Does Madelaine McCann deserve so much public money over the so many other children who have been lost?

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Upstairs-Double-622@reddit

Does she deserve it? Yes, every child does.

Unfortunately not every missing child gets the same amount of attention and resources. This is what the issue is not whether a child deserves it.

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What people seem to forget is, there is likely a man out there that kidnapped her and killed her, why do people not care about catching him? The reason this search is going on now is because the German police believe quite strongly that a man they have in jail at the moment did it, but he's about to be released soon and when he is released he is going to disappear. They also believe he committed a murder, but can't prove it yet. This alone is good enough reason to keep trying to find her body.

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IrishShee@reddit

The reason they “don’t care” is because some of them think the parents killed her, and the rest think that it’s so unlikely they’ll find the killer after all of these years that it’s a waste of money that could be spent on more successful endeavours and/or other children

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Minimum_Possibility6@reddit

I think there is also a group that thinks even if it wasnt the parents, they believe the parents were seriously negligent and if this happened to a different class of people then the system would have come down hard on them and the press demonised them.

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IrishShee@reddit

Well exactly. That’s 100% true. The title would be something like “3 year old kidnapped while parents used benefit money to drink, leaving toddlers home alone”

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Cpt_TomMoores_jacuzi@reddit

Which, in your made up scenario, would be an accurate headline, no? Assuming they were on benefits (otherwise they wouldn't be able to write that headline without getting sued).

The Mccans got absolutely slaughtered in the press. They were accused of allsorts. Their case in fact was part of the Levison inquiry into media standards and shady behaviour and they have also won libel cases against various parties because of the shit they said about them.

I can remember when I first read the story on the BBC News site.

When I read the headline I thought how terrible it was for them. Then as I read the story I thought "well that's neglect". I was surprised when nothing happened about that.

Then they used donations to pay off the mortgage, already being highly paid professionals.

I have no time for them. I of course always hoped she would be found safe, but I think the chances of ever finding her are externally remote.

We'll probably never know what happened that night other than three very young children were left unattended by those who should have been caring for them. Forget kidnapping, what if there was a fire or had a fall?

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Sea-Horse-5793@reddit

I think there is even a book that looks into the relationship between class and the media representation of cases like this. I read it and one chapter was a comparison of madelaine mccann vs a kid that went missing on a council estate.

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muffsniffer3@reddit

Well said

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claridgeforking@reddit

Pretty sure the press are the reason lots of people believe they killed yheir own daughter. I'm not sure how much more demonising they can get.

That group is quite significant.

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MammothAccomplished7@reddit

The German police dont have a dog in the British conspiracy theorist, amateur Sherlocks, class war internet bollocks though. Fella who likely done this and has done a number of proven other things will be running loose if they cant put it together.

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mondeomantotherescue@reddit

ding ding ding!

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idontlikemondays321@reddit

I’m not in anyway justifying it but people would be surprised how common it is for parents to do this. A relative worked for the summer seasons in Spain only a few years ago and parents were still leaving their kids

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IrishShee@reddit

I won’t even move my bedroom to another room IN OUR HOUSE because I don’t like being too far from them in the night in case they wake up 🤣

Leaving them in a building you’re no longer in is absolutely alien to me

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CarpeCyprinidae@reddit

I think its fairer to say that we have very reasonably come to the view that the parents have always known what happened to their daughter and the whole media thing about this is their defence mechanism. You don't have to spend much time watching her in particular to see the signs of a liar at work

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ortecam@reddit

Actually there is nothing reasonable about having the view of a conspiracy theorist nut job.

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CarpeCyprinidae@reddit

You say that, but the obvious antidote to conspiracist thinking is to restrict yourself to considering what can be known.

a lot of people find themselves looking askance at the parents as their testimony is almost the most improbable part of the whole situation. if we insist they must be speaking the truth, everything that happened must be very improbable

If we consider the possibility that their public accounts are dishonest, other possible explanations come to mind - some of which seem more plausible.

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SoftwareWorth5636@reddit

It is repugnant to accuse two parents of murdering their own little girl when all the evidence points to her being abducted by an evil psychopath

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From what I know, it’s not that they murdered her outright. It’s that she had an accident while they were out drinking and they covered up her death to avoid being charged with her death

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Fattydog@reddit

You say ‘I know’ as if you actually know what happened. You honestly don’t.

It’s a sign of ignorance to claim knowledge you don’t have.

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IrishShee@reddit

No I meant from what I know of other peoples’ opinions. Of course I don’t know what happened.

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SoftwareWorth5636@reddit

And those opinions are factually wrong. It’s misinformation designed to further demonise two parents who’s kid has most likely been brutalised and killed by an evil psychopath who is a known sex offender.

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ortecam@reddit

What’s more improbable here.

The parents along with all their friends they were on holiday with have kept a secret for nearly 20 years and are all complicit in her disappearance/assumed death.

Ok-Chest-7932@reddit

Which is Germany's problem and one Germany is solving. It's not our budget's business.

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RoboJobot@reddit

I think it has something to do with Germany and Portugal helping us out previously and the fact that most people in the UK would really like the person who kidnapped and murdered a small British child to be tried and convicted for the crime. So yes, it is Germany’s problem, but it would benefit us because it was one of us that it happened to.

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Ok-Chest-7932@reddit

The British would get more benefit out of a show trial that no one tells them is fake than out of continuing this goose chase. There's a good chance that is what this actually is, the guy denies having anything to do with the McCann case and the only evidence currently released to the public is that he happened to be in Portugal at the time. There's every possibility they're using the McCann case as an excuse to keep this guy locked up and the actual offender will never be caught. And if that is the situation, then I say good enough.

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Cold cases get solved

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admiralross2400@reddit

Less than 30% of cold cases are ever solved. The ones that are usually have a suspect who's committed additional crimes which have then linked them to the original case. You still need evidence to link them - and it has to be "beyond reasonable doubt" level. So just because they were in the area isn't enough...you'd need some kind of witness who saw them with the victim (there aren't any in this case), or DNA of them on the victim (not going to have survived 20 years)...I'm not saying it's impossible, I just think that it's worth it in this case.

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Ramtamtama@reddit

Body? Bones at best, nothing at worst.

If there are bones they should be able to get DNA, unless they've been treated. If the body was cremated or dissolved, there won't be.

Sorry to be so gruesome.

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admiralross2400@reddit

Exactly...that's my point. And any DNA will only be hers...they're not going to find any DNA from any suspect, that will have degraded a LONG time ago.

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Ramtamtama@reddit

At best they'll know whether it was her

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Ramtamtama@reddit

20 years and no positive sightings doesn't bode well for anyone being found alive.

Richey James was declared dead after 13 years, although his family had been given the option of declaration after 8. He was 27 when he went missing.

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AstraofCaerbannog@reddit

Not necessarily the case that someone would have seen her. We’ve had multiple women who were abducted as children and kept for many decades where they never got to leave their prison until they were fully within adulthood, and for some reason their captor allowed them to get medical treatment which led to being rescued.

What’s disturbing in these cases was how these people weren’t undetected despite being in plain sight. In one case he was a convicted sex offender with regular home visits from a probation officer and they never looked into the soundproof shed.

I think most likely Madeleine is dead. And as awful as it sounds, I hope she’s not trapped somewhere, death would have been kinder. But there is a possibility that she is still living in someone’s basement.

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locklochlackluck@reddit

The guy in prison in Germany allegedly confessed to a cellmate he killed and abused her. That's not nothing. That's what the German police are following up on and off course they're collaborating with other police forces as you would expect them to

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FlorisRosy@reddit

A huge amount of people think the McCann’s drugged their children so they’d sleep and Maddy died, so they buried her body

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mobuline@reddit

Agree. They must have some new information to restart this.

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Lowest_Denominator@reddit

What people seem to forget is the parents left a toddler completely unsupervised on her own in a hotel room in a foreign country whilst they went for a drink and a meal. Quite why the parents haven't faced any charges for child neglect I do not know.

lkdubdub@reddit

It's not a grant. You don't get a set amount per missing child

Jesus, the ignorance on display here is mental

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dreadwitch@reddit

How much is 2million from then worth now?

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Lynex_Lineker_Smith@reddit

What has the monetary amount got to do with it ?? They spent years looking for that poor little boy . Years. It was constantly in the papers and on the television. So , I don’t need a word with myself, as this isn’t some weird conspiracy like you’re trying to suggest . Read up on it, educate yourself , you appear to need it .

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Responsible-Walrus-5@reddit

Well, if god forbid your child went missing and you didn’t have answers, would you rather the search had £13m or £2m (over twice the time horizon) spent on? Monetary amount has a huge amount to do with it.

Absolute nonsense

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Suspicious-B33@reddit

Exactly this. You are 100% correct.

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BudandCoyote@reddit

I'm older, from the UK, and that's rubbish. My parents would never have left us unsupervised that way on holiday even years before Madeline, nor would any of the parents they knew.

Hotels often have babysitting services, as in someone there with the children, or some other group activity supervised space like a Kids Club. Leaving children that young completely alone, at night with no supervision, and with an unlocked door to the outside, has never been normal. It's either disingenuous of you to pretend that it is, or you and your cousins were part of the same 'bad parenting' circle.

At the time I remember my mum commenting that abduction wouldn't even have occurred to her, but she wouldn't have wanted us alone like that because if one of us got up in the night and couldn't find anyone a) it would be terrifying for that child and b) we could potentially manage to get out the room and wander off.

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Wild_Cauliflower_970@reddit

Imagine being so confidently incorrect. Your entire argument is based on the complete denial of the fact that listening services were commonplace. That's not something you can dispute, it's a fact. It's also based on your assumption of what used to be inside the head of your parents and their friends - as if you're retro-actively psychic.

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BudandCoyote@reddit

It's also based on your assumption of what used to be inside the head of your parents and their friends - as if you're retro-actively psychic.

No, it's based on their actions. As in they did not leave their children alone like that. Nor was anyone I know left alone like that.

A 'listening service' also involves monitoring. And staff members who can go straight to the room if they hear anything. Same as leaving a babysitter in your house with a baby monitor.

That is not what the Mcanns did. At all.

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Wild_Cauliflower_970@reddit

No, it's based on their actions. As in they did not leave their children alone like that. Nor was anyone I know left alone like that.

Then you don't know many people

A 'listening service' is babysitting, and also involves monitoring. And staff members who can go straight to the room if they hear anything. Same as leaving a babysitter in your house with a baby monitor.

So, to be clear, I was correct and you lied. I said listening services were commonplace and you said I was wrong. You're now clarifying I was right, listening services were commonplace and, ironically, this completely disproves your argument that no one left their kids...

That is not what the Mcanns did. At all.

I didn't say they did. I said that people commonly left their children and that proof of that is that listening services were commonplace. You said people didn't ever leave their children and that listening services didn't exist. You're now accepting that listening services were commonplace but kids still weren't ever left... So, explain to me why any parent would use a listening service for a child they haven't even left? Or explain why so many hotels had listening services when no one was using it? Or do you accept that everything I said was correct and you're now trying to redirect this to a different conversation about the specifics of the McCanns behaviour.

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BudandCoyote@reddit

You said people didn't ever leave their children and that listening services didn't exist.

Find me saying that, please! I said people didn't leave their children unsupervised and I emphasised babysitting because that's what you mean. A service that actively monitors the kids. It is not at all the same thing as leaving a child alone. Not even close.

I didn't say they did.

Yes you did. Browntown-Magician said, and I quote "I wouldn’t even dream of leaving my 3 year old daughter to even run to the corner shop for some milk, never mind a sit down meal with a couple of beers!"

Your reply: "This was a completely normal thing at the time. People don't do it now because of Madeleine McCann going missing. That's what a lot of people forget, or choose not to remember."

You were literally saying that what the Mcanns did was normal. It was not.

People did not 'commonly leave their children'. They just didn't. They left them monitored. Whatever way they did it, it is not at all the same thing in any way to what the Mcanns did, and unlike the way you twisted my words, that is the argument you were making - that what the Mcanns did leaving their children completely unsupervised was normal and everyone did it. Otherwise why even say it? Directly in response to someone saying they'd never leave their child completely unsupervised even to go to a corner shop.

All you have to do is look at media coverage from the time and you'd see very quickly they were eviscerated or it because it was not what most people did. I was nineteen when she disappeared, it was not normal parenting even when I was a small child, let alone in 2007.

Beyond that, you're arguing that these services were common (I quote "Every hotel had a listening service"), but providing literally zero evidence of it. It wasn't something that was ever used for me or my siblings, nor for anyone else I knew of... though I will admit it's probably not the sort of thing to come up in random conversation. Different countries are also very different, so while I'm guessing you're talking about hotels in the UK, this would not be the case in every country. In fact in most of Europe, the cultural norm is to take your children with you, even to adult-oriented, late night events, and if they need to sleep they did so on chairs or in other spaces around the room.

You're making the assertion, so it's on you to prove that 'listening services' were so common that literally every hotel had one. Because my family travelled a lot when young, so did many others I knew, and as far as I know this was either not an option, or not used by any.

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Wild_Cauliflower_970@reddit

You're just inventing nonsense and lying through your teeth. How embarrassing!

You're lying even within your own comment. Your first denying that you even questioned listening services and then saying it's on my to prove it... like, do you agree or disagree? Because, from my perspective, you've denied they were common, admitted they were common, denied admitting it, denied denying it, and you're now asking me to prove it.

You're arguing with yourself.

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CelestialS1ayer@reddit

It was a while back, and everyone makes mistake. you are making the error of blaming the victim not the perpetrator. That guy, whoever it was, was waiting for just one moment for them to be negligent. It could have happened at the pool, or anywhere. So now myself, like many parents have to go to bed at 8am in the hotel room with my kids as no one can leave their kids alone in a room anymore, for fear of an abduction.

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Suspicious-B33@reddit

People act like it wasn't super common in the 70s/80s for parents to leave their kids in hotel rooms while they went out while on holiday, I mean Butlins (or similar) used to have a system where the parents hung a red flag on the door to show the staff that their kids were in there alone so they could 'check on them'. Literal red flags everywhere advertising that kids were in open rooms asleep. Kids were left in bed and in cars for hours when parents went to the pub, and occasionally one person stayed back and 'looked after' the kids (all in different houses). Don't remember a single prosecution. I can't imagine making a bad decision like that and not only losing your child but being blamed for it. Absolutely horrific.

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BudandCoyote@reddit

But literally every scenario you mention (besides children being left in cars or bed while their parents went to the pub, which was bad parenting 'back then' and still is) the children are monitored. Red flags mean staff can go around regularly and make sure the children are there, and also that they haven't woken up needing anything.

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FlorisRosy@reddit

I agree.

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Substantial-Newt7809@reddit

Usually in those cases there is a body, which provides evidence to the police about what happened and can assist in a prosecution.

At this point, what's more likely. That her father was somehow able to do what few are - hide a body so well that no one has noticed in all this time and not get caught, never cracked under the pressure and guilt, or that she possibly was abducted.

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FlorisRosy@reddit

There was all that talk about burying her body under the foundations of the motorway that was being built. Why did they keep driving up there?

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Fluffy-Answer-6722@reddit

What’s the consensus on what happened to Ben needham

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I seem to recall that this child was left alone with her siblings in an apartment whilst her parents and others were enjoying an evening meal. Surely, the parents should be contributing to this activity given that if they had taken their children along ( Portuguese families eat together), this terrible thing would not have happened to their daughter.

Children are abducted, but not many are given the level of publicity or attention because their parents are not deemed as professional, educated, etc, but they laft those children alone despite being offered childcare.

They should be paying , if the government expects the tax payers to foot the bill, they should afford every missing child in the UK the same.

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BeachtimeRhino@reddit

What did they think happened if not abducted?

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CaptainJamie@reddit

Been a while since I looked at it but it;s believed he was accidentally killed at a nearby building site and when a worker noticed what happened he covered it up. Police found items belonging to the boy there, but no body, so not 100%, however it's pointing to that. I heard something about a death bed confession from a worker too.

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I actually disagree with this. From a strictly utilitarian moral perspective, they are one and the same. We as a society only have so many resources, if we disproportionately allocate those resources to a few individuals we make a very real statement about their worth over others.

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SheepishSwan@reddit

over all the other children who are lost

The media obsession, the public’s obsession — it’s a huge story and always will be until answers are found, if they ever are.

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YeshuasRap@reddit

Well said.

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Impossible_fruits@reddit

This is German tax payers paying because they have someone in prison, Christian Brückner, will they think was involved.

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DryAd296@reddit

Exactly, it’s not about whether she deserves it, it’s about why the same energy isn’t given to all missing kids. That’s the real problem.

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Master-Quit-5469@reddit

This is the only answer. Every child does. The sad part is not that one child got more attention and funding than others, the sad part is that all the others don’t get the same focus and funds.

Yes, she does deserve that much money. She's a child who has been missing for almost 20 years and dead or alive, deserves to have her whereabouts known.

However, ALL missing children deserve it just as much as her too. They just don't get as much attention. Like Andrew Gosden went missing the same year as Madeline McCann- his disappearance was a lot more baffling and unexplained and he gets nowhere near the amount of attention that Madeline does. I would definitely like him to be spoken about more in particular.

But that's just how it goes I'm afraid. Some cases get more attention than others. They can't equally spend their time on all cases unfortunately.

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dungannoncannon@reddit

I tend to agree. I relate this to endangered animals as in we put so much money in to savings pandas because they seem 'cute' but what about the kakapo? I call this the McCann effect. Sound harsh and I may be wrong.

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Reasonable_Royal4882@reddit

Ben Needham ...

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Hot-Box1054@reddit

Nope. But Family Guy perfectly explained why

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Key-Environment-4910@reddit

I just wonder WHY THE PARENTS EVER LEFT HER & why they were never done for neglect

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Fwoggie2@reddit

This is what baffles me most. I'm off on a Jet2 special to Turkey in a few weeks and it wouldn't occur to my wife or I to have a night out elsewhere in the resort leaving our 4yo asleep on her own. Instead we will do what do many parents do, have an early dinner with junior then get them asleep before enjoying drinks on your room's balcony just a few feet away. If you don't like that approach - and some wouldn't - then many places will do a Nanny service for a fee. Better believe that we will drop her off at the jet 2 kids club some days though..

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tulipjessie@reddit

I was working in an office when Madelaine went missing. I was young and childless everyone else was older and had families. Every single woman in that office stated that they left their children every time they went on holiday. They all stated that daytime was for the kids but nighttime was for them and how safe it was.

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Guilty-Staff2151@reddit

To be fair, I am only two years older than Maddie, and anytime we went away I was always with the asleep in the pram or a the table. They would have never even considered to leaving me alone an option

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AmaroisKing@reddit

That’s bullcrap, I’ve never known a single person with kids with that mindset.

The McCanns were on a swingers holiday, that’s why they left the kids alone.

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tulipjessie@reddit

It definitely wasn't bullcrap. They all agreed that it was completely normal.

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AmaroisKing@reddit

They were a bunch of a**holes then, not fit to have children.

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frankchester@reddit

Yeah, I was browsing through old family photos the other day and my mum somewhat joked "oh look, that's the time I Madeline McCanned you" to a picture of me asleep in bed in Portugal. Granted, my great grandma was in the room too but she was 90 with dementia and wheelchair bound.

Mum also told me she had to do something similar when we went to Eurodisney in the 90s and after she put me to bed realised there was no food available anywhere near, so she had to walk over to the restaurant to get a tray to bring back.

Is it a good idea? No. Has Madeline's case changed our perspective on this? Absolutely. Was it done regularly? Definitely.

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AmaroisKing@reddit

Sorry for your shit parenting.

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Alfredthegiraffe20@reddit

As a parent of two children, I can state, hand on heart, that I don't know any parent who would do that. All the conversations I've had with friends who have kids, or parents of my kids' school friends have all ended the same, we go on holiday as a family and we spend our time on holiday as a family. Kids sit in buggies whilst adults eat or the family eats early and then the parents hang out at the apartment whilst the kids sleep.

My youngest was 3 in 2007 when Maddie went missing and we took him abroad since he was 6 months old. There would be no way on gods earth I would have left him. Routine was, we’d play a while in the pool, get back around 6pm, bath, pjs, bottle, sleep. Straight into the pushchair and we’d go out for dinner. He would sleep all the way though and we would go back to apartment, change his nappy and put him into his cot.

It would have never crossed my mind to leave him, even going to the restaurant which was about 50 steps away from us

I just can’t comprehend it still

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potatotomato4@reddit

Exactly. It’s unbelievable. My kid is 12, and I still drop him off to school and collect him. I will continue to do so until I feel he is safe to do it alone.

I’m not taking any chances. Social media has messed up kids and everyone as well.

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Dimac99@reddit

Letting kids do stuff on their own and letting them sleep alone with occasional check ups used to be very normal. I absolutely 100% guarantee that there's a good number of people condemning them publicly while privately breathing a sigh of relief that it didn't happen to them. People tend to relax and unconsciously downplay dangers more on holiday, it's a recognised phenomenon that people take chances that they wouldn't at home.

We used to go to Butlins on holiday and they offered a "listening service" at least up to the mid 90's for parents who wanted to go out and leave their kids to sleep. And I promise you, some of the Butlins accomodation was much further from the on site entertainment areas than the McCanns were from their accommodation that night and plenty of parents didn't bother paying the extra. It used to be normal - until Madeline McCann's abduction.

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Loudlass81@reddit

It wasn't. Those Butlin's listening services all faded out after Jamie Bulger's murder. That case had far more impact on changing parental attitudes than the McCann case. My kids are now 27, 23, 21 & 14. So the middle two were the age of Maddie & her younger siblings at the time. There was also the Soham murders before Maddie went missing, and THAT had more of an impact on the whole free-range thing for older tween age kids too.

Parental attitudes had ALREADY changed by then, except for a small section of parents that refused to accept it was neglectful. Almost always white & middle class & assumed 'it could never happen to them so it was fine'.

All the parents at my kid's preschool were horrified by the idea of leaving their TODDLERS home alone to go out on the piss. It just DIDN'T happen. If we wanted drinks with mates, we took the kids with us & either stayed over with the kids, or carried them back home half asleep when done.

To do what the McCanns & their friends did, leaving TODDLERS alone at night, in a foreign country, in an area known to be rife with crime, possibly 'sedated' (drugged up with children's benadryl or phenergan), not in direct line of sight, when they literally had the option of paying not just for a 'listening service' (which were already being seen as fairly neglectful by then, post Jamie Bulger), they also had the option of paying for a Nanny service, and with the waiters claiming there were long gaps between the times the parents were 'checking' (which wasn't done effectively either), all sounds damn like neglectful to me.

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In the early 80s it was normal to see kids aged around five out by themselves and even toddlers could be out accompanied only by siblings under 12.

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throcorfe@reddit

This still happens in my street (London estate with mostly social housing), not every day but not uncommonly. Kids wandering about in nappies out of sight of home, “supervised” by a sibling under 10. Blows my mind

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Ok_Cartoonist6288@reddit

Yep so true, I’m 29 and playing outside by yourself as a kid was the norm. As long as you didn’t stray too far and got back home when the street lights came on.

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Ok-Pudding4597@reddit

That’s exactly right. It’s a bit like drunk driving. Seems patently unsafe to us now but was very common practice back in the day nevertheless

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Yeah but Madeline was 3. You probably don't even remember being 3.

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Ok-Pudding4597@reddit

Yeah that was my experience growing up. We were often left and periodically checked on. Not defending it, but the McCanns weren’t alone

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ParticularClassic871@reddit

And parent of the year award goes to: Fwoggie2. The McCanns did what they did. Their friends did the same. I wouldn't do it and haven't with my kids but the McCanns can't change their actions. The whole group did it, for almost a week!

But what I don't get is the vilifying. The blame lies with the perpetrator who snatched a 3 year old girl from her bed in a quiet holiday resort. He took those actions.

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Fwoggie2@reddit

Assuming it's a he, yes, but you make out that the McCanns had no responsibility at all to their 3 children (because there were also 2yo twins in the room).

That's why so many vilified them; they left 3 preschool children to sleep unattended while they had a dinner at a restaurant 82 metres away, well out of hearing distance. I just cannot imagine the thought process they went through to think that was ok. What if one of them threw up, or had a nightmare or woke up hungry and couldn't find their parents?

Kate McCann in her own book about it acknowledged that Madeline complained that morning that the parents were not there when her and her brothers had woken up crying.

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ParticularClassic871@reddit

I don't defend the McCanns actions and had there been a fire that killed the children then they would be culpable. But the predator who abducted a 3 year old from their bed is the one to blame in this instance. He was the one who took those actions.

It always seemed to me that Gerry McCann was more laissez fare and he was very alpha, where Kate had more concerns but tended to follow what Gerry wanted to do. No matter about that however, I will repeat it was the perpetrator who was to blame. A woman walking home alone should never be blamed for being sexually assaulted on the basis she gave someone an opportunity. Same goes here in my opinion.

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DanielReddit26@reddit

Just wait until something goes wrong at a kids club and in 20 years time everyone is saying how they'd never use kids clubs and can't believe anyone who did wasn't charged with neglect.

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Sad_Editor_6358@reddit

Quite a leap

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g0_west@reddit

Not massively - the Madelaine McCann case is what changed people's attitudes towards leaving kids alone. 20 years ago people were a lot more relaxed about their children being unattended.

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Loudlass81@reddit

Nope, it was the Jamie Bulger case, along with the Soham murders, that changed parental attitudes. And they were both before Maddie was kidnapped.

By the time the Mccanns did this, THEY were the outliers, the ones who realised too late (for their daughter) that the rest of the country actually thinks you are dickheads for leaving 3 TODDLERS alone to go out on the piss.

I remember in 1990 going to Ibiza with my mother & stepfather at the age of 9yo. What I remember about that holiday is being carted around different nightclubs, dancing my heart out, drinking coke, playing the 25 pesata arcade machines, falling asleep in the corner & then being carried back to the hotel.

My mother was actually done for neglecting me a few years later & even SHE didn't leave me alone in a hotel room at THREE TIMES MADDIE MCCANN'S AGE. Even SHE knew it was too neglectful in 1990.

There's no way a pair of qualified doctors weren't aware of the fact that leaving 3 TODDLERS like this was neglect. Of COURSE they knew, they were trained in child protection for their JOBS...

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DanielReddit26@reddit

A little, but I thought it illustrated my point well.

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Swiss_James@reddit

I think it’s fair- it used to be common in places like Pontins / Butlins to leave the kids in chalets then go out to the bar. Someone from the resort would check on the kids every X mins and there would be an announcement “Baby crying in Room 402”. Attitudes change.

The McCanns were 55 metres away, both on the ground floor. I’d be happy to leave my kids in a daytime kids club that far away, I’d even be happy to have some food and a beer while they were there.

I wouldn’t be happy going to a restaurant at night with an unlocked patio door, but then again I’ve read about Madeline McCann.

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AtomicYoshi@reddit

It's baffling! I was scanning old family photos from before I was born and this was in the background of some old Pontins pics. My Mum was all casual about it as if it was a normal thing to do, I was shocked. That straight up couldn't happen now.

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DanielReddit26@reddit

On paragraph 3, nor would I but I can't say for sure whether I would have thought as such in 2003 or not. The world seems a very different place now than it did then, the case of Madeline probably as much a driver as anything.

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sjw_7@reddit

Our son is roughly the same age as Madeline McCann so when she disappeared it hit close to home.

One of the most baffling things to us then and ever since is how they could leave the kids alone in the apartment when they went out. That is not something we would have ever consider doing.

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SoftwareWorth5636@reddit

Millions of pounds spent to try to recover a lost little girl. I grew up on a council estate and I think the class envy towards an innocent little girl is disgusting.

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Do give some examples of missing childrens cases involving BAME kids in similar circumstances to Madeleine McCann

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madeleineruth19@reddit

Please don’t treat theory as fact. There’s no evidence that the drugging claim is true.

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millieann_2610@reddit

no you're right, there was evidence she was drugged but no evidence the parents did it

That is a lot of assumption to make, without ever asking me what I think. Just pure telling me what I think, like you're a fucking psychic... hint, you're not psychic, no one is.

And then telling me what to do at the end there. Whatever, chump.

Fuck off, I didn't ask for your opinion on my comment. What gives you the right to come at me with assumptions and shit like that, without ever once asking me about how I think and feel.

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Aggravating_Sock4088@reddit

You don't have to have had a perfect upbringing to spot shit parenting

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berejser@reddit

There's as much time between 1981 and her disappearance as there is between her disappearance and today. If the standards of the 80's aren't relevant then we can't really judge it by our 2020's standards either.

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Beneficial_Grab_5880@reddit

I agree, and I'm judging them by the standards of the early 2000s, not the standards of today (experiences may vary of course, but I did some babysitting for children while their parents went to the pub across the road in the late 90s and nobody was saying it was unnecessary).

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Loudlass81@reddit

I'm judging them by the parenting of the time - my middle 2 kids are the same ages as the McCann kids. I was parenting the same age kids at the same time.

Difference was, I was a 22yo single mum-of-3 from a council estate. If I'd left my kids alone like that, even ONCE, and someone contacted Social Care, you can GUARANTEE all my kids would have been put in Care even without one of them being abducted.

If I wanted to drink with my mates, I'd take the kiss with me, they'd top & tail in bed with one of my mate's kids, and either I'd sleep on the sofa or carry the kids home half asleep when we were done for the night. THAT was seen as normal in my social circles. NOT leaving 3 toddlers at home alone so you can go & get pissed in peace...

And if you were babysitting while the parents were across the road in the pub, I think that highlights the fact that it actually WASN'T normal by then to leave young kids unsupervised so you can go out on the lash - it was the norm to hire a babysitter, cos you didn't leave young kids home alone.

The McCanns easily had the money to use the resort's Nanny service - which was offered there at the time, alongside the cheaper 'listening service' that had already been phased out as unsafe in UK. They decided not to use either service, yet still go out on the piss & leave 3 toddlers alone.

It was known to be neglect in 1995, it was neglect in 2005, it was neglect in 2015, it's neglect now in 2025, and it'll still be neglect in 2035.

Parenting attitudes had long since changed, but not in certain, specific circles (the holdouts that still did this were often white, middle class professionals who assumed 'nothing bad would happen to them and that it was perfectly safe').

The McCanns - and anyone else leaving LITERAL toddlers home alone in the early noughties - were neglectful. Whether they want to admit it or not, they were. And the person that suffered most for their awful lapse in judgement was their 3yo daughter.

All my sympathies go to Maddie & her siblings. I have zero sympathy for people whose actions enabled a toddler's kidnap.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone that tries to claim parenting was somehow 'different then' is talking bollocks, even in 1990 my school wouldn't allow kids under 9yo to walk home alone. And I was a latchkey kid at 9yo...but there is a VAST difference in maturity & ability to be left home alone, even for just 2hrs after school, from a 3yo and a 9yo.

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AspieComrade@reddit

It's relevant when the people that grew up in the 70s and 80s were parents in the early 2000s, it's easy to grow up with the world being one way and failing to adjust for how the world is later

That said, is it even that different? Were there not kidnappers a few decades ago?

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itsfourinthemornin@reddit

Just because it happened and that's what everyone did, doesn't mean it's correct nor normal. My parents regularly left me alone to work and to have social time, I hated it. I could never imagine leaving my son alone in a hotel room, and that's just in the UK, never mind a completely different country especially to go drinking.

It is straight up neglect. You cannot sugarcoat it with "well we did it back then". Good reason while rules and laws change.

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Top-Spinach-9832@reddit

I think the point is that we ought to leave the parents alone. They did it, it happened and they’ve been punished enough. There’s no point getting all high and mighty about what they should have done with hindsight, or what would be expected of your average parent today.

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Loudlass81@reddit

Those 'listening services' faded out after Jamie Bulger & the Soham murders, they were the cases that changed parental attitudes, well before Maddie was kidnapped.

And no, even in the early 90's, it was NOT normal to leave toddlers at home alone. Ever. Unless you were actually a neglectful parent yourself.

I had kids the same age as the McCann kids at the time. It was NOT the norm by then, it wasn't even the normal for me & my mates growing up, certainly not as toddlers - our school didn't let us walk home alone until we turned 9yo, so attitudes to stuff like unsupervised tween kids was already changing by 1990, let alone by the time Maddie went missing...

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TheUnderthought@reddit

Leaving kids in your own house >>>> leaving them in some random room in Portugal.

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My mum told me this just yesterday as the subject of Made came up w while they were visiting, that you would tell them that your kids were alone at your caravan/chalet/room etc and that a patrol would listen in to check on them through the evening and if any problems would arise they announce it in the bar over tannoy, this would have been the 70s or 80s

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PersonalFox755@reddit

I used to work in hotels and I had many many parents leave their children alone in the room and come down for dinner and drinks. When I would notice and ask them where their kids were (sometimes actual babies, like 2 months old) they would be like “oh I have a monitor”. I got in a lot of arguments with guests telling them it’s completely inappropriate and not allowed. Even the general manager who had kids himself would be like oh well if they have a monitor it’s fine…. I was like no.

Now I have children myself and I think it’s even more crazy, I have a really good monitor and there’s no way the signal on that thing was connected from their hotel room to the restaurant.

This was in the last few years btw, so parents definitely still do it.

Why are you talking about the 70s?

Screwball

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My_sloth_life@reddit

Nah. I remember going to Pontins as a kid and remember being left with a staff member in a room of about, well what seemed to my tiny mind at the time about 20 kids, but I am sure was less. There was a nanny who looked after us. That was in the 80s.

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sjw_7@reddit

Popping round to your neighbours house is very different from going to a restaurant nearly a hundred meters around the corner in a different country.

Even so leaving young kids at home while you go next door hasn't been a thing for a long time before Madeline went missing. Cases such as Ben Needham and Jamie Bulger had quite an effect on how people and meant people were more worried about leaving their kids like they may have done in the 70s and 80s.

Its not trolling to be critical of what the McCanns did by leaving the kids to go out. Its quite possible she wouldn't have gone missing if they hadn't done that.

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PrestigiousTheme9542@reddit

The reason they never were done for anything is because they were middle class, educated, posh people if they were on benefits it would have been a whole other story. They also have the most off vibes ever.

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Round_Inspection_806@reddit

If the parents weren’t a pair of well off, white British doctors they would’ve been done by the authorities and the public. I can’t imagine leaving toddlers in a foreign country to go to the loo down the corridor, let alone a restaurant…

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aezy01@reddit

Because what they did doesn’t meet the threshold for neglect. Not even close.

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Alive_Ice7937@reddit

Have you seen the aerial picture that shows how far away they were? Checking every 5 minutes my ass.

There were kids even younger than Madeliene in that room.

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aezy01@reddit

What’s your point - it still doesn’t meet the threshold.

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Alive_Ice7937@reddit

What’s your point - it still doesn’t meet the threshold. They were about 50-60 metres away.

My point is there's no way they were eating dinner and checking on those kids every 5 minutes. No way. Leaving a three year old and two two year olds alone for 5 plus minutes is grossly negligent regardless of any perceived "threshold".

And I'm not talking about them being left vulnerable to something as unlikely as abduction. I'm talking about a child waking up and hurting themselves. Basic child safety.

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aezy01@reddit

Yes, negligent and not great parenting. However, leaving sleeping children in a bedroom happens all the time. It’s not ‘child neglect’ to any degree that would see a parent charged or convicted.

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Alive_Ice7937@reddit

However, leaving sleeping children in a bedroom happens all the time.

Leaving them sleeping in a different building doesn't. Especially children of such a young age.

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aezy01@reddit

Yes but they could wake up and hurt themselves at home just as easily as in a holiday apartment if they were left for 5 minutes. They actually claimed they were checking every 15 minutes on a rota but either way it is not grossly negligent. Children of that age very often sleep through the night and are left for hours at a time.

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Alive_Ice7937@reddit

Yes but they could wake up and hurt themselves at home just as easily as in a holiday apartment if they were left for 5 minutes.

At home you can hear them crying. You can't when you're at a noisy restaurant necking carva.

Children of that age very often sleep through the night and are left for hours at a time.

Again, if you're in the house with them, you haven't left them.

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aezy01@reddit

That’s a good point, and note I’m not saying it was the best idea… but it was absolutely normal for a lot of parents to do this or similar at the time. I’m not saying it was correct, but it was normal. In 20 years it may well be the case that people are aghast at the idea of parents giving their children smart phones at a young age - we all know it’s not a great idea, but we still do it.

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Loudlass81@reddit

It absolutely WASN'T normal, even then only neglectful parents did it. Ben Needham & Jamie Bulger's cases opened most parents eyes on how you can't take your eyes off your toddler even for 30 seconds, more than a decade before Maddie went missing. Then there were the Soham murders, that educated parents on the dangers of free-roaming 7-12 yr old tweens. Again, before Maddie went missing.

My middle 2 kids were the same ages as the McCan kids at the time Maddie went missing. It absolutely was NOT the norm by then to even leave 12yo's running wild in the day, let alone leaving LITERAL TODDLERS at home alone at night.

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aezy01@reddit

It WAS common to leave children in bed asleep. In fact, it still is. Read through the comments here and there’s plenty of people saying their parents did the exact same thing. Are they all lying? Your experience may be different, but it was definitely common.

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Loudlass81@reddit

Only with parents that are neglectful. You cannot persuade me that it is anything other than neglect to leave 3 LITERAL TODDLERS alone at night. I wouldn't have done it as a 16yo teen mum and I wouldn't do it now as a Granny to my grandbabies who are toddlers.

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aezy01@reddit

If I cannot persuade you, there’s no point in having a discussion because you’ve already made your mind up and aren’t open to being challenged. But for the sake of anyone else who has happened upon this thread, here I go.

Depends what you mean by ‘leave’ and how you define ‘neglect’. I’m sure you left your LITERAL TODDLERS in a room by themselves to sleep. So the question then becomes ‘how long were they left for and how far away were you and what were you doing at the time?’ Those are important questions to ask.

Further, historical context also matters and you are guilty here of being the hindsight police. It was common practice to leave children asleep in their rooms even in 2007 and was not considered neglectful at the time. The multiple people on here stating so should be enough to convince you that it wasn’t rare and was generally accepted.

Consider that sending children down the mines or up chimneys was accepted at one point. At the time it was considered normal, although objectively we can look back and say it was exploitative and cruel, so we don’t do it anymore.

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Alive_Ice7937@reddit

but it was absolutely normal for a lot of parents to do this or similar at the time.

A lot of people doing it doesn't mean it was ever considered acceptable behaviour. This isn't a "people just didn't know any better at the time" situation.

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aezy01@reddit

Because a lot of people were doing it does mean it was considered acceptable. Kids used to get sent up chimneys and down mines -that isn’t right and why we don’t do it any more but it was considered acceptable at the time.

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Alive_Ice7937@reddit

Because a lot of people were doing it does mean it was considered acceptable.

Not by anyone else, it wasn't.

Kids used to get sent up chimneys and down mines

aezy01@reddit

I work in child protection. Check mate. You have not seen children removed from their parents for less than this - if that were the case all the children of the UK would be in care. You are being disingenuous because I guarantee that there would be other factors at play. I’m not saying that what they did was smart, but it does not meet the threshold for child neglect. That was my main contention. The point about gardens is that they were less than 1 minute away - the equivalent of crossing a big garden which is absolutely relevant - and they haven’t left the children for more than 15 minutes, which is normal for parents to do. Further, parents give their children calpol all the time as a sedative but there’s no evidence that they did so on this occasion, that’s wildly speculative and I would have thought a professional such as yourself would do their research before making that accusation.

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MoseSchrute70@reddit

“Check mate” - okay pal, if that makes you feel big. I’m not going to go into why I’ve seen what I’ve seen - like I said the additional factors were a previous referral to SS from childcare settings because of uncleanliness.

The facts are that records needed to be made about a set of siblings regarding their appearance due to hygiene concerns. Appearance gradually became acceptable and eventually bruises were noted (shins, elbows and knees). Social worker deemed insufficient supervision was causing injury (4 siblings playfighting/jumping around) while parent was in next room and children were moved into the care of the other parent. That’s it.

I’m not saying I supported the decision. I’m saying if a parent being in the next room can be deemed insufficient supervision, then having dinner at a restaurant down the street also can. Other scenarios of parents being in their garden are irrelevant to this case, this was merely a supporting argument to back up what I was saying about distance being irrelevant in the topic of neglect when you’re judging individual cases objectively.

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aezy01@reddit

That’s not much much less and is a different set of circumstances. Bruising that goes beyond incidental (kids get bruises a lot from play fighting so I’d imagine that this was more than that) and hygiene concerns (which would also have to be more than they haven’t had a bath today) are more than what is described with the McCanns. How long were the children unsupervised for, what was the state of the house and the level of their hygiene? Were they wondering around naked, or in soiled clothing for long periods? Did they have bedding? Was there food in the house? What was the children’s activity while they were unsupervised, what was their ongoing behaviour and was this more than a single occurrence. What was the likelihood of them causing significant harm to each other, any special needs, respective ages, previous SS/ police involvement, the parent’s capacity to cope, their mental/physical health and support structures, are they attending school…. ALL of this would have played a part, none of which is applicable in the McCann’s case. The only comparison is that the children didn’t have direct adult supervision, which in the McCann’s case wasn’t an extended period of time.

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MoseSchrute70@reddit

It wasn’t beyond incidental - the bruising came from playfighting and the children attested to this themselves. In my opinion the parent was doing a good job and had made a significant effort in improving their hygiene - it had come down to time constraints with being a single parent to 4 children and working full-time and they worked closely with their social worker to improve on that. Like I said, it was brought up to an acceptable standard. The bruising that was noted wouldn’t have been thought twice about on any other child that didn’t already have involvement with SS.

Like I said, I’m not advocating that the McCanns should have lost their children. I’m saying that distance per individual case is irrelevant, neglect can happen whether you’re in the room next door, in your garden or at a tapas restaurant down the street. The only thing I contested in your point around whether or not it could be classed as neglect is that they were close enough to the room. Risks were elevated far more in their scenario than they would have been if they were just at home in their garden, that’s what makes the distance irrelevant.

I’m done discussing this now. Have a nice day.

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aezy01@reddit

My initial response was to someone who clearly thought the distance between the McCann’s and their children was unacceptable and my point was that they were close enough for it not to matter when considering if that alone could be regarded as child neglect - but clearly distance does play into any decision. If they were 5 miles away then that would be of greater concern. You said you have seen children removed from parents for much much less than their parent/s being less than a 1 minute walk away. I called you out on that said that there would have been other things to consider which you have now clearly said that there were. So not ‘much much less’ as you initially contested.

Enjoy your day.

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Is this a satirical question?

Children under 13 should not be left alone, without an adult, just off the top of my head.

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Loudlass81@reddit

I'd personally say that age 9-10yo should be the lower limit for being left alone, and that SHOULDN'T be at night, either.

Parental attitudes had started changing long before this, when I was at primary school in 1990, we weren't allowed to walk home alone until we were 9yo.

Then Ben Needham went missing, Jamie Bulger got murdered, that all made parents realise the dangers of taking your eyes off a toddler for even 30 seconds. Then the Soham murders. These were ALL before Maddie went missing, and that changed the whole free-range tweens thing.

The fact that those earlier cases weren't enough to make the McCanns properly supervise their kids makes THEM the weird ones. It's a large part of the reason so many still suspect one or both parents to have had involvement in whatever happened to Maddie. That and the other sus things, like not allowing the twins to be drug tested immediately, washing that soft toy 'cuddle cat' etc.

weloveclover@reddit

So if I stab and kill someone by “mistake” I shouldn’t be tried for manslaughter because I feel guilty? They were fully compos mentis about leaving their toddler at home to go out on the piss. They should absolutely be tried at the minimum, they shouldn’t be allowed to walk free because they’re upper-class and mates with Tony Blair.

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That’s a lot of putting words into my mouth there 😂

I’m not saying they’re not guilty of something, clearly they are. I just don’t think throwing them in prison is going to any good to anyone.

Their child being abducted and likely raped and murdered is punishment enough I reckon.

Also in your example it depends on the scenario doesn’t it? If you literally stab someone by accident (not sure how but let’s say it’s possible) I’d think the guilt of killing someone by accident would be enough punishment than also chucking you in prison at taxpayers cost 😂 but sure

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weloveclover@reddit

So I’m putting words in your mouth? I haven’t, I’ve just asked for clarification.

However you have put words in my mouth. I have never said they should go to prison. BUT they should be tried in court for neglect. I will happily accept the judgement of the court but the fact they were never tried is an utter failure of our justice system.

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Jaded_Valuable439@reddit

You said ‘so if I accidentally stab and kill someone ‘by mistake’ I shouldn’t be tried for manslaughter because I feel guilty?’ As if that’s what I said. I didn’t say that.

It’s a completely different scenario anyway.

I agree with the original comment, hence why I replied. You clearly disagree, fine. But honestly what’s even trying them going to achieve? They get a criminal record, maybe spend some time in prison? Won’t bring Maddie back and won’t help their other 2 kids either. Completely futile and pointless exercise - in my opinion.

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Traditional-Bag-3659@reddit

I wholeheartedly agree and it's refreshing to see this opinion about the justice system on Reddit.

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postvolta@reddit

It's troublingly rare imo. There's a bloodthirstiness from people that I just cannot relate to.

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Because we now judge Madelaine McCann's parents in a post-what-happened-to-Madelaine world.

I was a regular babysitter back in the 1990s, a decade before what happened to McCann, and a lot of parents would not have considered themselves "neglectful" to leave young children fast asleep by themselves in a resort bedroom with a parent checking on them at regular intervals - their parents were 55 meters away, able to get back to the apartment in less than three minutes. They would have known their children were unlikely to wake if tired out with activities during the day, considered the risk of fire, earthquake, flood, etc, to be inconsiderable: and if invited to consider that a violent predator might break into their apartment and take one of their sleeping children away and they would never see her again -

Well, as someone else said upthread - one reason why the Madelaine McCann case caused such a public stir and is still in the public mind 18 years later, is that it was a unique case.

Now parents are horribly aware it could happen, because it did. In the 1990s, parents would have been keeping a wary eye on their 3-year-old when she was awake and active, because she might run out of their sight and get into trouble, but at risk of stranger-abduction when fast asleep in bed in their holiday apartment? Even the Portuguese police thought "there was an accident in the apartment and the child died and her parents tried to cover it up" a much more likely scenario - and an accident happening to a sleeping three-year-old is not high on the list of probabilities.

(An accident happening to a three-year-old who wakes up, gets bored, and decides to get into something is way more likely, and that is what would have made me, an experienced babysitter, nervous about leaving the kids alone - but parents do know their children's sleep patterns, and the McCann parents were very likely right to figure that they had given their kids an exhausting day and they would now be safely asleep for eight hours plus.)

It's been 18 years and what happened to Madelaine McCann is still a horrifyingly unlikely fate for a sleeping toddler. But now parents know it could happen - so they wouldn't have left their kids alone.

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foalythecentaur@reddit

Her mum is an anesthetist and was giving all three kids sedatives so they can go drinking.

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Beer-Milkshakes@reddit

On top of drugging her kids in general tbh.

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Substantial-Bid-6546@reddit

Because they’re both doctors if they were on benefits or even working class they would have been vilified by the media

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Ok-Pudding4597@reddit

I’m not defending it, but it was very common practice before then. I was certainly left whilst my parents went to eat on the same resort.

Also there’s not much value in repeating that obvious analysis because a) people have stopped doing it since and b) I don’t doubt that the parents say that to themselves every day and feel enormously guilty

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slipperyinit@reddit

Awareness back then was much less. Leaving kids in locked hotel room for few hours happened way more often than you might think, the Mcanns were just unlucky. In almost all cases, nothing like this would occur. That’s not to say they didn’t make a huge mistake, and this case did make a huge difference towards attitude in itself.

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randomusername123xyz@reddit

If you read into their background then some of the things that have come up seem off. And that is being generous.

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marl3x@reddit

Much more common to do this back then unfortunately.

Truthfully this is the case that stopped my mum from ever doing this again with me or my brother

That being said I don’t have kids currently but I could never imagine leaving them alone like this

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RoboJobot@reddit

In all honesty, while I think it was the wrong thing to do and no one should leave their children unattended like that, I think that a lot of people probably used to do things like that up until this happened with no consequences. Personally as a parent I think it was a very dangerous and irresponsible thing to do and would never leave my kids alone for more than a few minutes. But I expect during the 89s, 90s and 00s it was probably a lot more common than people will admit.

And now they have to live with that guilt and regret for the rest of their lives.

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H16HP01N7@reddit

Money.

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Legitimate_Finger_69@reddit

Probably because children don't need to be intensely supervised 24/7. We can do it now with smart cameras, they couldn't.

WheresMyAbs98@reddit

Was very common in the early 2000s

My parents would leave us all time for up to a few hours.

It’s almost inconceivable what happened. Far more concerning than leaving your kids for a few hours while you go for a meal.

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AmaroisKing@reddit

So you had shitty parents too.

AmaroisKing@reddit

They weren’t responsible parents though.

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markedasred@reddit

My concern with the McCann case was how they appeared to monetise it. They were paid by a charity in their daughters name and had a bestselling book out of it, whilst both being well paid professionals.

It just doesn't sit well with me.

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Afraid to tell you, but you are a conspiracy theorist. Like being an alcoholic the first step is admitting it to yourself.

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BeccaaCat@reddit

Ok 🖖🏼

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ParticularClassic871@reddit

That's a good start.

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So last year, there was the mother (I believe in London) who left her toddlers to go out. The house set alight and the toddlers died. She’s been in court.

Then, in Leicestershire, a family took their children to a water park. One of the children drowned and again, the parents went to court.

I’m not saying it’s wrong for the above to have gone to court, but all left their children, when they shouldn’t have and it resulted in their deaths.

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The54thCylon@reddit

So last year, there was the mother (I believe in London) who left her toddlers to go out. The house set alight and the toddlers died. She’s been in court

The family was living in a house covered in rubbish and human excrement, there was a long history of neglect and on the day in question she either left a lit cigarette or a tea light to cause a fire. Hardly comparable - and she was actually cleared of the neglect charge. She went down for manslaughter for locking in the kids with a fire (something people like to point out in the McCann case is the door was unlocked).

Then, in Leicestershire, a family took their children to a water park. One of the children drowned and again, the parents went to court

Also a long history of dangerous neglect, including letting him wander around in the road on a previous occasion. On the day of his death he was taken to a water park and allowed to wander along for two hours when he couldn't swim. Again, not really comparable circumstances at all.

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So we shouldn't bring the killer to justice because the parents were neglectful. Or we shouldn't investigate because of that? Just trying to get what your argument is here.

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Loudlass81@reddit

WHAT IS WRONG WITH DOING BOTH?! It isn't an either-or situation.

We can both want the CORRECT perpetrator locked up based on actual evidence tying them to the crime (not circumstantial bollocks, either, I'm talking 'beyond reasonable doubt' levels of evidence) AND want the McCanns on trial for neglect.

They've never even admitted it was wrong of them to leave 3 TODDLERS alone in a strange environment so they could go on the piss in peace. So they learnt nothing from this even after Maddie was kidnapped.

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iamabigtree@reddit

Lots of people here are saying we shouldn't spend money investigating her disappearance or try to find her body BECAUSE the parents were neglectful.

It’s a confused question, not a simple on, and the word ‘deserve’ is a distasteful one. Her parents are wankers but Madeleine didn’t ‘deserve’ whatever happened to him, whether death by sedative, or a bogeyman sneaking in while her parents picked over their tapas.

I just don't see it as a fair distribution of the funds available to cold-case missing kids when £13 million has been spent on one case. Funny how now even a fraction of that was spent on the Patric Warren/David Spencer case, cod they were working-class boys. Ditto for Ames Glover, cos he was black. Those cases should have had those millions spread amongst all of them.

Why do the McCanns get this funding consistently yet cases like Ames Glover get almost hidden & ignored, with no funding ever being allocated to these even as cold cases with equal merit? Why shouldn't that money be more fairly shared when there's still plenty of other parents waiting fir answers too?

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dannydrama@reddit

The instant it came out that they left her alone, they should have lost their other two kids and told "you're not fit, fuck off".

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GoldBear79@reddit

Yep, fully agree. It wasn’t as though they went on a dodgy rollercoaster and there was a tragic accident. They knowingly left their children alone. I don’t jump easily to the privilege card, but I think it was used very effectively in this case.

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Fattydog@reddit

It’s the typical ‘I think they killed her’ response from people who get all their news from Facebook.

They should not have left her and her siblings to go and eat. They were wrong. But boy have they suffered for it.

As for all the nasty comments about them being shifty or unemotional, it’s the same as the dingo baby case where the mother was imprisoned because she didn’t react the ‘right’ way.

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GoldBear79@reddit

You’re talking about Lindy Chamberlain; the cases are very different. The locals supported Chamberlain’s claims, there was strong forensic evidence to back it up, and she was acquitted within 8 years. People will always be awful, perhaps even myself in this case, but as far as I know, the only forensic evidence in the McCann case was blood found in her parents’ own hire car.

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saxbophone@reddit

The morality of pitting one case against another is an obsolete measure.

On the contrary, when you spend such disproportionately excessive resources on one case in particular, as we have with this one, the question of morality as regards to resource allocation is legitimate and on-topic. The scale of resources spent means the likely number of missed opportunities in other missing childrens cases caused by allocation of funds to the McCann case is probably statistically significant.

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GoldBear79@reddit

Most cases don’t go on for 18 years. The cost is commensurate with the length.

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Henegunt@reddit

Exactly this, nothing more annoying than when people quote the "hundreds of thousands go missing every year" without mentioning the context that almost all of them get found quickly

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Yes. He’s been on their radar for years and with everything we currently know, there’s a very strong chance he abducted and killed Madeleine. He’s currently in a German prison for raping an elderly lady after he broke into her holiday apartment. He’s due for release as early as September this year.

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lizzywbu@reddit

He’s been on their radar for years and with everything we currently know, there’s a very strong chance he abducted and killed Madeleine.

You say that. But the police have suspected him for the last 5 years and have failed at every turn to find the evidence necessary to charge him.

The police only know about him because his cell mate tipped them off and claimed he admitted to taking Maddie.

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dani-dee@reddit

He’s been on their radar since 2013 after the McCanns made a television appeal in Germany. He was named as a suspect in 2020.

There’s circumstantial evidence including his phone being in the area and receiving a call an hour before Maddie was discovered missing, his car being re registered the day after she went missing but also being found on his property at a later date etc. But it appears they don’t have any forensic evidence and therefore not enough to charge him. Hence the current searches.

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lizzywbu@reddit

Hence the current searches.

Numerous searches have been conducted over the last few years and turned up nothing. I highly doubt anything will be found now.

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Devil_Advocate_225@reddit

Can you tell me where I can find info of the evidence of how he is likely to have done it? What is everything we know now? I had a look a while ago and either they hadn't released anything yet or I didn't know where to look for it.

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verzweifeltundmuede@reddit

The German police won't release anything until after the court case - they can't risk impacting the investigation.

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Ok_Cartoonist6288@reddit

From everything I’ve just read I truly hope it is this guy, so they can keep him in prison for the rest of his life. If that’s what the money for the investigation is going towards then let that be it. I’ve always been one of those skeptical of the amount of resources that went into Madeline’s case over other kids, without feeling like she didn’t deserve justice. I was a kid when this happened and now I’m an adult. I just want whoever did this to her to pay for their crimes.

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dani-dee@reddit

There was a documentary a few weeks back which went through what the police have made public. I can’t remember what’s it called but it was on channel 4 or 5.

But from various news reports and the documentary: the car he had at the time of the abduction was re registered to someone else the day after she disappeared. Yet when police searched his house after the dog started digging in a spot, they found said car (along with numerous children’s toys and swimming costumes)

They also found lots of fantasy type stories he wrote about kidnapping and raping women and children. Using chloroform etc. In the boot of the car the found bottles of “chemicals”

His phone was in the vicinity of the abduction (I think it was within 5 miles or minutes?) He claims he was having sex in his camper van with a woman he drove to the airport after.

One of his burglary friends attended a music festival with him (I think it was the year after she went missing) and they were talking about Maddie and the friend alleges that Christian B told him “she didn’t scream”. He reported this to police. We know he was definitely at the festival because he got into an accident after he left and there’s insurance claims to back that up. But whether he actually said it or not 🤷🏻‍♀️

They found hard drives when searching his house, what was on them hasn’t been released but there’s speculation that whatever it was made German police look at it as a murder case, not an abduction.

His MO: he broke into holiday apartments on the regular. He’s currently in prison for raping a woman who was in one of these apartments. Another woman was raped in an apartment but he was found not guilty of that. She told police that her rapist had a scar on his thigh. Christian B’s lawyers said he didn’t, it was never questioned and the judge wouldn’t allow it as evidence. When searching his house police found photos he’d taken of himself at the place they searched last year I think it was? Where he’s in women’s underwear with a visible scar on his thigh.

There’s quite a detailed timeline on his history here

From various forums I’ve read: The second sighting of a man carrying a child in pyjamas (the Irish families sighting not the woman with the mccanns sighting) and the sniffer dog losing the scent at the carpark.. people have often said that the description matched Gerry McCann. But the description also matches Christian B.

God no, just look at how Noah Donohoe’s case is treated. Yes they found a body but the police have done nothing.

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Mysterious_Balance53@reddit

I wonder if there would be so much public money and attention if she wasn't a pretty blonde girl with big blue eyes.

All missing children 'deserve' this level of attention and funding, but practically it isn't possible.

She got the level of attention and funding she did because her parents were well off and had ties inside the government at the time. I happen to believe it's the same reason the CPS refused to prosecute them for what was very clearly neglect. If that was a working class family, there wouldn't be anywhere near as much attention or funding, and her parents would have faced significantly more scrutiny.

This isn't a new phenomenon, rich people are advantaged at every level of society, including the justice system.

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benevanstech@reddit

But could you cope with the disappointment on the little faces of Officer Wayne and his buddies when they found out their annual holibobs had been cancelled?

He'd already packed his little bucket and spade! You monster!

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Aggravating_Piano_29@reddit

At this point, she's a story for the media to wheel out on a slow news day or when they need a distraction from something else.

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hazzap913@reddit

No, it’s obvious they’re never gonna find her it was years ago, the parents should be in prison anyway

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jamiekayuk@reddit

Nope, she's a topic changer for the uk news and that's it.

The McCanns gambled their most precious thing thoughtlessly and lost. So far as it goes, for their loss, they have my sympathy.

But Maddie has gone now. The money spent on pursuing whoever took her, might be better spent protecting many more children at more immediate risk.

I think the point is they didn’t investigate properly from the second the police where contacted. So does Madeline deserve justice and to be buried at home near her family yes 100% no money or value should come into it. The fact it’s dragged on so long is because of multiple police failings and the bottom line is they know it was him that did it but he’s manipulated the system for so long and hidden evidence so well he thinks…

So I ask a new question.. why does the world protect pedophiles? Why do they get locked up and we feed them and cloth them and allow them to live? That is what is wrong with the world and what needs to change.. in what world is that okay? Why do we all pay to keep these monsters breathing?

There needs to be 100% death penalty for them all and not by lethal injection but by severe brutality and pain so they suffer to the very last second because that what every single child suffered at the hands of these monsters and they don’t get to be here to speak for themselves so why on earth do we all sit back and just let it unfold? Because humans are selfish fuelled by power and greed simple as that…

Well, I can only assume that if they find evidence of his involvement they won't just be like "you got another one?! You cheeky rascal!"

"it is basically the bare minimum to keep a case active"

It's unusual for a case like this to be active for so long though, in comparison to the tens of thousands of children that have gone missing over the past 2 decades. Not all cases are treated the same and that's unfair, some are closed sooner than others (when not found).

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Healthy_Oven_8660@reddit

Show me a non active case like this one that literally right now has prime suspect sat in a German jail, who supposedly admitted to the crime to a cellmate in jail, was in the area at the time and is a serial rapist and paedophile?

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AnticipateMe@reddit

But see, you're missing a lot of important information. He wasn't a prime suspect till MUCH MUCH later in the case, was it 2022 he was considered a prime suspect? So if we ignore the years after 2022 it's still nearly 2 decades of a mostly active case the majority of the time.

So I still don't understand why you said all that in your comment, if he was prime suspect back in 2010 or something then fair enough you sorta make some sense, but not when he was fucking declared an official prime suspect in 2022 cmon...

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Healthy_Oven_8660@reddit

It was 2020 Breuckner was publicly called the prime suspect but was on police radar for years before that. A significant portion of the time since 2007.

You say mostly active which is fair. What you don't say is that active periods coincided with new information. They didn't just have a bunch of met officers wandering around Portugal for 20 years.

Also I just want to go back to what you said in a previous comment and say that 10s of thousands of children do not go missing every year. Unless you are counting kids lost on tesco for 2 hours or teenagers who run away for a day to a friend's house. It's very disingenuous to compare those to a case like this.

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Neither-Stage-238@reddit

Estimated cost of a life year in the UK is 20k. So it's 5 years or 1/15th of a life.

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Healthy_Oven_8660@reddit

You can compare literally every bit of government spending to the value of a life year if you want but all it will do is send you insane. It's generally not useful.

That’s about 20 people’s tax contribution.

I’m guessing it was because he went missing as a teen? It shouldn’t be that way though, every missing child in the UK should get presence in the press for as long as it takes. There was a girl that went missing in my old neck of the woods & she’d been spotten a few times & then caught on CCTV in a near by village too (with the sighting confirmed by her Dad from the footage) yet the police never actually ‘found’ her. That’s been about 30 years I think. The McCann case constantly bobbing back up is doing a favour though, as much as I’m fed up of hearing about it, because Andrew Gosden’s name is back out again. & others too (Ben Needham keeps being mentioned as well but it looks like the Police drew their conclusions on that but at least they did actively have a massive search & the PM at the time pushed for there to be a search too, when authorities on Kos seemed so CBA about it)

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RealMrsWillGraham@reddit

That is sad about the girl in your area.

As you say the McCann case serves to remind the public of Andrew, Ben and other missing children.

The other factor is often neurodivergency. Autistic & ADHD kids can be VERY hard to keep in your sight - it's like trying to herd cats. Often when you delve inti the cases, these kids often either have a diagnosis or ate in the process of getting one.

And those kids, the autistic ones that go missing? They get a mere FRACTION of the key that's still being spent to find Maddie McCann, even when they're fresh cases that would benefit enormously from the same level of funding as Maddie's case has received...

Ditto for kids that ain't white that go missing.

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Simple-Pea-8852@reddit

They get a fraction of it because frankly, in almost all cases they only need a fraction of it. Madeleine McCann's case has had a significant amount of funding for several reasons, relatively little of which is because she's white.

The truth is that most kids that go missing have run away or wandered off. They're in danger, obviously, but there's not definitely a very violent and dangerous criminal involved who's got an MO of snatching small children from their rooms. Most children who are abducted are abducted by family members. Stranger abduction is vanishingly rare. In Maddie's case the only logical explanation was that she'd been abducted by a stranger. The response to that is always going to be bigger than a child running away or an estranged dad picking their kid up from school when they don't have custody. When a child's run away or wandered off, parents usually have an idea of where they will have gone so the search area can be smaller. When a kid is taken by a family member the police know who's taken them so of course the amount spent can be lower.

The vast majority of children who go missing show up or are found and we're not still looking at them 18 years later. If a case is open for 18 years, more money is going to be spent on it.

Also this investigation has ended up spanning, now, at least 3 countries. That's not normal. It means all 3 countries are spending money on the case. Also the Portuguese response initially was bad, evidence was lost (hence it's still open 18 years later) and the UK police had to re do much of the initial investigation. None of that is normal either.

The parents being white and middle class has certainly helped them leverage press support. But the truth is, cases stay open until they're closed or until there are no new leads or evidence. We find the kids or we run out of things to investigate.

Maddie's case has restarted because new evidence has shown up. That would be the same for anyone. Ultimately the German police are motivated by keeping a known predator behind bars.

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ONLY_SAYS_ONLY@reddit

I don’t know what the answer should be. However, stranger abduction is incredibly rare, with about 50 cases per year of successful abductions. Should each child have the full force of the state and public behind their safe return? Absolutely. But it’s such a black swan event that i don’t think it’s too useful trying to generalise.

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PlasticNo1274@reddit

her parents were negligent, therefore they shouldn't bother looking for her?

I agree that a disproportionate amount of resources has gone to her case, but the circumstances of her disappearance are irrelevant to if the authorities should try to find her.

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SplurgyA@reddit

The parents being shit has no bearing on that poor little girl or whether or not she deserves an investigation.

thecityofgold88@reddit

Public money should also be allowed to investigate the McCann's for neglect and any possible further involvement.

As I understood it, there is an explicit agreement between the McCann's and UK police that the money will not be used to investigate them.

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aezy01@reddit

They were investigated for neglect both in Portugal and in the UK. It is a high bar to prove and their actions do not meet the threshold.

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Kirstemis@reddit

We don't know that she was abducted or murdered.

Back when this happened I worked in a Holiday park bar and it was common place that this kind of thing went on, it wasn't even hidden. The stories on this thread back that.

I am willing to bet that there were several families doing this at the same resort.

Even now there is no hard law, merely guidelines. It is shit.

I started leaving my kids when they were about 10, but not for very long.

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Pale_Slide_3463@reddit

Just because they were created doesn’t mean they were used widely or popular. We didn’t even have proper iPhones till 2008+ and still got charged crazy prices.

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Scottish_squirrel@reddit

Even in the 80s & 99s my parents weren't leaving us to go out with friends. Especially not at 2 & 3 years old!

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Pale_Slide_3463@reddit

Oblivious to how stupid people are it seems

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dl064@reddit

I've been told this a lot too.

This was definitely on the extreme end, but I've heard from a lot of older folk that this plus a few things like Milly Dowler really made a lot of the generation above really buck up their practices.

My mum was saying that in the 90s folk would leave their kids asleep when they went to the shop etc.

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Pale_Slide_3463@reddit

Yeah there’s a lot of uppity parents who don’t realise this actually did happen more than they believe. Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Child abuse is real 😩

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dl064@reddit

If it wasn't very outdated in 2007 (which it was), you certainly wouldn't be caught dead admitting it after this event.

I know of someone who did similar.

It was not normal, nor did people in any large number leave babies and toddlers alone. Any working class parent who left their 5/6 year old alone would have been done for neglect. You're the one claiming that it was normal for babies and toddlers to be left alone with absolutely no evidence and multiple disputing it.

Was it normal for people to leave their 9 or 10 year old at home while they popped to the shops in the 90s and early 2000s? For some yes, but not their babies and toddlers. That it why there was such a huge outcry, not a case of it being the norm for the population to lie en masse.

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Royal-Jackfruit-2556@reddit

This was early 2000s, not the 80s. The only reason they weren't done for neglect is becuase of their social status.

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Yes, TBH I don't remember his case ever being in the news when I was growing up. He would have been about my age, so I would have been too little to be aware when he first went missing and then I think I only really ever heard of him on the internet when people compare his case to the McCann case.

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aezy01@reddit

I was 12 and the name rings a bell. But I wouldn’t have been able to name him.

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noodledoodledoo@reddit

I was 11 in 2007 (which is when Madeleine McCann actually disappeared, not the 80s!) and my brother was 4. When not on holiday I would also be home alone for 20 minutes after school before one of them got home from work, especially once I started secondary.

But my parents would never have left us alone at night while they went out on holiday. Did they give us too much freedom around the pool (!!) and holiday resort by today's standards? Yeah, probably. During the day we could do loads of things without any supervision as long as we were together and checked in with them regularly. Holiday resorts often had like big inflatables for kids to play on for a couple of euros while parents sat nearby and drank and hardly paid attention, so that's what we did. But we were never left alone in hotels in foreign countries for an indefinite amount of time. It absolutely wasn't normal in 2007 to leave your toddlers alone at night!

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Humble_Flow_3665@reddit

You can judge it by 2007's standards. There is no reason to leave multiple small children, out of sight, unsupervised, in a strange country other than neglect and plain selfishness.

Those children should have been at their parents' knees in buggies, as every other family with small children oes to ensure their safety while still enjoying a family holiday.

And I highly recommend having a look at the actual distance between where they sat for drinks and where the children slept.

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raddishred@reddit

That does not compare. There is a massive difference between a nine year old and a three and a two year old.

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srm79@reddit

You validate my point, because neither is comparing 2025 to 2007

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Loudmouthedcrackpot@reddit

It doesn’t validate your point at all.

The developmental difference between a nine year old and a three year old is there regardless of what year the calendar says.

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Loudlass81@reddit

Nobody that was a decent parent did it then either. Even as a 22-yo Mum of 3 kids at the time, the younger 2 the same age as Maddie & her younger siblings, I knew better than to neglect my kids like that. It was only a 'watershed moment' for parents that hadn't previously bothered to CONSIDER how dangerous & neglectful their actions were. For the rest of us, we were utterly HORRIFIED at the very idea of leaving 3 TODDLERS alone, in an unlocked room, probably sedated with children's benadryl or phenergan (both used by neglectful parents at the time to drug up their kids as young as 6 months old), in a foreign country, with no direct line of sight, to basically go for a meal & go on the lash.

Growing up my family home had a large garden with a patio at the boundary on one side. I'm absolutely certain my parents would have had dinner on the patio in summer when I was in bed as a baby and they were probably actually further away than Kate and Gerry McCann would have been on the night Maddie disappeared.

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cousinrayray@reddit

No one would do what Kate and Gerry McCann did now because of what happened to Maddie.

I can't believe how off-base this comment is with up votes.

It absolutely was not normal for parents to leave under 10 year olds at home for any period of time.

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SunUsual550@reddit

I'm not necessarily saying it was 'normal'. Even in 2003 many parents would have been mortified by the idea of going for tapas and leaving a three year old in bed unsupervised, but stuff like that did happen and parental attitudes were much more relaxed.

I remember popping in to see my brother on my way home from work around the time Maddie McCann disappeared to find he'd gone out for a meal with his wife. They'd left a 'friend' in charge who I'd never met in my life.

When she answered the door she was glassy eyed and slurring her speech, I decided to stay as I didn't feel she was in a suitable condition to look after my niece. There's no way my brother didn't know that woman had a drink problem.

From my own childhood my parents were much less risk adverse than is considered normal today. My parents once left me in a department store in Siena, they would regularly leave me with babysitters they didn't actually know. I recall once on holiday being allowed to stay in the swimming pool with a random man because my mum and dad wanted to go back to the apartment.

People still leave their kids in the car, people still nip to the shop and leave their kids in the house

The difference is that these same parents who just nip to the shop don't leave their kids in an unlocked apartment, a long distance from where they then go and get pissed up with their mates

The criticism is completely justified and will remain for as long as they live. They should have been prosecuted at a minimum for child neglect

That should be the focus now, not spending more tax payers money to go with the already spent 13 million of taxpayers money looking for a ghost

Where was the focus on all the other children that have gone missing?

What makes this case any different?

Why have the parents not been held to account for the neglect of their children?

Playing out for hours is again very common, my kids do it, but they are not 3 years old. They also have phones and stay in groups

They are not 3 years old, not left alone a long distance from where I am getting pissed up with my mates not giving a literally shit about their safety

Thats why people have huge distain for the parents

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running_on_fumes25@reddit

I was born in the early 80s. My parents never left us home alone when we were toddlers.

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-adult-swim-@reddit

If you grew up in the 90s, you had james buldger hot in the mind.

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MickeyMatters81@reddit

I don't know, I'm 44 and I feel as though things had already changed a few years before. There was a change in the 90s, though it took a while to fully take hold, by the time Maddie disappeared very few educated middle class professionals would leave their 3yo home alone.

Sorry for the classism, but the social expectations for wealthier parents changed faster. At the time everyone was saying they would have thought the parents were poor/working class and were shocked that a doctor would be so negligent.

Mid-90s I could see people doing this, but by 2000 the worm had turned on free range kids.

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GoneWitDa@reddit

I’m not a parent, granted, but like.. I am correct in assuming their behaviour was utterly negligent right? This case was from when I was a kid to me I haven’t really paid much attention to it as an adult, but at face value I’m more concerned about leaving my mum’s dogs unattended than they were about their own children.

In a sense kids that age could really hurt themselves even if I didn’t assume anyone was gonna bloody kidnap them.

Embarrassed_Put_7892@reddit

Yeah same. It was normal when I grew up. I was the oldest of five and we were often left in the car for me to supervise everyone else whilst my parents went into different shops. We were sent to Stay with my grandparents abroad a lot and we’d go to barbecues with loads of different families and we’d just be left to our own devices whilst the adults had a few drinks and we’d end up falling sleep on someone’s lap. A lot of my friends had similar experiences. It wasn’t uncommon and it wasn’t really looked down upon until all of a sudden this happens and it’s the worst thing any parent ever did. I was shocked to find out that parents these days don’t even leave their kids at a birthday party… it’s a different mindset for sure.

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moubliepas@reddit

You haven't described any time when you were locked in a room.

My siblings and I were pretty free range, my elder brothers looked after me a lot, when they were old enough (ie, not 3 years old).

We waited in the car a fair amount. In broad daylight, for very short periods, when it would have been really impractical otherwise (ie, to quickly pop into the shop on the way to an important appointment, not for my parents to go and have dinner).

We let ourselves in to the house after school and entertained ourselves. Because our parents worked, and because we were old enough to do so (ie, not 3 years old) and because we knew both of the neighbours if there was a problem and we also had my parents' workplace phone numbers written beside the house phone.

I personally think kids are too coddled nowadays and don't have enough opportunities to get bored and experience the tedium of having literally nothing to do because the world doesn't revolve around you. I think kids should spend more time on their own, should be trusted how more, should have more free, unguided time, and parents should be a little less risk-averse.

But there is an insanely large distance between that and 'I think it was ever acceptable to lock a three year old in a hotel room in a foreign country while the adults go to have dinner and drinks'. That is not acceptable, in my opinion, and it's not forgiveable, and it's not the sort of 'yeah yeah it's not great but parents can't be perfect' that sounds like bad parenting but may also just be bad humaning or bad organisation or whatever.

I do actually know at least 2 people who have left their toddler unattended at some point. One was an emergency (other child possibly hit by a car), one was a desperate trip to the shop to get alcohol that became their 'never drinking again' epiphany.

The startling thing about this case is the complete lack of emergency or epiphany. The parents - and media - still seem convinced that it's perfectly fine to lock one's toddlers in a hotel room abroad while going for dinner and drinks, despite having more than enough money to pay for babysitting (if for some reason, you really can't stand to have your children with you). That's the galling thing.

Everybody makes mistakes and misjudges things, and of course people have different judgement ls and risk assessments, but if my parents had left us in the car for just a minute while they popped into the shop and anything had happened, I'm pretty sure they would be more 'How could I have been so reckless, I didn't think!' and less 'I've written 2 books about my innocence and will use the millions of pounds as I please'.

That's weird.

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400_lux@reddit

Not even locked in. The patio door was left unlocked.

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IcedWarlock@reddit

I agree here. I have on occasion left my (10 year old) in the house when I've popped over my mam's for a cuppa. Literally over the road, because he didn't want to come and stop playing Minecraft.

He loves being on his own occasionally now as an older teen.

My youngest hates being alone and I never left him unattended (oldest able to babysit for a few hours by then. Again over my mother's house over the road) I also moved so never popped over anymore so the youngest missed the independence there.

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sambonjela@reddit

exactly this

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sambonjela@reddit

it was uncommon to leave children at that age. how old were you? I would think at least 7. You would know who to call and how to call for help if needed. Leaving kids who are too young to have any idea how to fend for themselves has always been despicable, in every era.

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intrepidhornbeast@reddit

That's totally incorrect regarding the apartment. The apartment was outside complex.

To get to apartment you had to leave the complex reception and walk up a public road.

The apartment was then accessed from the public road via a gate which led to patio doors at the rear of the apartment. They were leaving the gate and the patio doors open every night so they could get in and out each night. Where they were dining had no view of the rear of the apartment.

Literally anyone could walk off the public street into their unlocked apartment, what they did was fucking insane.

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IcedWarlock@reddit

Literally anyone could walk off the public street into their unlocked apartment, what they did was fucking insane.

But the "kidnapper" took her from her bedroom window.

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TwoPintsYouPrick@reddit

~~could~~, did

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lipscratch@reddit

This factor makes such a difference

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CaptainJamie@reddit

It's not totally incorrect.

I agree with you.

I believe they were negligent, but I believe that that kind of negligence was relatively common at the time and they were not particularly far outside the window of acceptability.

They (rightly) attracted criticism for not making use of the resort's baby listening service, but nowadays you wouldn't consider "busy receptionist half listening to audio from the room" remotely sufficient.

It's slightly difficult to express how different things were in 2004. Mobiles were common but not ubiquitous, and you wouldn't use them on holiday anyway. Baby monitors didn't have video let alone temperature or breathing sensors.

There were a lot of people at the time defending the behaviour.

Loudlass81@reddit

Children's benadryl, or phenergan. I'm old, my kids are 14-27 now. No I never uses them to knock my kiss our. But I knew middle class 'yummy mummies' that absolutely did. In the end, I left that group because they kept urging me to drug my kids too...

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Individual_Bat_378@reddit

I'm a children's nurse and used to work in hospitals, I remember there was always a joke from the older nurses/doctors of just give them Calpol to knock them out. I don't know if that used to have more in it than just paracetamol? NHS always used the cheap non branded version so I haven't come across it haha.

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LuDdErS68@reddit

It might have been Calpol, but I seem to recall something else. My 'kids' are 18 and 21 now, so it was a long time ago!

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Loudlass81@reddit

Back then, it was well known that children's benadryl would make MOST kids sleepy, and many parents (not me, drugging kids to get them to sleep always seemed wildly neglectful to me, but I was a 16yo teen mum from a council estate, so I guess it just wasn't the done thing in my social circle) would 'dose their kids up' before going on a plane, or if they had bad colic, or if they had a dinner party planned.

Always blew my mind how the middle class Mum's I knew would happily drug their toddlers with benadryl for an easy life/quiet, undisturbed social life - but I knew full well that if anyone from my estate had done it, THEY'D lose their kids.

I always wondered WHO the McCanns know that keeps the public purse so open to them when other kids that DON'T meet the media gaze, especially Disabled kids, or kids that aren't white, get so much less spent on looking for them.

Sidenote: There are SOME kids that children's benadryl actually has the OPPOSITE effect on, often kids who have ADHD but are too young to be diagnosed, and it makes already hyper kids SUPERHYPER. As I discovered due to my youngest's life threatening allergies. In the end we had to swap to a different antihistamine...

Found her parents account

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sally_says@reddit

Sorry just to clarify, I'm not doubting it's true.

StandardBanger@reddit

So you’d know how far away the evening baby sitting service was from the McCanns apartment then & whether Madeline would have been at the same one as her younger siblings as there were 2 there at the time, one for the 2 & unders & a separate one for the older kids. & what time did the resort switch from the day reception location to the Main reception which was used for the 24/7 service.

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author_dreamweaver@reddit

Yep. If they didn't want to use the late night kids club that stayed open until midnight, which was based at the far end of the tapas restaurant just past the dancerfloor area, then they could have had a babysitter in their apartment until whatever time (to be fair, dependent on availability so perhaps that wasn't an option that particular night). Creche for babies generally are separate, yes, given the different ratio required for safety. Given it was over 20 years ago now, I could easily be misremembering details, I'll grant you.

Childcare options aside, the location of their apartment versus where the restaurant area was, would've discounted leaving small children in there by themselves. None of the apartments surrounding the main complex would have been suitable to do such a thing. I'm actually not in the "blame the parents" camp, the blame lies squarely with the perpetrator. They were naive and neglectful, but doing something lots of other parents have done.

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StandardBanger@reddit

Thank you, that’s cleared a few of my niggles about that part of it up. I knew it wasn’t a listening service, & iirc one of the parents said they didn’t want to have the kids at the evening sitting service because of having to bring them back & have them awake again & have to settle them down. Also that would have put a time limit on the evening activities as it seems they’d stay beyond midnight.

MW holidays weren’t cheap so I didn’t think they’d just have a listening service, any liability would land at their feet if anything went wrong with that & nannies & an evening crèche seemed more their level.

Considering the volume of people in the McCann party, I don’t think all the spaces would have been filled.

& I’m pretty sure the 21:15 sighting that was ruled out was another parent returning with their sleeping child from one of the evening crèches.

It was naive to the point of being absolutely idiotic, if it was their first holiday abroad then possibly they’d never experienced this kind of lackadaisical even lifestyle. In 2007 I had 3 young children & no way could I have left mine like that, at home or abroad, it was always bevvies & snacks on the balcony.

(Edit… it seemed to randomly post the reply in the whole thread & not directly to you so posted it again)

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author_dreamweaver@reddit

I worked looking after children abroad for a long time. Not with Mark Warner (only ever encountered them in Luz, and the staff very much did not mix with other holiday operators!) You'd be surprised at how often people left their kids unsupervised while they were getting pissed. The better ones stayed in the complexes at least, but it wasn't unheard of to spot mum and dad out on the town without their kids. If a child disclosed to me that they'd been left alone (a child small enough to be at kids club, so generally under 12), we'd report that to social work back in the UK.

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StandardBanger@reddit

It really does surprise me & I’m from the 70’s where everything seemingly was possible, though my folks wouldn’t have left my bro & I on our own & get tanked. We’d play gin rummy & sip holiday Fanta until bed time, that’s including them. Thank you for having decent morals & standards. It’s like people take on a ‘different zip’ code attitude & rules don’t apply on holiday & that boils my pee somewhat.

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LuDdErS68@reddit

The "childcare service" is very likely to be at best, someone walking around the resort, just listening at the relevant doors. It won't be individual babysitters, one per room, for the evening.

AIUI, a group of parents, including the McCanns, organised their own rota of one parent checking the rooms of the others every hour or so. In all likelihood, that is exactly the same as the resort's service.

author_dreamweaver@reddit

I can't speak for nowadays, but listening services were very much a thing for a long time available in hotels both in the UK and abroad.

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LuDdErS68@reddit

Why on earth do you think that the childcare service the resort provides is like this?

Observation while on holiday.

That wouldn't be legal lmfao.

It would lmfao.

Leaving the kids alone in a hotel room while staff go around listening through the door to see if they're crying or screaming is not a childcare service, it's just illegal. I've never even heard of anything remotely like that.

Ah, so you haven't heard of it, so it doesn't exist and would be illegal if it did.

Resorts often have "kids clubs" where kids can go during the day.

I have been on holiday with my two children. How many times have you been in holiday with your children.

happy_chairs@reddit

I'm suggesting, as I've seen others suggest too over the years, that if they weren't doctors the headlines and articles would have put more emphasis on how the parents decided to leave 3 young children alone in an unfamiliar place, while they chose to get drunk.

I wasn’t aware that babies were also left.

Makes the case even more worrying tbh.

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NoVermicelli3192@reddit

Pair of two year old twins. Madeleine must have been drugged otherwise she could have easily left the room to look for them.

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ZiggehZiggeh@reddit

All 3 were drugged weren't they? That was one of their defences "oh we knocked them out so knew they would be safe"

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The__Pope_@reddit

I don't think they've ever said that, it's just a theory people have

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ChinDick@reddit

Drugging your child so you can have a few bevvies.

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MoseSchrute70@reddit

I’m pretty sure he was being hyperbolic about how high alert he is when it comes to his child. He’s probably not carrying out sniff checks at the door.

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spaceshipcommander@reddit

I obviously take their fingerprints as they enter and check their hand bags as they leave to make sure they haven't stuffed my child in there and.

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MoseSchrute70@reddit

Well, that’s just bare minimum.

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ChinDick@reddit

Not OP, but those women can go fuck themselves.

They were supposed to take turns checking all the kids at fairly short intervals but somehow a check got missed or delayed and there was a much longer gap.

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Not-That_Girl@reddit

The documentary I saw said all the parents would get up the check their own kids, and they were called out on it because that was stupid that half the party was getting up and leaving in a constant round of checks. Either way, it's neglectful.

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IcedWarlock@reddit

I think one of the 7 just went to the front door of the apartment heard mild snoring and left it at that. She could have been gone by then.

The crime is viewed objectively. Any mitigating factors can be submitted to court by the defence, but the McCanns haven't even faced court for a judgment to be made.

They should be charged, regardless of their "suffering", suffering which is, presumably, nothing compared to that of their children.

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Shifty377@reddit

That's just wrong. Sentences are mitigated for factors like that, and crime isn't just 'viewed objectively'. It has to be in the public interest for the CPS to even decide to prosecute in the first place. There are lots of other factors that go into the decision.

Why would it be in the public interest for these two to face prison sentences? The justice system isn't based on revenge. So what, deterrence? Rehabilitation?

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forfar4@reddit

Equity.

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LemmysCodPiece@reddit

Under UK law leaving a child alone isn't illegal.

Many years ago my eldest was selected to go to a special after school event in another town, so was her mate. The school couldn't provide transport and her mate's parent didn't drive, so I offered to take him as well. When I dropped him off it became apparent no one was home and he had obviously been primed to lie about this.

I expressed my concerns to the school, the headmaster was as concerned as well. He reported his concerns to the local authority and it came back that it wasn't actually illegal. TBH I was shocked. Apparently it is down to the parents to decide if it is safe to leave them or not.

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slowlyallatonce@reddit

At least up to maybe 5-7 years ago, there were hotels with a childcare service where someone just checks in on your room every hour or so. If they hear crying then they call you. So, the parent groups were essentially doing that.

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YorkieLon@reddit

This is because of the double jeopardy law in Portugal.

The Portuguese police believed the parents were involved somehow, the lead detector believed they murdered her. So they didn't want to charge on neglect as they wouldn't be able to charge on murder further down the line. They wanted to collect all the evidence and then charge for the more serious crime.

Not even a dad myself but routinely babysit my niece and the idea of going asleep or doing anything personal to myself before she's asleep was always something I thought was wrong.

Setting-Remote@reddit

I'm Reddit ancient, and grew up with parents who would be considered negligent by today's standards. I can honestly say that they would never have left me alone at that age, in an adjacent building, while they ate and drank with their friends at a restaurant. It just wouldn't have happened. Kids wake up disoriented at home, never mind in an unfamiliar place.

Your point about children of that age accidentally hurting themselves being more of a concern than abduction is exactly the point. If her parents had been working class on a package holiday to Spain, there almost certainly would have been a different outcome.

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iansta1@reddit

This, Mid 70’s child and while I definitely seem to have had more freedom than children of the 90’s and early 2000’s my parents and none of my friend’s parents growing up would do this. Mine don’t drink so going out wasn’t their thing and I know are horrified at what the parents did leaving children than young alone. I know a lot of friends whose parents did like to go for drinks with people they met on holiday and when you asked what they did the following happened, you took the children with you to a child friendly bar or restaurant or you sat outside the room. Plenty of stories from friends seeing their parents get drunk some to the point of falling over which I never experienced growing up but you stayed with the children and the younger the children the what would happen is the drinking would start earlier in the afternoon and parents left a little after the kids bedtime so they get excited to stay up late and the parents get a bit more time enjoying themselves score going back to parent mode for the night. Disappearing to a restaurant down the road out of site of the apartment didn’t happen until you where 11 or 12 and then there where rules you had to abide by until about 14-15 when most bets where off. Just a terrible thing to happen to them and the family but it has always seemed odd how little push back their behaviour had

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GenXer76@reddit

Late 70’s, my parents would go to hang out with the neighbors and brought me and my brother with them. We would go to sleep with the neighbor kids and then be carried home.

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iansta1@reddit

That has also happened with me just so they knew where we were. I thought that was just how parents behaved, clearly not in the McCann case

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CraftyCat65@reddit

Me too.

I'm early GenX (born 1965) and my parents were typical for that era, in that we were pretty much free range latchkey kids.

My siblings and I often marvel that we made it through alive, considering some of the shit we got up to while unsupervised.

However - not when we were literal toddlers!!

Not even my shitty, negligent, selfish, self indulgent, wooden spoon wielding parents of the 60s/70s would have left a 3 year old and 2 year old twins alone while they went out to dinner.

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billyboyf30@reddit

Shifty377@reddit

literally anything else could have happened in that scenario

I'm absolutely not condoning their decision making, but the kids were in bed asleep. If they were able to get out of their beds and 'choke on a piece of food they found lying out', or 'fallen and hit their head' they could have equally done that when the parents were sleeping.

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IrishShee@reddit

I don’t know if you’re a parent or not but when my kids wake up, I wake up. So no it’s not really possible for them to get up out of bed and open the front door to get to the swimming pool without me waking up and stopping them.

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Shifty377@reddit

I didn't say it was possible to open the front door and get out to the swimming pool. But it's possible for a kid to get out of bed when you're asleep.

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Important-Glass-3947@reddit

I don't know about that. It's possible, but generally when small children wake up, they yell for you. And then if you don't come quickly enough, they go looking for you. Noisily.

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Papi__Stalin@reddit

They were literally metres away, literally just across the swimming pool.

And the adults of the group took turns to check the kids every 15 minutes.

You may still consider this negligence but think your description is exaggerating it slightly.

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360Saturn@reddit

And the adults of the group took turns to check the kids every 15 minutes.

I sincerely doubt they kept to this schedule after a few glasses of wine were had, in a time before people carried devices that could set a regular alarm reminder. It would take looking at your watch every ten minutes like clockwork.

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Papi__Stalin@reddit

That’s just baseless speculation now.

I legit had someone say to me '2007 was a different time the tapas bar isn't that far away' nah....it's far away now it was far away then. It was neglect to leave three young children alone for periods of time with no supervision in an apartment when you are out eating. Anything could have happened to those children (two of whom were babies) and the worst thing ended up happening.

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Alive_Ice7937@reddit

It's pretty shocking when you see that aerial picture that shows the distance between the restaurant and the apartment.

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dl064@reddit

I've been to it, through a twist of fate.

I don't know about an aerial shot, but i's literally metres away, effectively. It's nothing.

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TheLoveKraken@reddit

…it’s nearly 200 feet away on the opposite side of a swimming pool, it’s hardly next door.

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dl064@reddit

It literally is next door//virtually within the resort.

What amazed me was how much smaller everything was, full stop - the town itself is absolutely tiny.

The beach is similarly absolutely nothing from the hotel. Way less than you'd expect from the news etc.

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Alive_Ice7937@reddit

"Metres"

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upadownpipe@reddit

It would have coat them peanuts for a babysitter. At the time the going rate there was about €20. Infuriating they decided to try and save €60.

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Papi__Stalin@reddit

The babysitting service was checking in on the room every 15 minutes to check on the kids and tell the parents if they were asleep yet.

The parents and the parent’s friends basically did the exact same thing. One of them would go and check on all of their kids every 15 minutes.

Had they paid for the service the outcome would likely have been exactly the same.

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upadownpipe@reddit

There were sit in options too

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MrsValentine@reddit

I would never do that with my own kids, not least because it’s completely socially unacceptable now, but also I feel it’s worth pointing out that a child murderer stealing into a bedroom to snatch a 3 year old is an extremely rare thing to happen and that they couldn’t have anticipated it in any way, nor does choosing to use a hotel babysitting style method of watching the kids mean that are they personally morally responsible for the depraved actions of a child murderer. Wasn’t there that little American girl (who wasn’t murdered but managed to return to her family many years later) who was snatched by a paedophile from her bedroom at home whilst her parents were asleep in another room and her sister actually asleep in the same bedroom?

I think ultimately that normal people just cannot wrap their heads around how audacious and evil someone who could do that is. If he was watching the family and waiting for his opportunity, would they have stood a chance even if they had done everything “right”? Personally I’m happy for money to be spent keeping the person who did this OFF the streets. I don’t care how long ago their crimes were and I don’t care how much better people take care of their children now, keeping someone like that far far away from normal people is one of the better uses of taxpayer money in my book.

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dmmeurpotatoes@reddit

I feel it’s worth pointing out that a child murderer stealing into a bedroom to snatch a 3 year old is an extremely rare thing to happen and that they couldn’t have anticipated it in any way

I have an 18mo - about the same age as Madeline's twin siblings.

I would not be worried about kidnapping. I would be worried about him being sad. I would be worried about him breaking something. I would be worried about him hurting himself. I would be worried about a house fire and him not being able to get out.

That their parents weren't worried is the criminal neglect.

I’m more concerned about leaving my mum’s dogs unattended than they were about their own children.

I remember a statement I read years ago: "I wouldn't leave my purse on the bed in an unlocked hotel room." And everything in my purse is replaceable trash.

Can you imagine doing that? Leave your purse in your unlocked room and then just run back every 15 minutes to peep at it? Wouldn't that be fun and relaxing! Imagine doing that when the hotel had a safe that you could easily arrange for a night? Imagine doing that when you could take shifts, look after the kids, I mean, "wallets" for a night and then the next night, a different parent takes a watch.

No, just leave the wallets there on the bed and leave the door unlocked so you and everyone else in the building can stroll in, any time. Doesn't that sound like a good time?

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rhnireland@reddit

My daughter is 9 almost 10 and I still refuse to leave her on her own in a hotel room. They had the ability to access childcare that night but instead chose to leave 3 children under 3 in a room on their own. For me that would just be impossible.

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Jolly_Cantalouper@reddit

I live in a three storey house and mine & son’s bedrooms are on the top floor. I don’t even like being on the ground floor once he’s in bed in case he needs me and I’m too far away to get to him quickly!! And that’s with a video baby monitor still set up. When he’s in bed I go into my bedroom next door to watch TV. And he’s 4 and starting school this September!

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Appropriate-Falcon75@reddit

I would argue that your view is significantly influenced by the events that night. As I understand it, leaving sleeping children in a room on their own while you had dinner a (visible) short distance away and went back frequently to check wasn't a particularly abnormal thing to do.

Children used to be left alone a lot more than they are now- this case (and other cases like it) is part of the reason why our view has changed.

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sambonjela@reddit

it's so negligent as to be unbelievable, no parent should feel ok about leaving 3 kids under 4 on their own, they were not able to monitor them, and even half-hourly check is inadequate. I don't believe it happened the way they said it did.

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At the time I remember a work colleague who had a 13/14 year old son saying that they'd still check on him every hour or so if they'd gone for a few drinks after he'd gone to bed.

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BoopingBurrito@reddit

I am correct in assuming their behaviour was utterly negligent right?

Deeply, yes. The level of negligence from the parent is a major root cause of the conspiracy theories about them being behind her disappearance - the idea of "if they admitted to something this bad, what are they actually hiding" or "if they don't realise how bad what they're admitting to is, what fucked up shit are they comparing it to".

For clarity (and because I've heard of them going after people who suggested it with legal action), I don't believe they were behind it, I'm just commenting on what a root cause of the conspiracy theories was.

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theRicicle@reddit

Exactly this. All this knee jerk reaction to them being negligent and committing child abandonment doesn’t make them guilty of every crime. I also think the go to automatic accusation of “the butler did it”, “it’s always the wife/husband”, “its the parents” lead the lazy police chief to try and close the case asap to stop the bad publicity for tourism in the area. That and the JonBonet Ramsey case a couple years earlier- where the parents were clearly involved and never prosecuted made people go full on conspiracy nuts

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Independent_Pace_579@reddit

I too, as personal opinion, believe they were negligent, in that they obviously didn't take appropriate action to supervise the kids coming bavk to find one missing, but also, if you look at photos of the complex, I can totally believe a parent mistakenly making the plausible mental stretch between thinking the kid is 'just upstairs' when at home, vs 'they're just upstairs' when in a hotel.

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GoneWitDa@reddit

Nah I don’t think they’re implicated like that it’s just absolutely wild to read about now.

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dl064@reddit

They were like 10 metres away. I've been to the resort.

Back when these two went missing, children going randomly missing weren't unheard of. CCTV wasn't as good, and stranger danger was a massive thing, but not huge like now. It's heartbreaking!!

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New-Strategy-1673@reddit

I'd like to say that it was 20 years ago and we mustn't judge them by modern standards... but that shit didn't even fly back then. You'd have to go back to at least the 70s and honestly I don't think it was ever acceptable to just abandon a 3 year old and piss off to the pub

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Lazy_Age_9466@reddit

The Ben Needham case has been solved. If you are going to quote other cases, at least have the grace to be up to date with them.

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littlebluelily@reddit

And this may sound like some “random anecdotal” evidence. But my parents stayed at that EXACT place and said “yes it’s a 2 minute walk….IF you had the ability to just blast through all the hedges to get to the rooms. But you couldn’t. So it was more like a 10 minute walk.” They went on holiday there when they just had my brother and took him out in the pram every night. There was also a cresh/room check service available. They were insanely negligent. My mum worked closely with social services and said if this was a low income family they’d have lost their remaining kids immediately but got away with this because of who they were.

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highlandviper@reddit

Yeah. We’ve got two kids. One of us will ALWAYS stay with the children of the other wants to go out.

But their punishment shouldn’t be “and as a result your kid goes missing”

Yeah they weren’t perfect but you’re being a bit of a glass house here. Are you perfect?

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The_Sorrower@reddit

Agreed, they should have been watching her. I remember at the time wondering if they were complicit or just negligent...

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real_Mini_geek@reddit

So having shitty parents was her fault?

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ZookeepergameOk2759@reddit

He was unsupervised as well wasn’t he? What’s the difference?

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red_black_red0@reddit

so many other children who have been lost

4 or 5 kids in this country in your living memory isn’t the same thing as “every day”

Look, I’m all for treating cases of legit abduction with the right amount of urgency, but inflating the numbers of missing children is a scaremongering tactic pushed by conspiracy weirdos

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red_black_red0@reddit

As in factual?

Almost all missing kids are found in less than a week.

Almost all "reported missing" kids are not in fact missing, but have run away (for a very short period of time to a friend or relatives).

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Northwindlowlander@reddit

I got to the point of thinking "this is bananas" about a week or two in when I saw a "missing persons" poster with about 20 people replaced by a poster with nothing but Madelaine Mccann. In Glasgow, a city that had no connection to the case. I mean, obviously they had to crank up that visibility, she'd only been on the front of every newspaper and on every tv news show in the country.

I pity the child for what her parents did. My "mother" left me at 6 years old to go out with her friends.

One time I woke up and she wasn't in bed, so I left the house and went over the road to her friends house to see if she was there. She wasn't.

I was lucky I went there and not wondered the streets. The police was involved, as we're my Nan and Dad, but I was never assisted by the system, which lead to all sorts of trauma, even being taken by my mother to London from Manchester. Never saw my Dad or family until I was 14.

I was always beaten, used as a weapon against my family, attacked with a pool queue when I came out, told I wasn't normal. I'm 40 now but that trauma has infested my adult life to the point where I'm crippled with cptsd

What help did I get, nothing. As an adult, the help still really isn't there. You just talk to man up and deal with it, even when a slightest little pressure makes you crack and crumble.

No child should ever go through things like this, the system is fucked and actually works against children IMO.

Not enough is done in the media to help children, the government is still tying themselves in knots over two child benefit cap, when every child should not go hungry no matter the circumstances. It's not their fault that they're born into that situation.

A genuine believe that there is a privilege even with white people, the more money I have, the better qualifications you have, the more that the media and government will actually look into things properly, does spend as much money as possible. But nothing for peppe like us, born into poverty.

I think it's only ever been one exception, that's all because of what happened to Madeline, and that was when that Matthew's family pretended to hide one of their kids. The media lapped it up only because of the timing.

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PinkSharkFin@reddit

OP implies there are kids missing left and right and Madelaine is somehow prioritised over them. I doubt. I'd love to see some evidence that's the case. It seems pure speculation by OP. And don't send me statistics about teens running away from home and being alive and well, away from parents. Nor do I care about kids taken by one parent against another's will. I'm talking about cases like Madelaine. It doubt tragic cases like that happen often, yet OP is making out like it happens every day.

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Dimac99@reddit

It's not about finding Maddie, not really. It's ultimately about finding the man who abducted and killed her. There's a suspect, but without her body and the forensic evidence they don't have enough to prosecute him, and it's impossible to be absolutely certain he'll never hurt another woman or child again unless he's in jail.

I would also point out that her parents have nothing to do with the investigation or the money spent on it. Obviously they want to know what happened and lay their little girl to rest, but they get absolutely no say in the actions taken by the investigative team, in any country. The current investigation is being led by German detectives (in Portugal) who do not want to let this man out of jail where he's currently serving a sentence for raping an elderly woman in that same area of Portugal.

I'm personally all for spending money on catching people who rape old ladies and (allegedly) murder children, probably after sexually molesting them. They're very much the sort of people I think we can all agree need to be kept off the streets.

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Alternative_Fox4421@reddit

It's all about narrative.

That year, the McCann's left their kid unattended and went out for dinner. They've been treated as if the babe was stolen from their arms at gunpoint and the media have focused solely on a xenophobic criticism of Portuguese police with the McCanns money and status controlling he narrative.

The same year a twelve year old, with her mother, at a beach party was abducted and raped. She wasn't a doctor with money like the McCann's, she lived in a council house and was arrested and questioned by Police and Child Services on return to the UK.

Personally, I get sick of hearing about it every 12 months. It's regular as clockwork and the media routinely fails to remember that she was left unattended while her parents went out for dinner.

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p1p68@reddit

Badly chosen words in the question but I get what you're asking. Every child deserves thorough investigation. I can't imagine how upsetting her coverage must be for all other missing children in the uk. Did they get alot of attention being middle class white doctors of a very sweet pretty child yes absolutely. If the same circumstances had happened but it had been a single mother or non Caucasian there's no way in hell they'd of been given so much time sympathy and understanding.

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Picasso131@reddit

No she doesn’t…

But blonde hair and blue eyes help , also having parents who are doctors and seem to well connected can’t hurt …very photogenic.

Remind me … how many children go missing everyday ..?

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red_black_red0@reddit

how many children go missing everyday

Almost none.

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txteva@reddit

More than you'd think...

Data for 2018/2019 - 75,918 individual children were recorded missing by UK police. The majority of resolved incidents (52%) end within eight hours, with 80% being resolved within 24 hours.

The UK Missing Persons Unit records that 1,514 children are missing for longer than 28 days but half of those are from previous years. So lets say 757 children go long term missing every year.

surreyade@reddit

Plenty of teens go missing, but (thankfully) usually turn up after a few hours. You only have to spend a bit of time on local FB pages to see appeals.

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aezy01@reddit

Loads go missing, most are found. Those who are genuinely abducted by strangers is probably 1 a year or less. It’s exceedingly rare, which is why when it does happen, it’s disturbing and makes the news.

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JustaRamdomChap@reddit

2?

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Bdublolz1996@reddit

My personal conspiracy theory is that if her parents had been working class they'd have been arrested for neglect and had their other children taken into care. Only because they were doctors and seemed to have connections they got off lightly.

I hope the girl is found safe.

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JonnotheMackem@reddit

You’re a s everyone else’s. It’s an often repeated trope about Madeline McCann

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anonymously_quiettt@reddit

She’s dead. Nothing will bring her back.

They tried to find her, they didn’t.

During the hunt the mother's parents accused the boyfriend of beating the children, so that's not quite true.

I also recall quite an aggressive interview on the Today program with the mother where whoever it was presenting at the time was very judgemental about the mother having lots of children from different men.

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Desperate_Yoghurt941@reddit

I find your idea that the murders of 'neglected' children shouldn't be investigated really sinister. Charlene Downes was being abused, so by your logic they should have 'redirected money' from that investigation too? Crimes against children aren't investigated as a reward for good parenting. Children are people.

In any case, those other cases aren't closed anyway. They arrested (and then released) someone in the Downes case in 2017, and they were appealing for leads on Gosden really recently. The media doesn't actually control that. The police can only work on leads, and they seem to believe this Brueckner one is worth looking into.

But if he has committed many crimes why not focus on the ones that are easier to solve to keep him in prison as long as possible? The Madeleine McCann case has been extremely difficult to figure out. Look how many years several police forces from different countries have been investigating it.

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Henegunt@reddit

To be fair there's reason to think they know more stuff to suggest he is potentially involved, they've found usb sticks and other stuff relating to him which they haven't shared publicly.

(Not saying they know more in a conspiracy way, just that they have evidence that isn't publicly known)

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Jam-Jam-Ba-Lam@reddit

It's crazy we have this mentality in many cases yet the public need to share the world with this scum and/or dangerous people. In the UK Valdo Calocane had a mental health assessment that suggested he was going to kill someone. Went on a rampage despite having an arrest Warren out for him. There will be countless sex offenders all over too that the people we put in place with the expertise would tell us will reoffend. And yet our children need to walk the same streets. It's really heart breaking.

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Hannah591@reddit

I think the time and money should be spent on other children.

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Potential-Question-4@reddit

The important thing is to solve the crime and keep the abductor off the streets to protect any potential future victims.

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AnotherYadaYada@reddit

As another said…

No.

Sad to say, but black child, poor family. Ain’t getting this kind of attention or coverage.

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dollimint@reddit

I used to work in a corner store when Maddy when missing and used to read the newspapers when it was slow. there was a bunch of kids went missing the week she did, including a three year old boy who was literally ripped out of his mother's arms.

Nooooo attention.

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idiBanashapan@reddit

Whilst your comparison may hold some merit, should we not be saying that all children regardless of social status, background, race or whatever get as much as has been thrown at this case, rather than going by the lowest denominator (being nothing)? In which case, I would say yes, all missing children deserve as much as can be given.

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Mavericks7@reddit

Do all kids deserve it? Yes,

Will all kids get the same treatment? No.

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saxbophone@reddit

C'mon now you're being clearly obtuse, whilst that's a nice idea you and I both know full well there's not enough resources to grant Madeline-Mcann-level funding to all missing childrens cases, and IMO this point just serves to deflect from the criticism of disproportionate funding that her case has received.

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idiBanashapan@reddit

No there’s not. I said each should get the same, not that all should get McCann levels of funding.

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Perfectly2Imperfect@reddit

But isn’t the point that it’s being given at the expense of someone/thing else? There isn’t an endless pot of money so the time and money spent on this case is time and money which isn’t being spent on other open cases. It’s not as if every other crime in the UK has been solved.

Sad to say

Why is it sad to say? You admit yourself they don't deserve it, so they're getting just the amount of attention or coverage they deserve.

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RealMrsWillGraham@reddit

I agree.

I know that "Missing White Woman" was a term originated by the late American journalist Gwen Ifill (may she RIP), but I think it applies over here too.

Yet I think in the UK that class makes a difference, whatever the race or colour of the child.

Do you remember the case a few years back of white teenager Tia Sharp who went missing and was found murdered? The person who killed her was her grandmother's boyfriend. Her body was concealed in the loft of their home and was only found after a fourth visit by police.

One family member said something along the lines of that if they had been a posh family the investigation would have moved faster and she might have been found.

& I’m pretty sure the 21:15 sighting that was ruled out was another parent returning with their sleeping child from one of the evening crèches.

It was naive to the point of being absolutely idiotic, if it was their first holiday abroad then possibly they’d never experienced this kind of lackadaisical even lifestyle. In 2007 I had 3 young children & no way could I have left mine like that, at home or abroad, it was always bevvies & snacks on the balcony.

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Prefect_99@reddit

And the two doctors who left her? With the cash to afford a nanny.

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Mavericks7@reddit

The reality is she fits the media narrative of a white, from a middle class family, girl.

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BeachtimeRhino@reddit

All children are priceless but MM has had a disproportionate amount spent on her.

Her parents were selfish and entitled to leave sleeping children alone. They could have taken turns to go out for dinner and drinks. They shouldn’t be getting a penny spent to help them.

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Quiet-Deadly991@reddit

The parents know what they have done to that little girl and they continue to play it off like someone else did it

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bedbuffaloes@reddit

Whether or not, the monster that probably killed her is about to get out of jail (for raping a 72yo woman) so I'm thinking they're doing what they can to get him back inside. Because he WILL keep offending.

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AllTheWhoresOvMalta@reddit

She was a cute, white child of middle class parents. So she was always going to sell papers in the UK.

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Stigweird85@reddit

No, hundreds of not thousands of kids have gone missing in circumstances where it wasn't down to parental involvement or negligence yet they don't get the millions thats getting put towards this.

Yes. 100%.

Because at this point it's not about Madelaine McCann, it's about all the future children (and adults) that could be saved if the abductor is caught.

Especially considering the person they're investigating is a convicted reoffender who's suspected of a whole raft of crimes. If it is him, he's shown that he will keep doing terrible things unless he's put away for life. Even if it's someone else, someone who kidnaps and does god knows what else to a kid is a potential threat to every kid they come across.

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Pristine-Coat8885@reddit

I for one will happily spend any amount of money to get that creepy German man put away

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PlanktonLopsided9473@reddit

Absolutely no she doesn’t. If she was the child of a poor family, she would just be another statistic.

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One_Economics3627@reddit

Probably unpopular opinion, but I used to commute into london with someone on the initial task force. He said that had the parents been working class, left their hotel room door open and not had a baby sitter - they l'd have been vilified in the press.

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WiccanPixxie@reddit

In a nutshell no. If her parents weren’t white doctors and “highly respected members of their community” they would have been hauled to the courts for child neglect and social services would have placed the other kids in foster care.

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Bloody_sock_puppet@reddit

I think they should keep it quiet. Most of the resources are spent in dealing with the public but searching one building every time they get a tip twice a decade is fine.

Otherwise there remains at least one method that a child can die and nobody know how. From a societal quality control point of view it's worth a bit of effort.

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BlackCatLuna@reddit

I think that one thing that makes Madelaine's case stand out is that she was abducted from a resort. In areas with large resorts tourism is a major part of the economy and security of the tourists can make or break it.

Every day without an answer risks casting suspicious eyes over the locals and risks jobs. On top of that, if one criminal gets away with something like this, it might attract copycats hoping for the same lack of conviction.

With those points in mind, it's not strange to imagine why Portugal is putting so much money into trying to solve the matter one way or another.

I agree with other commenters that the parents were negligent to leave sleeping children alone while they went to dinner, but a 3-year-old couldn't have gone far without help if the door was locked.

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RekallQuaid@reddit

The issue I have with it is that it seems to happen every single May/June every year without fail, just as the holidaying season begins, there’s suddenly more funding given and the parents go on holiday to do more campaigning.

The fact is, it’s horrendous and it’s not Maddie’s fault, but I don’t know why this family gets so much press, when they LEFT THEIR CHILDREN ALONE so they could get pissed.

Every child who’s gone missing deserves as much attention as Madeleine McCann gets!

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Dr_Poth@reddit

No because automod requires more words

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StillJustJones@reddit

Why is it ‘one over the other’… odd question.

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mrwillbobs@reddit

Because funding and police time is limited? Money and man-hours spent on this are not spent on other crimes?

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Peterleclark@reddit

How do you know that?

Media attention and police spend do not necessarily correlate.

It is not the fault of the police that the media took such particular interest in this case.

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OwnTransition1441@reddit

They absolutely do correlate & the resources their spending on an 18 year old case could be used to find current missing children who’s parents didn’t neglect them

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Peterleclark@reddit

Which ones? What cases? How much do you deem the police are allowed to spend to find out what happened to a child who in all likelihood was raped and murdered? Who decides which cases and how much resource? Is it you? Why?

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jdastral@reddit

I'm not saying that I would ever have left my child in a hotel room on their own but people seem to forget that this particular Mark Warner resort offered a "baby listening service". This service was also offered in some of their other resorts including in Greece, as far as I know. After Madeleine went missing this service was removed from their website.

The baby listening service involved telling people that they could go out at night to their restaurants, bars, etc, leave a contact number with the staff, and the staff would go around the resort listening outside the doors of anyone who availed themselves of this service, and if they heard crying, they would contact the parents.

Holidaymakers had used this baby listening service for years. It was a legitimate service advertised by the resort and therefore appeared to be safe.

All children deserve public money to be spent on trying to find them, just don't believe this much would've been spent if they were a lower class.

The problem is this is the 3rd or 4th person they've arrested and been 100% sure he was the one who abducted her, yet it always comes down to lack of evidence.

I know I'll be call a conspiracy theorist but I still don't believe it wasn't the parents. No one leaves little kids alone in an unlocked apartment in a foreign country, not to mention if you were abducting someone youd take a baby rather than a toddler. They're easier to carry, less chance of them screaming out that you aren't the parent and will dramatically change appearance as they grow.

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xovrit@reddit

The urgency is the imminent release of the perp. End of. He's a threat to all.

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ABritishCynic@reddit

Only if he's been proved to be, which he has not as of yet.

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Vast_Celebration_225@reddit

She is likely dead. Very sad

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PLTuck@reddit

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Accomplished_Cup_540@reddit

No it doesn't

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EntryCapital6728@reddit

If a child goes missing nothing so little as funding should stop forces going to find them - however its never that simple when everything costs manpower and money.

The McCanns have friends in very high places. You might consider why the British govt sent in press officers for the family, when that had never been done before in this type of situation. They were also given far more support from embassy staff than in any comparable situation

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TheeBigBadDog@reddit

No definitely not and never should have been

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Ill_Soft_4299@reddit

txteva@reddit

She was a pretty looking little girl, with well to do parents who pushed the PR as hard as they could.

Madelaine, along with every other missing child, deserves it yes.

I personally think her parents should be held responsible. They decided to leave a 3 year old and two baby twins alone to go out and have dinner with friends. Doesn't matter if it was in the UK or on holiday, that is negligence, and they deserve to be held accountable for their part in their daughter's disappearance.

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NewtRider@reddit

Considering they should be in prison for if anything negligence, if not (as I believe) for her death. No they shouldn't even have 10% what they've got
But they've played the public like saps because they know people will eat this stuff up.

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flusteredchic@reddit

The current netflix documentary on the case is really good and touches on exactly this.

I was a kid who was left alone on holiday. The time is important I mean there was a time it was normal to leave our littles outside in the UK to sleep in pushchairs like the Scandi countries.... Toddlers in the care of their siblings running the streets feral wasn't uncommonly seen either... That changed because of media attention on particular horrific cases that received national/global attention.

I think it's tragic and can't imagine it in the eyes of parents with other kidnapped children at all.

But.... Playing devil's advocate, I personally think this case single handedly is why it is no longer a split camp on leaving kids unattended/it being never ever ok to leave them... The media campaign informed parents globally and stopped existing and future parents from making this same mistake under false senses of security (however routed in original ignorance).

It was also the biggest who dun it since jack the ripper and had public interest and A LOT of private investment alongside public.

Do I think they were negligent in leaving them (along with their entire group) - yes

But I admire them using any and every resource available to them and never giving up and using the system everyone else and their opinion be damned to find their child? - yeah I do, I'd do the same without blinking. And this one case I do think single handedly improved parenting practice and turned the negligence semi-normalised to abhorrent.

I think every child should get this level of attention btw in an ideal world. In an ideal world this wouldn't happen at all.

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PurpleBiscuits52@reddit

No, it doesn't. I'm sick of the media focus on her and the endless money train. Let it go and find some of the missing black and brown kids who's parents didn't neglect them.

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Lonely-Job484@reddit

This kind of conversation usually ends out a bit divisive; there's a lot of emotive heartstring-tugging built in to it.

So either you say "no" and go down a rabbit hole of "you can't put money ahead of a child's life!" arguments, or you say "yes" and end out arguing about how impossible it'd actually be to do this at scale/across the board.

It's the same when you debate e.g. NHS budgets - there is never an "enough" that satisfies everyone, but there is a point at which it becomes unsustainable.

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Comfortable--Box@reddit

Yes. All lost children deserve the money.

The thing with Madeline McCann is that they have the main suspect in prison right this very second on another charge (breaking into another holiday apartment in the area and raping an elderly woman) but he is due to be released in September. The evidence very firmly points in his direction, and so they are desperately trying to find something to pin him on so he isn't released. Because if he is released, he will just disappear and go on committing such abhorrent crimes.

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PaleMaleAndStale@reddit

If it was your child, you wouldn't be asking the question. The case may get more press coverage, but it's a bit of a leap to assume that means law enforcement are giving it higher priority than other cases. Also, if we assume she was abducted and possibly killed, the perpetrator is still out there and remains an ongoing threat to children until caught.

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topher2604@reddit

More than £11m has been spent to date, and no charges were ever brought against the McCann's. They're somewhere between guilty of murder and concealing a body, and guilty of wilful neglect.

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Togden013@reddit

I think this is a divisive topic with anyone who is a parent saying protect the children at all costs.

SoftwareWorth5636@reddit

The resources are being perfectly well spent trying to keep a known sex offender, and likely reoffender, behind bars.

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I think it's fair to say that Madeleine McCann's case has gotten disproportionately more publicity and public money attributed to it than other missing child cases, so by this definition absolutely its too much, comparatively.

That's before you look at the case details, parents negligence, whether this would be the case if they weren't well-educated, middle class parents.

True_Egg_5685@reddit

No. Simple answer.

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ADHDiyuk@reddit

No. If she had been born to a working class family they would have been prosecuted and jailed and it would have been forgotten about, but because of the fact that they are Middle class, people are helping them get away with it and showered them with money.

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joyboy-91@reddit

I mean it's privately funded who are we to judge

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JJGOTHA@reddit

How they were never metaphorically dragged over the coals for this is completely beyond me. If they were a working class family, on holiday in Majorca, they would have been crucified for this in the media.

The whole thing stinks.

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Tom_Bowler@reddit

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Broccoliholic@reddit

Because there aren’t that many

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Royal_IDunno@reddit

26 aren’t that many? Plus there’s way more undocumented.

Exactly what my wife and I said yesterday. Every May/ June " another lead" seems to pop up. Must be incredibly frustrating for other parents in similar situations

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HumbleUK@reddit

No it’s obvious to me and most of the uk what happened there. Opinions etc

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MysteriousGas420@reddit

I’m sure there’s an absolute fuck ton of nuance. But I’m my opinion your question is bang on and the answer objectively to me would simply, no. The parents needed public discussion which by default leads to a camp who support them a camp who doubts and a camp who doesn’t care.

My guess was the noise made it much harder for any police actions whilst such a microscope was on them all worldwide surely?

Deserve? No.

Parents made a dumb decision

The police investigators on this case are very very bad.

Money allocated for this is in the millions and I have a warm feeling that this amount of money, would have solved many cases.

I think the UK is trying to make an example of this case, but they are failing, unfortunately. I feel sad for the girl though. Trash parents.

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Roybatty201999@reddit

I dont think she has received any money, public or private!

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Aivellac@reddit

What are you on about? The search has been funded by a lot of people to the tune of millions.

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Apidium@reddit

I think at this point resources spent on that case are resources wasted.

I'm not sure why that case blew up as much as it did. Well. It's a good news story but I mean in terms of practical merit and odds of finding the child. The circumstances of the vanishing being dramatic imo is a pretty shitty way to determine which missing children should get which resources.

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Put simply no

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Its1111L@reddit

The short answer is that it’s more than Madeline McCann. Like when a person is made an example of. This case is an example of the lengths Britain will go to get justice for their citizens. A subsequent reputation that may act as a deterrent when our friends, family etc visit other countries. However the lack of justice makes this all the more messy.

It’s also thought provoking that her 2 parents, who were/are highly qualified doctors trained at a specialist level in safeguarding and protecting children through their profession, failed in their basic duty of care simply as parents towards Madeleine and the other 2 children.

It’s unfair to society that they were not held to legal account and also able to continue to work as Doctors without some formal restrictions to practice as Doctors.

Respectfully, if they truly do not know what happened to her then I’m sure they bitterly regret their grave error of judgement & have suffered unimaginable and unbearable pain.

However, what kind of message does it send out to society that we have a 2 tier justice system for those who have privilege and power and those who do not? Had these parents been uneducated or poor they definitely would have been prosecuted for child neglect and endangerment but also treated as social pariahs.

Yes Madeleine does deserve justice but it shouldn’t be one rule for the affluent and another for those in poverty.

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outofideasfor1@reddit

The short answer is no. It’s horrid what’s happened but the continual spend of public money on it when policing is so under resourced is quite sad.

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Basso_69@reddit

The Chamberlain case in Australia was similar. It happened when I was 13 - I was in my 30s when it was officially closed. So.many investigations, trials, retrials. new leads, new trials...Id be surprised if the combined cost of Federal and 2 State poluce/courts_Govt interventions was any less than 30 million in todays money.

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dani-dee@reddit

I don’t think we should stop funding searches for missing/presumed dead children. Whether it’s Maddie, Ben Needham, Keith Bennett etc.

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P0rk1n5@reddit

The McCanns should have been locked up for neglect.

Additionally, the fund has been used to cover certain legal expenses. For instance, in 2023, accounts revealed that £6,695 from the fund was spent on legal costs related to a libel action in Portugal against former police chief Gonçalo Amaral, who had made unfounded claims about the McCanns’ involvement in their daughter’s disappearance .

It’s important to note that the fund’s primary purpose has always been to support the search for Madeleine. Over the years, it has received significant donations, including £125,000 from the News of the World as part of an apology for publishing Kate McCann’s private diaries without consent . As of March 2020, the fund held a balance of £773,629, designated for ongoing efforts to locate Madeleine and bring those responsible to justice .

While the use of the fund for personal expenses did draw some criticism, the McCanns and fund administrators have maintained that such expenditures were within the fund’s remit and were necessary during an exceptionally challenging period.

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Vast-Heron8963@reddit

There mortgage being one

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Blame the way it is being reported not what is happening.

There are plenty of cases that get investigated on the quiet, it just so happens this one is considered news worthy due to the fame of the case and the optics.

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DigbyGibbers@reddit

They are trying to get enough evidence to keep the guy they think did it in prison.

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SWiftie_FOR_EverMorE@reddit

They are treated well because her parents had respectable positions, if it was a family in which the parents had to leave their kid to earn a living and still couldn't afford childcare they would be absolutely slated. You shouldn't leave your children unsupervised at all but going out for dinner is an atrocious reason.

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Miasmata@reddit

It has always kind of pissed me off that this particular child going missing seemed so much more important than every other child, especially when she's obviously dead by now

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Emergency_Mistake_44@reddit

Does she deserve it? Yes. Do the parents deserve it? Based on what we know, it feels acceptable to say no.

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PraterViolet@reddit

Pitchforks! Burning torches! Furious outrage!

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PaperObsessive@reddit

I'm not sure it's wrong to be outraged that a child suffered because her parents wanted to eat a kid-free mealnm with their friends.

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aezy01@reddit

Madeleine didn’t suffer because her parents wanted a kids free meal, she suffered because some specimen of a human decided to take her and likely do horrendous things to her and then kill her. Yes the parents made a mistake, but that isn’t the reason Madeleine suffered. What you are saying is similar to blaming rape victims for what they were wearing.

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PaperObsessive@reddit

As a rape survivor, I can tell you that it is not the same thing, if that's the horrible game you wanted to play. My clothing ended up in evidence bags, so a wide variety of people know exactly what I was wearing.

If MM hadn't been alone, that piece of slime couldn't have walked off with her. Her parents failed her, which made her vulnerable to bad people who could be anywhere at any time.

Maddies bike.

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ukbot-nicolabot@reddit

A top level comment (one that is not a reply) should be a good faith and genuine attempt to answer the question

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thebrowncanary@reddit

Other cases don't have the mountain of tips or leads this case does.

The reason they keep searching for her is because they have leads regardless of how tenuous or flimsy they may appear to be.

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f1boogie@reddit

It depends on the final results.

It will be worth it if it saves even a single child, Maddie or not. If it takes a single paedophile off the streets. If it does anything to break up any child trafficking rings.

If all it does is find a body, then it's been a shame but a huge overspend.

If they find nothing, it is utterly pointless.

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Questjon@reddit

Most investigations end because they run out of leads not because they run out of money. The parents and other public groups have raised money to generate leads (some more worthwhile than others) and the police have investigated those. Why don't other families do the same, maybe it's because "pretty middle class white girl" or maybe because the parents were well educated and had the resources to create fundraising campaigns but realistically most families don't give up when the police have run out of leads because their child is dead and they are too broken to do what the McCanns did.

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IansGotNothingLeft@reddit

It's not so much that she doesn't/didn't deserve it, that would be a hideous thing to say about a likely dead child (doesn't stop many in these comments, I see). It's more that all missing children deserve it.

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OkayTimeForTheTruth@reddit

No.

Or rather, every missing child deserves to have such efforts made.

In fact, in general, missing white (especially well-off) children get disproportionate media/police attention than their black (especially poorer) peers.

That's messed up.

I get weird vibes from the McCann thing as well...

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SnooCakes1636@reddit

Can’t comment on costs as I simply don’t know what they are, but I do think the case has had more attention than it probably should have.

Initially I think that stemmed from the highly regarded professions of the parents, but then as speculation started, and media attention ramped up it kinda spiralled - where media would continue to report and fuel the speculation (because it sells), and so the investigation had to respond to that media attention.

Basically, I blame the media.

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ThaddeusGriffin_@reddit

As far as I understand it, yes there are many many “lost” children each year, but these tend to be abductions by family members or older kids choosing to go missing.

Kids outright disappearing is very very rare.

That said, witch hunt away against her parents, I won’t be objecting.

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Odd_Ad_4061@reddit

Simple answer is no!

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