Texana
Overreaching
From Times Online:
Meanwhile, a former Portuguese police chief said that the McCanns should have been arrested as soon as their daughter disappeared for abandoning their children.
Paulo Pereira Cristóvão, who left the PolÍcia Judiciária this year to head the Portuguese Association for Missing Children, told the 24 Horas newspaper: When the parents told police that they went to dinner and left the children at home alone, they confessed to the crime of abandonment. The penalty of abandonment is at least three years imprisonment.
So it was not the common practice in the quaint little resort to go out to dinner and leave the children alone.