Snipped from your post above
@Kasmeer
Could it be that actually she did check, ask passers-by etc, but as it seems irrelevant today, it's just not being mentioned
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This is a direct quote from Steven's mother, made last week when she was arrested.
Recalling the day he went missing, she added: “I stood directly in front of the exit, I don’t know for how long. I was there for quite a long time, just wondering what had happened to him.
“
People say why did you not go in? But you would not for a 23-year-old man.”
Parents' 'nightmare' as they are quizzed over son's alleged murder
There is also this quote, made in 2004, which gives a slightly different impression
"When I came out, I did look around but then I thought, 'I'll just pop home and get the kettle on and be waiting for him,'" she says
'We can't ever give up hope'
I was going to just leave it last night after "liking" (aka thanking) these posts (although neither quote specifically says she
didn't ask anyone around, which leaves open the possibility of poor reporting), but the whole thing about her wording just nags at me and stuck in my mind overnight... it looks SO bad to all of us, it almost makes me wonder if she's genuine after all! Because, if it's so obvious to us, surely someone trying to cover something up would see it too, and embellish it a bit? It'll be hard to clearly say what's in my mind, especially as it bugs me when threads degenerate into people trying to diagnose mental issues based on a few selected quotes, yet, what's quoted, really suggests some oddness with her thinking process.
In fact it's how I could see a more extreme version of myself thinking (I am on the autistic spectrum - I am NOT trying to diagnose her with that, just using context of my own thinking process to show how these quotes come across to me): "you would not for a 23-year-old man" - well yes, there's general social rules, and that sounds rather like rigid thinking; "it's not right to enter the opposite gender's toilet". If I were in a similar position, I'd think long and hard before doing so myself, because it's against the unwritten rules (and while asking a passing man to check is the obvious solution, there either might not have been a passing man on a cold December afternoon, or else I have severe social anxiety and would find that equally hard to do as it would be to break the "rules" and check myself). Giving up and going home to wait would be in line with what I might possibly do, too - actually I'd personally be more likely to end up just "stuck" standing there for hours, not doing anything, as my brain would run out of capacity to think, but I could see just returning to familiarity as an option too.
I'd really love to see more contemporary reports on what the parents were quoted as saying at the time, to see if it's changed over the years or remained consistent (bearing in mind people's memories usually don't remain exactly the same, details will change unconsciously but the major points should remain similar) as there's a few possibilities regarding these specific quotes, which don't necessarily imply guilt:
- The parents are responsible for Steven's disappearance and Mrs C is just doing a very poor job at covering up.
- The parents are responsible for Steven's disappearance and Mrs C is doing a
good job at sticking to the script and not embellishing her story with any extra details which could cause questions to be asked about why she only "remembered" checking after 28 years!
- The parents are responsible for Steven's disappearance and Mrs C is somewhat stressed by it, maybe losing some memory after 28 years (she is 81 after all), and clinging to a few basic facts which are safe to mention.
- Mr C is responsible for Steven's disappearance and Mrs C is too scared to admit anything but too upset to do a better job at covering up/is sticking rigidly to the script.
- The parents are actually not responsible for Steven's disappearance and Mrs C has some unusual ways of thinking, so did a poor job of checking at the time, and does an equally poor job of expressing concern for her missing son.
- The parents are actually not responsible for Steven's disappearance and Mrs C actually checked rather better than we think but is losing her memory and clinging to the few facts she remembers for sure.
- The parents are actually not responsible for Steven's disappearance and Mrs C actually checked rather better than we think but poor reporting has focussed too much on a few quotes which make her look bad and support the narrative that the parents are responsible.
No doubt the actual truth will be none of these, or some other combination! Everything I read makes them sound guilty, and gives me a bad feeling about them, and yet... it doesn't sit quite right with me because I just think a guilty party would make more effort to cover up.