. . .docwho3, would you PLEASE stop judging us for speculating on the parents' behavior. . .
I do not mean to judge you. However, I do think it is out of place, unproductive, and boring on a sleuthing forum to spend so much time and so many posts expressing anger about any one aspect of the case rather than sleuthing that case and I have said so. But to me it is also important to actually discuss the case on its merits and not just repeatedly waste posts and time on a noncase issue. It gets really old to see it get to that point and every little while it seems someone tries to work us 'round again to the same tired subject.
At times in the height of the emotions people were feeling, it seemed that one single aspect of the case completely overwhelmed all other parts of the case, including finding the missing little girl and I have have commented about that but I have endeavoured to use restraint. I came to websleuths to sleuth and I was seeing less and less of that being done on some threads and more and more posts about awful parents etc. I thought we had the parkinglot and jury room for posts about noncase solving issues. Do the mods allow certain things to go on in some threads?- Yes. But is doing all that you are allowed to do always the best thing to do? In my opinion the answer is no.
I am happy to see that more people have begun to actually discuss the case on its merits than before. That is a good thing and much much more interesting to me. Remember it was also I who theorized all sorts of ways that the parents might possibly be guilty of this crime as long as it was part of an open minded discussion of the case on its merits.
Again I do not mean to judge people. I was raised to not kick a family when they were down and if a family member went missing or was in the hospital we just did not say bad things about them until they were found or were brought back home. Perhaps my feelings about that side of things has found its way into some of my posts but I am not trying to be mean to people or find some reason to look down on others.
If at the beginning of a case people start posting that "turtles are green and green is evil", over and over and then they taper off but still try to post the same thing every once in awhile and then you post a post about a simple case point and the reponse you get is "turtles are green and green is evil" you might tend to post a less than favorable response. Even if the saying were 100% true it does nothing to help the case move along and ignores the post point you just made. Think you might begin posting, after awhile, that "turtles are green and green is evil" is not something to continue to occupy our time with, that perhaps we might want to move along to actual case points a bit more? Do you think you might begin to feel that the thread is overly obsessed with "turtles are green and green is evil"?
CaliKid said:
. . .Like colomom said, there is no alledged lack of supervision- it is a fact. Even the McCanns admit they left their children alone. . .
The 1st def. for alleged is "declared or stated to be as described; asserted".
I say alleged because I was not there to see it happen. It was reported in a news article. I say alleged partly because there appears to be some controvery in news reports as to how long the gap in supervision was and even some controvesry as to whether it was an appropriate gap of time.
I am not trying to be argumentative when I say "alleged" I am trying to be accurate and careful not to jump to conclusions. You may notice that news people also often use the term in news reports on various cases.
It was alleged that the parents never checked on the children at all that night. And it was alleged that the parents did check on the children in a certain time interval that evening. And it was alleged that the original time interval was later changed. The 1st def. for alleged is "declared or stated to be as described; asserted". What do we know? We know some things were stated declared or stated to be as described and we know that a child is missing and that her parents were alleged to not have been there when it happened. Were they really not there when it happened? Is it a fact or only something stated or declared to be as described?
CaliKid said:
. . .The McCanns are like the man who let the genie out of the bottle. Early on they had friends with powerful contacts (i.e. Kate McCann's best friend was neighbors with PM Brown's brother) and set up this global media campaign. One of the things they apparently didn't consider was that their own behavior would come under scrutiny, fair or not, and whatever secrets they hoped to hide (i.e. they left their children, crying, alone at night to go out and get drunk) would eventually come out. What it looks like to me and a lot of others is that they can't handle the attention about the choices they made. Like a little boy who gets mad at his playmates, he wants to take his bat and go home. It is unfortunately too late for the parents to take everything back.
I want to try to communicate this delicately and not meanly.
I care about the little missing girl. I care about seeing the case solved. I care about learning from the outcome of the case, such things as how guilty or innocent parents sometimes act.
If you and/or others want to start a drive to have the children taken away from the parents forever I won't say a word. I do not propose it nor oppose it. It isn't my business.
