Ed The Madeleine McCann Case.

Darat said:
It's not just that she was a pretty white kid that had plenty of cute photos to use it was and is also a class thing. Nipping out for a boozy meal is OK when you are white, professionals in the UK, nipping out for a pint or two to the pub and abandoning your kids is the most heinous child neglect when you are chavs!
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That's exactly my point.

zooterkin said:
Those are all in the US; how is that relevant for a British family in Spain?
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Because I'm lazy, and being America, all the links that came up first were American.

What difference does it make? The law is the same in UK. Darat seems to get it ok.
 
The Atheist said:
That you can't leave young children alone.

Since they're Poms: UK
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Which says nothing of the sort.
The law does not say an age when you can leave a child on their own, but it’s an offence to leave a child alone if it places them at risk.

Use your judgement on how mature your child is before you decide to leave them alone, for example at home or in a car.
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And yes, it was in Portugal, where parents get charged for leaving kids alone.
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Which also doesn't say what the law is; abandoning a child alone for 14 hours is clearly extreme.

I'm not saying that what the McCanns did was right, but you've yet to show that it was illegal.


(And, yes, I said Spain instead of Portugal earlier.)
 
zooterkin said:
I'd expect better from you than sharing the first google hits you found and argument from incredulity.
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It's not an argument from incredulity.

Edited by sarge: 
edited to remove rule 12 violation
Leaving a four year old child alone in a hotel room is unconscionable, and in every developed country, illegal.
 
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Darat said:
It's not just that she was a pretty white kid that had plenty of cute photos to use it was and is also a class thing. Nipping out for a boozy meal is OK when you are white, professionals in the UK, nipping out for a pint or two to the pub and abandoning your kids is the most heinous child neglect when you are chavs!
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After a fortnight, British journalists had penned 1,148 stories devoted to Madeleine McCann. The stunning sum of £2.6 million had been offered as a reward to have her returned to her parents. Prominent donors included the News of the World and the Sun newspapers, Sir Richard Branson, Simon Cowell and J. K. Rowling.

The missing infant quickly became a household name. The McCann disappearance was no ordinary media circus. The case became a national trauma. Like some sort of macabre reality TV show, every little detail was beamed into the living rooms of a transfixed British public. News broadcasters sent their most celebrated anchors to report live from the Algarve. Posters with close-ups of her distinctive right eye went up in shop windows across the country, as though somehow the bewildered three-year-old would be found wandering the streets of Dundee or Aberystwyth. Members of Parliament wore yellow ribbons in solidarity. Multinational companies advertised the ‘help find Madeleine’ messages on their websites. The disappearance of one little girl had provoked the most extraordinary outpouring of media interest over such a case in modern times. The result was something approaching mass hysteria.

What a contrast with the pitiful response to Shannon Matthews’s disappearance. After two weeks, the case had received a third of the media coverage given to McCann in the same period. There was no rolling news team from Dewsbury; no politicians wearing coloured ribbons; no ‘help find Shannon’ messages flashing up on company websites. The relatively paltry sum of £25,500 (though this later rose to £50,000) had been offered for her discovery, nearly all of which had been put up by the Sun. If money was anything to go by, the life of Madeleine McCann had been deemed fifty times more valuable than that of Shannon Matthews.
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From "Chavs"

Some of the quotations from journalists explaining why they focussed on one story not the other are surprisingly frank (basically empathy for the parents).
 
Some people seem to think it is criminal to ever have your child out of your vision. The truth is most children will not sleep in the same room as their parent. It is not unusual to put your child down to sleep and go downstairs to socialise with other adults, or even go out into the garden. This is why baby monitors exist, or do some posters think these are incentives to crime?

Some hotels offered a child watching service with baby monitors in room. Should they be prosecuted for inciting a crime?

This was not locking a child in a car on a hot day, nor locking a child in and going out clubbing. This was going outside on the same premises and looking in on a regular basis. Something that most people do at home.
 
Planigale said:
Some people seem to think it is criminal to ever have your child out of your vision.

...snip...
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Note how you have to add in baby monitors, childcare services to the scenarios. If they had had something like a child monitor with them then I would say given the other circumstances that was acceptable but still not ideal. And the idea that kids at home in their bedrooms is equivalent to what happened is a false equivalency.

Even if they were not involved in her disappearance, they were still bad parents.
 
Darat said:
Note how you have to add in baby monitors, childcare services to the scenarios. If they had had something like a child monitor with them then I would say given the other circumstances that was acceptable but still not ideal. And the idea that kids at home in their bedrooms is equivalent to what happened is a false equivalency.

Even if they were not involved in her disappearance, they were still bad parents.
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That doesn't necessarily mean they were breaking the law, though.
 
Matthew Best said:
Obviously if you’re going to invoke your mind reading powers I have no comeback.
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Mind reading?

You may have heard of this new-fangled thing called Google, which is a search engine, where you can search for pages to get information.

Ex GP Kate, 49, and heart doctor Gerry, 48, of Rothley, Leics, were never prosecuted for abandoning their kids out of “compassion”, a former Portuguese law chief revealed last year.
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https://www.irishmirror.ie/showbiz/celebrity-news/kate-gerry-mccann-vow-fight-10060767

Took 0.65 seconds.

Also, for those who doubt they were stupid and neglectful:

They didn't even lock the door.
 
The Atheist said:
....
Also, for those who doubt they were stupid and neglectful:

They didn't even lock the door.
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From your previous link:
The newspaper Correio da Manha says that the McCanns had left their children alone before during their holiday in the Algarve - a routine that, while normal at Praia da Luz, may have made it easy for her kidnapper to plan the abduction.
.....
Statements to police from employees at the resort said that neither the McCanns nor other parents had demonstrated any worry about leaving the children alone. Employees also said this was normal behaviour at Praia da Luz.
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https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front...lone-before-during-their-holiday-6580344.html

I, for one, don't have any doubt that the parents were stupid and neglectful. So were their friends, who left their own children alone. In retrospect, I suspect the McCanns feel the same way about themselves. But they were at a vacation resort in a tiny village that felt safe, where children were routinely left alone for a short time, and they went to dinner within sight of their apartment. I don't understand what you think would have been accomplished by prosecuting them.
 
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Bob001 said:
But they were at a vacation resort in a tiny village that felt safe, where children were routinely left alone for a short time, and they went to dinner within sight of their apartment.
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With an unlocked door.

Bob001 said:
I don't understand what you think would have been accomplished by prosecuting them.
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I haven't suggested they should have been, I've pointed out they could have been, because they clearly met the threshhold for criminal endangerment.
 
zooterkin said:
That doesn't necessarily mean they were breaking the law, though.
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Of course.

There were reports at the time that they could be prosecuted in Portugal for their bad parenting. If that was true and even though they weren’t prosecuted (for whatever reason or reasons) that doesn’t mean their behaviour was lawful.
 
The Atheist said:
Mind reading?

You may have heard of this new-fangled thing called Google, which is a search engine, where you can search for pages to get information.



https://www.irishmirror.ie/showbiz/celebrity-news/kate-gerry-mccann-vow-fight-10060767

Took 0.65 seconds.

Also, for those who doubt they were stupid and neglectful:

They didn't even lock the door.
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The problem is one can imagine other instances where locking the door might have had a bad outcome. Locking doors is not a universal phenomenon. If you look at old photographs you see how people used to leave a child in a pram outside when they used to shop. They still do in Sweden. If you were Dutch you would be left in a hutch in the garden to get fresh air.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21537988
https://daddytypes.com/2013/03/04/its_my_kind_in_a_box_babyhok_the_dutch_baby_hutch.php

This is an interesting example of relative risk. In reality the risk of stranger abduction of a child is small, the risks of being killed by a parent much higher. Or the cat sitting on the babies face. Arguably being with the parent or the cat is the high risk option! Don't get me started on swimming pools! Legislating for child safe pools saved many Australian lives.
 
Vixen said:
The police can ask anybody they like to come in for questioning any time they like. If one of those persons is a real suspect (= probable cause they were involved in the crime in question) then a failure to let them know they are a suspect could prejudice any later trial.

Kate McCann was made an arguido. Was given fifty questions, of which I believe she answered only one. I dare say her lawyer advised her to keep shtum because what mother with a missing child wouldn't want to tell the police everything they know of the circumstances surrounding it? However, as an arguido (formal suspect), your words can be used against you in court and in any case the burden of proof is on the police and prosecutors, so the reasoning is, 'If they think I did it, let them prove it! It is not in my interest to help them convict me! (Which is what they are after, with their trick questions).'

So when the tabloids report the latest arguido, the German anti-social paedophhile offender (also recidivist burglar and thief) refused to answer the Portuguese police's questions as an arguido as to where he was on the night the little girl went missing, it is not really so strange he refuses to answer.

The papers report that the McCanns 'welcome' this development. I wonder if this is because they themselves can no longer come under suspicion. That has to be a relief, I guess.
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One who is smart enough, and well advised enough, to see a police force desperate for a difficult case to go away, if only temporarily?
:rolleyes:
 
arthwollipot said:
We used to send children to work down the coalmines.
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Do you really think there is an equivalence between children working in coal mines and whether you can leave your infant in a pram outside of a shop or in the garden?

If you do then a skeptic site is not for you.
 
Planigale said:
Do you really think there is an equivalence between children working in coal mines and whether you can leave your infant in a pram outside of a shop or in the garden?

If you do then a skeptic site is not for you.
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You appear to have missed the point of my comment.
 
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