on holidays together and everything had been absolutely fine… wow, that night calpol really knocks them out doesn’t it… we’ll just pop out for 10 minutes, then half an hour, then a couple of hours…we’re doctors, it’s all fine…and bit by bit it gets normalised by the whole group until it becomes weird if you’re NOT doing it.

The one person I mostly couldn’t understand in the group was the grandmother that was one of the party and joined her daughter and son in law along with the rest of them eating at the Tapas Bar of an evening!
I’m a grandmother myself and if I’d been away on holiday with my grandchildren and their parents who were determined to leave the kids unattended I’d have stayed back in the apartment myself.
I’d have told one of them to nip back with a meal for me to eat in the apartment.
I’d have also given them hell for even thinking of leaving them alone.

 

[Lucyxxxx]

Kate said 'they've taken her'. Who's 'they'? Things that make you go hmmmmm.

 

[Hbeau93]

So I was telling my 6 year old about maddie yesterday and when I explained that her parents left them alone in an unlocked apartment she said "ohmy god they are bad parents!"
So If my 6 year old can't comprehend that it's a bad idea then how did grown fucking middle class doctors/adults not see that this is abhorrent behaviour?!
Mind boggles

 

[InkHeart]

A lot of parents struggle with their kids. Parents who had to do IVF perhaps even more - IVF is gruelling, and the guilt / unhappiness when things turn out less than perfect can be even worse than if you didn't have to invest so much money, effort, and physical pain to have your children.

People like to paint parents who struggled to have children as somehow superior and more deserving - they had to do SO much, they must have REALLY wanted their children. As if really wanting children and going to great lengths to have them, means you will or would be a better parent than parents who conceived at the first try.

That's a fallacy.

People who struggled to have children can be just as unhappy, disengaged or indeed downright abusive as people who had their children easily.

You're right, sadly a lot of people think they want children, until they have them. I don't know their true feelings of course, but Kate and Gerry remind me of other couples I've seen who wanted children to create an image of "having it all". They needed children to complete their image, just like they needed a four bedroom house, an Audi, holidays to the south of France, for the wife to always be thin and blonde. To such people, it's an affront if there's something they can't have, because they feel entitled to the perfect lives. It's about their image, more than about what happens behind closed doors.

 

[Emsie]

I don’t even have kids and I can’t imagine ever leaving children in an apartment on their own. Absolutely anything could have happened that could be foreseeable, from falling out of an unfamiliar bed, waking up alone and scared or even a fire wouldn’t be a huge stretch. But then seeing how close the apartment was to a gate which went onto a road I cannot understand what was going through any of their heads?! Whatever happened, the only victim was Madeline as she was totally failed by the people who were supposed to protect her

Just all of this!!! And an unlocked apartment too! I wouldn't even leave the door unlocked when I'm at home. Not because someone could get in but because toddlers are wild and think nothing of opening the door and going outside!