"Who would leave children that young alone?"

[brit1981]

Well, in nearly all mark warner resorts which are spread all over Europe, they provided a nanny listening service. After madeleine Mccann was abducted they stopped the service.
RPG are you saying the nanny listening service did not exist? Mar Warner says it exists, are they now part of the conspiracy

I do not now what part of Europe you are in, but in most Northern countries they are no hard and fast rules about looking after children. You just have to demonstrate you took sensible precautions for the circumstances. the British prime minister and his wife accidently left their child behind in a pub recently, but there had been no talk of prosecution.

 

[brit1981]

The following lins are for hotels, travel sites that talk about baby listening services. Try googling listening services, along with europe, individuel country names, mark warner etc and you will get a lot of hotels and resorts offering this srrvice all over europe and in the US. the list below mentions hotels in Sweden, the UK, Austria, France, the US, greece, and Portugal.

http://www.ehow.com/list_7530487_hotels-baby-listening-services.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/snowandski/732153/Skiing-Club-class.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel...ur-baby-no-childrens-clubs-please-651767.html

http://www.britainsfinest.co.uk/hotels/search_results.cfm/searchclasscode/305
http://montesantoalgarve.com/family-kids.asp

http://www.igluski.com/are/holiday-club-resort_p19836

The link below has, if you scroll down, a response from mark warner where they say they have now replaced they nanny listenign service with a drop in service i.e instead of just listening at the door the nanny pops in and checks.

http://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/790287/Whistleblower-Full-responses/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH

I also do not think going for dinner and have a couple of glasses of wine, counts as going out drinking.

 

[brit1981]

donjeta,
which part of Europe are you in by the way?

 

[Donjeta]

I have lived in Finland for a number of years. I tried googling Finnish hotels and "baby listening service" and I found one travel page with a co.uk address that recommended a skiing hotel in Lapland which apparently had one, but, strangely, their Finnish web page made no mention of such a service. I don't even think there is a common term for it in the Finnish language. I tried googling for the Finnish equivalent of the words "baby listening service" or mere "listening service" and all I got was sites where you can listen to music online. Is it a British thing, something that British customers are used to? IDK. All I know is that the Madeleine McCann discussion was the first time ever I heard about it.

I don't think it really matters if the parents go drinking or golfing or windsurfing or to the church if they leave their little children without protection while they're doing whatever was more important than the little children. The operative thing is not whether you're completely sober, it's whether you are there, or somebody is.

 

[brit1981]

http://www.firstchoice.co.uk/press-...oice-ski-and-snowboarding-brochure/index.html

The above link is for first choice, and it says at the end of the page it offers a listening service in all of its resorts and they have resorts in Finland.

I am not sure if it is just a British thing or not. I know Swedish families who use them. I had never heard of it until a friend who was a mark warner nanny told me about it. I think it is normally one of those things you only hear about if it is something you would want to use. I would never consider asking for a listening service, and until my friend told me about it, I would have had no idea they were even offered. I think kid clubs are fun, but I would not tend to go on holiday and put my children in daycare all day and evening.
But I do think the attitude varies widely. For instance the british PM and his wife left their little girl behind in a pub recently. She had gone to the loo, and he thought she was with her mother and the mother thought she was with him, and they left in seperate cars and no-one realised she was still at the pub until they arrived home. I would not have let an eight year old (especially one who was obviously the daughter of the PM) go to the loo by herself in a fairly busy pub, but obviously both they and their security thought it was fine.

 

[Donjeta]

http://www.firstchoice.co.uk/press-...oice-ski-and-snowboarding-brochure/index.html

The above link is for first choice, and it says at the end of the page it offers a listening service in all of its resorts and they have resorts in Finland..

It's from 2009 and elsewhere on the site it says they have transferred the holidays in Lapland to another company.

http://www.thomson.co.uk/editorial/lapland/lapland-holidays.html
Doing a search there for baby listening I found some hotels offering baby listening service in Austria, Italy, Cyprus, but no Finnish ones yet.

I had no idea that baby abandonment is a family friendly service. :maddening:
I'll be sure to boycott any hotel that encourages this sort of behavior.

 

[rpgman]

I had no idea that baby abandonment is a family friendly service. :maddening:
I'll be sure to boycott any hotel that encourages this sort of behavior.

Lol
Me too.

Sent from my VM670 using Tapatalk 2

 

[brit1981]

I agree. I know mark Warner have ended the service (but I am not sure they replaced it with anything better) after Madeleine McCann disappeared, but I am shocked so many places still use it. To me its a no brainer - even if abduction is not a risk, a lot can happen in half an hour, the child could easily hurt themselves, wander off (if Madeleine McCann had wandered out of the flat to find her parents, she had to walk out by a road, and then cross by a pool). But again I have known people who might go to their next door neighbours, and leave the child at home and just rely on a baby monitor. It appears a huge number of people use this listening services, and rely on baby monitors, so I can see why it would be easy to be lulled into a false sense of security if you are on holiday in a peaceful village, and everyone is doing something similar.
If you think about it a huge amount of children who have disappeared have disappeared whilst doing something that many people would say was risky i.e Etan Patz disappeared whilst waling to the school bus in new York, and a little boy was abducted and murdered a couple of years ago in New York whilst working back from some sort of school acivity. There is an arguement that children should not be able to walk alone like this, but I know plenty of people that allow they children to walk to and from school alone.

 

[LadyL]

If someone wants to abduct your child, they are going to do it whether or not you are in the same home. I can think of many cases where a child has been taken from a home where adults are sleeping or awake in the next room. As for the McCann's being negligent or compared to parents who leave their children over night to party, I think that is unfair. The issue with this case is so many people have limited cultural understanding regarding parenting practices in other countries. I am sure, the McCann's suffering and horror over all of this is enough to make them question routine practices of dropping in to check on children. They live with it every day. Checking in on children while dining nearby is a norm in a lot of places where "stranger-danger" hasn't taken over society. Plus, American jurisprudence dictates how we parent in many ways. In reality, if someone wanted Madeline, they would have taken her whether or not her parents were 30 feet away or 3000. Why are we victim blaming the parents here? Does it help solve this crime? Does it make us feel superior? There is no need. Let's focus that on finding some type of resolution for a family who has not only been railroaded by sensational media, but by the language barriers and bizarre legal practices in the country she was abducted in. We simply can't compare across the board the US legal system with how strange the other is, nor parenting practices. This is an awful case and I really think the many misunderstandings caused by culture, language and countries have made this even worse for the parents. I think they are suffering enough and are educated enough to be well aware of the possible outcomes of their daughter's fate without being crucified by the public.

BTW: As a parent, I personally am obsessive about my children, but I grew up in stranger-danger America. I also have been known to stop the car to check if a sleeping child is breathing...LOL. My oldest daughter got to the point on long trips where she would roll her eyes and say, yes...he's alive...LOL. But, I have traveled many places and know and I have to say what works in our country is not the solution for all. America is not a perfect country, so acting ethnocentric about how this is an abomination is short-sighted. IMOO.


Here is a recent article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...I-saw-Madeleine-McCann-twice-disappeared.html

Opinions on the above article?

I agree with most of what you say. The above article though is not recent, it's 3 years old ... wonder if the guy's dead by now.

 

[brit1981]

I seem to recall reading he had died, after refusing to spea to police.
I think a big part of the problem has been the Portuguese police's reluctance to accept there are paedophiles in Portugal (in fairness a lot are apparently foreign). The Casa Pia scandal had apparently been reported to police years and years before action was finally taken, and by that time photographic evidence had been lost. Also shortly before those responsible for the abuse at Casa Pia were brought to court the Portuguese government apparently changed the law so that a child abuser could only be prosecuted once per child victim, no matter how many times they had abused them. Then there was the lack of action about the other attacks on tourist children, and the disappearence of a little girl seven miles away from where madeleine disappeared.

 

[badhorsie]

The Ocean Club in PDL never offered a baby listening service as it was felt to be unsafe. This was in 2007, But the McCanns knew best and decided to use their own checking service. They could have use the babysitting service or the creche which was open at night but chose not to due to not wishing to have strangers looking after their babies despite leaving their babies, with strangers in the MW creche throughout the day.

And I have not spent "holidays" in Denmark and Norway, I stayed with family and went shopping with them in their locality. I saw what normal people did

 

[brit1981]

The ocean club did not offer a listening serrvice because the complex was spread throughout the village, not because it was deemed unsafe. They used the listening service in other Portuguese and European resorts so if they had deemed it unsafe to use in this one resort it would have raised questions about the safety of the place.
And I live several months of the year in Denmark and Sweden, and I see babies in pram outside the shops and in the quads of blocks of flats every single day in the warmer weather. If you live in a place where you cannot leave a baby outside for fear of it being abducted, you should not be living there if you have children anyway. It is also common for children as young as six to walk home from school alone, etc. The only stranger abduction of a child I have heard of recently was when a little boy called Oliver was snatched from his mother's arms outside a school in broad daylight in front of plenty of witnesses. Luckily the abduction was for money and he was found by the police unharmed a couple fo days later.

 

[Donjeta]

I don't think I agree that you shouldn't live where your children could be abducted, because you've got to live somewhere and there is no place in which bad things cannot happen. It's generally pretty safe in Finland in that regard, you don't hear of many stranger abductions taking place, but even so, I remember a couple of recent cases here in which babies disappeared from their prams that were parked next to the walls of their homes. In one case it was a kid who had wanted to take the baby and play with it and the baby was found unharmed although IIRC there was some damage to the pram. The other case was scarier, again it turns out that it was a girl from the neighborhood who had taken the baby, but it was winter, and she had buried the baby in the snow a few steps from the pram. Luckily someone heard the baby make a noise while it still could, otherwise I guess the remains would have been found in the spring. But anyway, the thing is, I don't remember where the first case took place but the second case was in what appeared to be a perfectly peaceful residential area near a small town, and not the sort of area anybody would warn you away as unsafe for children. There may be people who are not right in the head just about anywhere imo.

One of my babies always napped outside in the pram because that was the only way he would sleep during the day but it always made me kind of nervous and I was neurotically keeping watch from the window. I didn't get many household tasks done while he napped. Nobody ever approached him, you wouldn't have seen him from the street, and I didn't even have to chase away any wild animals so I guess in retrospect it was safe but you never know. He did fall from the pram once. I noticed he woke up and was trying to sit up and I was putting on my shoes to go get him when he fell. I didn't know he could squirm away from the safety harness but he had managed it somehow. He wasn't hurt in the fall, his legs were still stuck in the safety harness and it slowed him down but he might have been. If I had just had someone listen in on him every half hour or so he could have crawled in the driveway and got run over in time for the next check-up.

 

[brit1981]

jesus, she buried the baby in the snow - what the hell for?
I think you are right, you can never be too certain there is always going to be a first case. But if you think about it most people let the child do something where there is a risk of abduction - let them walk to and from school, go out with their friends to play outside for a couple of hours etc. There are very few child murders I can think of that have happened when the parent has had the child under watch (the only one I can think of was in the UK, where a little girl was asleep in her bedroom and the mother was checking on her every half an hour, and on one check the mother found the child raped and murdered - the killer was the little girl's uncle who was staying over for the night), most have occurred when a child has been on their own.
Saying that leaving children with a babysitter is no guarantee. Babysitters are often young and targets themselves, and there have been cases of childcare professionals abusing children. I was reading on the news this morning that an alleged paedophile ring are in court, and two members are a female teaching assistant, and a female childminder. Sometimes it seems you just cannot protect yourself.

 

[Donjeta]

This is where the baby was found.

I don't recall hearing anything about the motives. She was a minor, so it was handled by the social services and they don't really share any info, so I don't have a clue why.

You're right and there is no way that we can always guarantee that our children will be safe from all harm. There was a freak accident that killed a baby when a part of the ceiling fell into the crib... the babysitter or the school bus driver or someone in the family can be a pervert... I think the fear of stranger abductions ranks relatively low in my estimation in the reasons little children should not be left unattended for any considerable period of time, I am more afraid of accidents and other unpreventable things. Even if I lived in the middle of a deserted island with walls all around it my kids can get sick or accidents can happen or they just wake up and feel scared if an adult is nowhere in sight.

That said, one of my kids walks home from school... I am not afraid she'll get abducted but I worry about car accidents. There are cultural differences in that, for sure... it's really the norm here that children past a certain age get home from school on their own, it's only the rare, weird, overprotected ones who have mom waiting for them at the gate. School taxis are available for those who need them for health reasons or disability, and you can get bus tickets if you live far away from the school, but it's not a school bus, generally, just the normal route buses with the normal assortment of potential creeps aboard.

I think the strangest thing about that night in PDL to me is, why did they leave the door unlocked? It seems like an invitation to me.

 

[brit1981]

I think the left the door unlock to make it easier for them to go in and out, I think if they had thought it was unsafe to leave the door unlocked, they would not have left them in the first place.
I am with you that abduction is low on my things that could happen list. My main worry would be fire (you would have no chance of getting in), or the child wandering off themselves and coming to harm (a child did apparently manage to get out of their holiday room at a mark warner resort and this was not discovered for a while because the nanny listening service was in use so no visual checks were carried out). But if you were in the garden and had a large house could you guarantee the child's safety? It is quite scary when you start to think about all the what ifs?
But the flat the McCanns had was perfect for an abduction, it was the most secluded flat, right on the corner, and the bedroom window backed on to a fairly empty car park. Plus one of the Tapas bar staff had left a note at the reception that these families were making a block booking because they were leaving their children alone in the evening, and anyone could have seen this note. I know it is a side issue, and nothing to with the abduction, but that would really irritate me if I was another guest and could not go to the Tapas bar on the complex for my entire holiday because the same nine people hogged space each night (there were only about fifteen places at the place apparently) on the basis that they wanted to leave their children alone (I read you were not meant to be able to block book, but they made an exception because they were leaving the children alone). It just seems really obnoxious and selfish to me, but maybe thats me being selfish and obnoxious.

 

[brit1981]

I don't recall hearing anything about the motives. She was a minor, so it was handled by the social services and they don't really share any info, so I don't have a clue why.

Thats another cultural difference. In the UK the age of criminal responsibility is ten years, so if this girl was ten or above there is a good chance she would be in a young offenders institute.

 

[Donjeta]

She was twelve. It's 15 years or above in Finland who can get criminally charged.

 

[saggymoon]

Too Young To Be Alone: McCanns Culpable - YouTube

 

[brit1981]

these are American commentators, they have nothing to do with EU law. I have also heard that in the US you can have babysitters as young as 13 (americans here please correct me if I am wrong), and lets face it if someone wanted to abduct a toddler a 13year old would present no challenge.
The fact is that many resorts and hotels still continue to use nanny listening service. the only reason the MW resort at PDL did not was that it was too spread out so the nanny could not do a circuit in half an hour. They offered it at the time in nearly all other campus style resorts. They only ended the service after Madeleine went missing.
The following links are for hotels, travel sites that talk about baby listening services. Try googling listening services, along with europe, individuel country names, mark warner etc and you will get a lot of hotels and resorts offering this srrvice all over europe and in the US. the list below mentions hotels in Sweden, the UK, Austria, France, the US, greece, and Portugal.

http://www.ehow.com/list_7530487_hot...-services.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/sn...lub-class.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/...se-651767.html

http://www.britainsfinest.co.uk/hote...hclasscode/305
http://montesantoalgarve.com/family-kids.asp

http://www.igluski.com/are/holiday-club-resort_p19836

The link below has, if you scroll down, a response from mark warner where they say they have now replaced they nanny listening service with a drop in service i.e instead of just listening at the door the nanny pops in and checks.

http://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/7...CMP=ILC-SEARCH