General Chat

Joyous Joy, my feelings exactly. In all the interviews/statements by the McCanns they sound as tho they are talking about a possession, they barely touch on the fact that Madeleine is very probably suffering hugely whether just mentally or physically too, maybe because they cannot bear to put it in words, but I am darned sure if it was me, I would not be as cool and calm as they always appear, so controlled, that there seems to be little emotion over this lovely little girl. All I hope for is for Madeleine to be found safe and well, and then for her and her sister and brother to be made subject to care orders or whatever so that if/when they return to normal life in the UK they are watched so that they are looked after properly in future. That should go for the children of the rest of the adults in the party, they should already be subject to scrutiny now they are back in the UK. Liz

wei think its perfectly normal for anyone be it papers/police/public to speculate.. i think we also have a right to have our views. and mine for what there worth are....... it was wrong to leave children unattended. its come at a huge cost.no i will not show sympathy for the parents,theres many children been abducted for a number of reasons.they have no fund to help the parents find there children. maddie is the one who has all my sympathy.

I'm still astonished that they Trademarked Madaleine's name 15 days after she went missing!

Well, one theory of mine iwas... what if she'd wandered off and fell into an uncovered man hole?. There were lots of road works going on at the time. Sounds extreme perhaps and you'd like to think that someone may have seen a little girl wandering off on her own. If she was 'abducted' and there is no real evidence to support the theory, I hope & pray she is ok. If something sinister happend that night, then I just hope the person(s) is/are bought to justice! Another good thread Kris, as usual!!:)

It does make me wonder, if Madeline's parents sat quiet and did nothing, leaving the police to get on with it, during the last 100 days, if they kept a very low profile, did no more interviews other than the first plea for help, Would they have been accused of killing their own child ? We all make mistakes, some worse than others, we are human. They are also human and have feelings, as do their family. They have not been convicted so are innocent until proved guilty, My prayers go out to the McCannes and their family.

I don't know that the Portugese police have been lax as such, but I do think that because this event was so unexpected, so rare in fact, that the local police just didn't act as if a crime had been committed at all. They presumably thought, initially, that Madeleine had just wandered off.

Yet again another interesting article Kriss. Whatever side of the fence we sit on, people want answers. Things don't add up. The parents like it or not were neglectful. Their comment that they were 'at worst naive' is insulting to their daughter. At the end of the day they were neglectful of not just Madeleine but Sean and Amelie too. They placed their own entertainment ahead of the safety of their three little children. That doesn't mean they were operative in her disappearance, I have to believe that no parent would do that whatever social class or level of education they were from. I think it is safe to say that in view of the social class these people are from and their level of education you would expect that they would never contemplate putting their children's lives at risk. I do feel as some have said earlier if they were a less middle-class family and would go further if both parents from Liverpool the public feeling would be completely different. Regarding the comment that 'it is the job of newspaper to report NEWS' I have to agree with Rose and others, you only have to look at Watergate, one of many incidents where INCVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM sought out and exposed the truth. The two journalists from the Washington Post Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were diligent in their research and they got the answers that people were asking. They were then able to report it as NEWS. We have to have investigative journalists, they can poke and dig where Joe Bloggs Public can't and they are extremely good at getting answers. I personally don't believe, or really I HOPE they didn't have anything to do with the disappearance of their daughter but things don't add up, like it or not there are going to be accusations, printing of half or completely untruths equally as there will be printing of the truth of this situation. I suppose one way of looking at it is this, if they did hypathetically manufactured her disappearance which I must emphasise again I doubt for one second they did, then at least their little daughter stands a chance of being cared for and not coming to any harm. As far as the McCanns suffering the loss of their daughter and their guilt over her disappearance, sorry to say this but so they should be. What on earth has their little girl gone through in the last hundred days, you can bet it hasn't been a walk in the park for her. If she is still alive, she knows her mummy and daddy and her brother and sister, she knows she is not with them rather with some strangers. However well they may be treating her, she knows they are not her family, her grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles and her friends. She is suffering and she never put herself in the position she has found herself in. My sympathy rest entirely with little Maddy. This topic will rage onwards on this and other threads, in newspapers and in conversations around the world until the truth comes out, until Maddy is found, until the parents and their friends give a full and honest account of the events of that night. My sympathies to little Maddy, I hope you are well little one. Lyn x

I'm with Yvette and Deanna in this. I just hope to goodness Madeline is safe somewhere and is returned to her family as soon as possible. Personally I find this public judging of a family, based on the writings of journalists, very cruel Just my opinion.

Hi Deanna, I don't know but wish I did! There has been no hard evidence to show that she was abducted from the bedroom, the door was unlocked. I still believe it is possible that maddie wandered out to look for her parents. It is not a nice thought but it is not far from the sea. The currents where I live are strong, and in a tragic case recently two bodies were not found for quite some time. I don't want to distress anyone but it seems this possibility has not had much attention. Rosex

hi all well that seems a different story to what kate mccann herself said i think she said gerry mccann went to look at 10pm ? as for the group of people being top doctors or whatever well i do not care what they were, look at the doctors who recently bombed the airports, just because they had good professions does not mean they are saints jet

I think this whole investigation has appeared to be a bit of a shambles. Maybe the police have been lax or maybe we are just being told bits of information. I too don't believe all I read in the papers but I still don't think we are getting the truth about how often they checked on their sleeping children. I pray they find her safe and I feel for the parents but as I have said all along something doesn't add up.

Well said Yvette... And Rose, for goodness sakes, if she wasn't taken.... where is she then?? Deanna X

Could I just add that there is, as far as ANYONE connected with the case has stated as a FACT so far, no evidence that Madeline was TAKEN by anyone. Unless I have missed something? (capital letters for emphasis not shouting) Rosex

Read Later. libra.

Oh for goodness sake! Is reporting half baked views and unsubstantiated reports a new way to solve a crime and sit as judge and jury?? For starters no-one has even confirmed the blood is linked to Madeleine yet, and just because someone isn't telling everything to anyone who feels they have a right to ask doesn't mean they are guilty of said crime! This is nothing to do with whether they were right or wrong to leave their children....i think we all agree it was wrong.....but are they not paying for it enough already? Why do so many on here and in the general public think they have a right to say how the family should act? and that they have a right to perpetuate views that have no grounding in the facts? I have stayed out of this debate for ages as some of the views i disagree with have come from people on here i genuinely like, and i have no wish to fall out with anyone or cause a fight, BUT please a little humanity and respect for the family shouldn't be so much to ask for. We DO NOT KNOW what happened, and even if it does God forbid, turn out that 1 (or more) member(s) of the family/friends is responsible...what about the others? if the Portugese police really thought the family were responsible surely they would be acting differently from very early in....or are we saying they are hopeless at their job? One fact we DO have is that they handle things very diferently over there and things are not made open to Joe Public. In some respects knowing every move made by the police makes it easier for the guilty party to avoid detection as they are getting tipped off by the press along the way! The only thing we should be doing at this stage is trying to find Madeleine and the scum that is responsible for her disappearance. In the meantime we should be treating her family as victims of a terrible crime who need support and understanding, even though we disagree with them leaving their children. All said and done, they were not the first to be so stupid, and not a single one of us can say we have never done something stupid. Stupidity wasn't a crime the last time i looked. For the record i have never left mine, never would and am amazed they did.........and i don't have to live with result of such an action. Whatever the outcome of this nightmare, they will have to live with this for the rest of their lives, guilty or innocent and you can be sure they will never know a minutes peace again. Let the police do their job and judge on the result.......this rubbish is not helping them, or Madeleine.

Hello, just come back in! As you rightly point out Sheila,Lesley and Deanna, with the freedom the press in this country enjoys, comes the responsibility to publish facts rather than unfounded speculation. I admit I was thinking of cases of miscarriage of justice which, without the continued involvement of journalists,might well have gone un-noticed and un-rectified. Also Campaigning journalism which brought to light the atrocities in Cambodia, and any number of similar issues. I have read a little of the Mail today, whilst waiting on the station, it does throw up some issues which should have been adressed at the outset of the McCann case,which were possibly not. Mainly,I think, because of the huge wave of sympathy in the press here initially. They are now asking the questions that (it appears) the police did not ask at the time. But since I can't say for sure what questions the Portuguese police DID ask, that too is 'speculation'. Rosex

Rose - yes, I will concede that my reply was somewhat sweeping and I uphold the freedom of the press. The media would also be a tad boring if it reported nothing but 'pure' news! However, with freedom comes responsibility and I detest the way the press acts as judge, jury and executioner before any hard FACTS are known.

PLEASE...... LEAVE THEM ALONE... I rarely believe anything I read in the papers, don't even buy them. Just how much pain needs to visited on that poor couples back before you will all be satisfied?? I have just come on this morning and this is the first thing I read!! As I have said before..... threads have been put up before.... attacking people BEFORE ALL THE FACTS WERE KNOWN!! Deanna X

Off out so won't be here to respond but I just wanted to politely differ on the comment re 'it is not the job of the press to ask questions ' . Without a free press able to ask questions as well as bring us 'news', their would have been many atrocities,crimes and matters of vital importance that would never have been brought into the public domain, .................in other words people would have got away with things! Rosex

According to the Mail Portuguese police have dramatically changed their attitude to the parents of Madeleine McCann in the last few days, it emerged last night. The latest revelation is sure to fuel speculation in Portugal that the parents were in some way involved.