Madeleine McCann #8

[Naffdoff]

It was the leaving the twins to run back to the tapas, ringing sky news before the police, putting the twins in the crèche the day after for a game of tennis etc etc Im sorry no matter how many times someone says everyone behaves differently this is not normal behaviour for people who have a missing child in the circumstances they want everyone to believe!

 

[Freda Fandango]

I feel their whole act of we left her alone but you can't ever say it/be angry at us for it as a way of living with it. They have never, ever been directly challenged in the public eye as far as I am aware? Anyone they talk to in the media just acts like it wasn't even the reason Maddie was able to vanish/be snatched in the first place.

Thanks to their friends in the highest of places they were able to create a shield on day one and they will never let it go.

It's probably a bit like when narcs and fantasists believe their own lies.

Exactly. Noone knows what happened, but ive posted before

If they'd been interviewed and said please dont do what we did, we thought it was safe, its not, never leave your children alone ....etc etc

Its the entitled "its like eating in the garden" which it fucking wasnt as it was open for any Tom Dick or kidnapper to get in

And im going to rant now because they enrage me......I bet they wouldn't have left their passports, money or jewellery sitting out on a table with access to their apartment but their kids?

Yet they get angry when even questioned about that, setting their guardogs Carter Ruck on anyone raising their heads above the parapet.

And no Kate and Gerry. It wasn't the done thing years ago, we brought our children with us, had an early meal with our friends and then a drink on the balcony. Because our children were on holiday too, and not fancy accessories to pick up and put down when it suits us.

Its so sad that children do go missing, its the circumstances thst their own parents deliberately put them in on this occasion (and the other tapas entitled lot!) that makes folk bristle.

Rant over thanks for that

 

[Freda Fandango]

Im not helping the discussion, im here to rant so scroll on now

I remember Fiona Phillips nodding sagely at the time saying we've all dunnit, and no Fiona we fucking didnt.

My eldest was born in 1983 and youngest 1995, we've two middle ones. Being skint we got loans every year to the cheapest holidays in the sun we could get. When the youngest was a toddler my husband either stayed in the apartment with him while I took the other three to the kids disco. Or he slept in his buggy beside us.

Even at that, my toddler cracked his head on the tiles while wriggling away from me. So how in the name of all that is holy would two doctors not short of dosh think oh ill leave a three year old and two babies alone....checking every half hour was not good enough, a head hitting tiles and fractured skull doesn't wait for a listening service or a pissed up parent. Ergo whether they had hadnt or still have a listening service is moot, as a parent you weigh up risks and they did that and STILL put their socialising first.

Anyhoo thanks for letting me vent. I think she had an accident and had been given medication to sleep and woke up. She perhaps heard her dad and climbed on the settee to see him talking to Jez. My toddler had a purple egg on his head just tripping. Falling from a height could easily be more serious. How they covered it up....dont know but its just my personal opinion.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

There was also the deliberate confusion the McCanns created, if people believed their initial lies then yes some might agree they had done something similar. The McCanns had everyone believing it was akin to dining in your own garden, the apartment had been left secure, regular checks, Kate’s brazen lie about it being a max 30 second walk away etc.
The true circumstances of how they left those children is unfathomably risky to any sane person.

 

[Harlot O'Scara]

I think the McCanns were uncooperative with the investigation for the same reasons they left the kids in the first place. Arrogance, entitlement and self-interest.

 

[Tangerine Dream]

Italy culture is the same, kids are absolutely adored and are welcome to be with adults at dinner. At least, that's what my semi Italian family was like and what the country was like when I last visited 20 years ago.

They had no excuse whatsoever to leave literal babies and a little girl who was still almost a toddler herself in an apartment alone. I can't find sympathy for them at all, only for the children.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

It’s even worse when you consider Madeleine had “stay in my bed at night time” on her reward chart at home, so it must have been a challenge for her. And they left them all in an unlocked apartment in a foreign country anyway.

It took a good few days for Gerry and Kate to even admit they had left the apartment unlocked, only once their ‘jemmied window’ narrative had been ruled out. All creating a lot of confusion.

And the upstairs neighbour, Pamela Fenn, reported hearing a distressed child crying from their apartment for over an hour the night of 1st May. She remembered because it kept her up and she even called her friend and mentioned it that night and the friend confirmed, so it checks out.

So we know Kate and Gerry cared more about an evening of wine and tapas with people they only loosely knew, more than they cared for their kids safety. And they barefaced lied about checks every 20 minutes.

 

[Freda Fandango]

Im sure my posts here show i have not an ounce of liking for these two entitled arrogant and negligent parents.

But in this case I feel sorry for Sean, hes excellent at his sport and it must be already a huge burden to carry being constantly Madeleines brother. And no matter what story his parents have told him, it must go through his mind that he and his sister were literal babies and if there was an abduction it could as easily have been them. There could have been a fire, they could have fallen and cracked their heads and a gazillion other accidents.

All that said I wish him and his sister well. Lots of young people want to be on social media and it would be a shame that babies pay the price for what their selfish parents did.

Where I would draw the line is if they start to use it as a USP.

 

[50sGirl]

It was more socially acceptable to leave children back then. I remember being on a cruise about a year before she went missing and then baby listening service they advertised was that you left your child in your cabin and did something to the phone so that you could call in from wherever you were on the ship to have a quick listen in as and when you liked. I thought it was madness but plenty of people used it. Also in hotels you would let reception know your child was in your room whilst you went for a meal and a member of staff would listen at your door once an hour. Again, madness, but a service used by many!

I disagree. I had children before the McCanns and it was not socially acceptable to leave your children unattended. None of my friends would have done it either. Yes, in the 1970s and earlier it was accepted, and perhaps at the start of the 80s, to use a listening service.
However, it has NEVER been socially acceptable to leave your children alone whilst you go down the road to a restaurant to eat.

 

[TheMiceInTheShed]

At least those mad people used a listening service, unlike the McCanns.
Even worse, the McCanns lied about how often the children were being checked. Which made establishing a timeline difficult. Key to finding a missing child.

There was also an implication that the group of adults were having their meal only a few yards from where the children had been left - tiny, alone and vulnerable - practically like being in their own garden - while in reality there was quite a trek back to the complex.

Even if there wasn't a risk of abduction - children can wake up and be alone and terrified; they can be sick and choke; they can have accidents and be badly injured or die. I was born in the 1950's and it was NOT common for children to be left alone.

 

[Tangerine Dream]

I feel for them too, it must be the weirdest thing ever growing up with the history Madeleine's loss has brought them.

Whatever they do they will be judged by some, which is unfair.

I'll never have many kind words for Kate and Gerry but the twins can't help any of the controversy that surrounds the McCann name, the media should leave them out of it. They have a right to their lives.

 

[Naffdoff]

Well that’s the start of the odd behaviour isn’t it? Then there is
1. why ring sky news before the police
2. Why set up a find maddie fund immediately
3. why didn’t you search for her yourself
4. Why put your twins in a crèche immediately afterwards whilst you played tennis
5. why lie about the broken shutter
6. Why continually push the narrative about the crying the night before
7. why did Gerry have to fly home to get some DNA evidence?
8. why wash her favourite toy

could go on &on it’s certainly not the behaviour of parents with a child that has been abducted

 

[hehehe]

Around the time. The McCann case is what shifted social norms around leaving your children, imo. ‘We did it then but we wouldn’t do it now’ attitude, so the McCanns were supposedly acting within social norms at the time.

Huh? It's never been a "social norm" on any planet I've been on to leave a toddler and infants at home and bugger off out to dinner for the night.

 

[50sGirl]

With the disappearance they still had to say they weren’t there. I think that leaving children was a lot more of a thing than in those circumstances. We view the world with a post-Madeleine lens so it seems so wrong to us. That together with GM being an unsympathetic character. I just don’t think they could have pulled it off somewhere they never visited prior. They were also not close with everyone in the group. Some they didn’t even know, why would they lie for them?

Erm, with a “pre-Madeleine lens“ it still seemed very wrong to 99.9% of us to leave young children unattended.
I can assure you it most definitely was NOT “more of a thing” back then.
People who justify their actions as being “normal” back then are at best deluded.
Their social life and stomachs were more important than their children. Whatever happened to Madeleine, she was the innocent one who paid the ultimate price. Unforgivable.

 

[Tangerine Dream]

I don't think the McCann's were simply "unlikeable", they seemed to be bizarrely unhelpful in the investigation of their own daughter being missing. Refusing to do a reeactment was particularly strange to me, as was jetting off on a world tour when it was still very early days and they would have surely done better to stay closer to the scene, etc.

Oh, and basically silencing a nation for quite a long time. They even got a film pulled from cinemas because it was about a girl going missing on a beach. They sued everyone they could. They really abused the power they had, imho. If it was simply 'unlikeable' discussion about them would have wound down years ago.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

Why did she lie for years about the shutters being opened?

I believe it was - at least initially - to cover up that the door was left unlocked.

Because it was only once the Portuguese authorities established that the windows had not been “jemmied open” (as the McCanns claimed), and therefore nothing to support a break in / intrusion theory, that the McCanns were forced into admitting they had been leaving the door unlocked.

It was always in Kate and Gerry’s best interest to then leave the waters muddied as the intruder theory garners them the most sympathy.

Kate said "We're not the ones that have done something wrong here. It's the person who's gone into that apartment and taken a little girl away from her family."

Which is interesting because firstly the sheer brass neck to not even acknowledge the egregious, repeated, deliberate neglect of their children, but secondly using third person pov to either distance herself or to word it in such a way that it is giving other people the line to take. Fascinating. And she would not have been able to be anywhere near as defensive if the ‘wandering off’ theory was the prevailing one.

It’s crazy how much time and effort was wasted trying to establish basic facts.

 

[Emsie]

The cheek of him complaining about media attention when he was the one that called it in.
I dont see what you guys see though. I just think he looks older.

 

[Serene Serena]

That's the saddest thing. I don't have children, but when I've been on holidays to resorts in Spain and Portugal, they have always had very family friendly places. It's so common for kids to be eating out with their families of an evening, and it's not unusual to see them asleep in buggies/pushchairs or having a little dance/play around even when the adults are enjoying a drink or two afterwards.

We go to Spain regularly and our children come out with us in the evening. My little girl will usually doze off in the buggy and my little boy will play with other children also out with their parents. Children are made welcome everywhere. The McCanns have no excuse for what they did.

 

[Tangerine Dream]

I disagree. I had children before the McCanns and it was not socially acceptable to leave your children unattended. None of my friends would have done it either. Yes, in the 1970s and earlier it was accepted, and perhaps at the start of the 80s, to use a listening service.
However, it has NEVER been socially acceptable to leave your children alone whilst you go down the road to a restaurant to eat.

80s baby here. My mum would have never left me alone and I know when one mother left her kids she was repeatedly reported to social services and watched by them for at least some time after.

It's beyond crazy to me the McCann's not only never got in trouble legally for leaving the babies/toddler but the moment it happened a ring of steel was formed around them by what felt like the whole world at the time. You were Satan himself if you had anything even slightly non-totally sympathetic to say. It was a really long time, many years, before the tide turned even somewhat. Classism was the main reason but still I'll never understand it.

 

[Emsie]

They also released this as a sketch so I'm reluctant to rely too much on the sketches