Why did Madeleine 'go missing'?

[Donjeta]

Is this thread open again? Because it keeps popping up in my list of most recently commented yet the last comment was posted years ago.

Polls tend to come up when someone new votes in them.

 

[OneLove]

Are we allowed to discuss again? :biggrin:

 

[katydid23]

This case really makes me sad. And my butt gets sore from hopping on and off the fence.:fence::fencefall::fence::thud:

 

[KariKae]

This case really makes me sad. And my butt gets sore from hopping on and off the fence.:fence::fencefall::fence::thud:

Mine too

 

[claudicici]

Question: In the USA, leaving children this age alone in these circumstances would be considered neglectful. Is there a different "standard of care" that makes this acceptable in the UK?

I do think there is a cultural difference.
I know when I was growing up my parents left us alone a lot (Germany)
But this was in the 70's.They would go out and leave us with the phone number of where they were at and also let the neighbor know we were alone and that we could call her if we were scared.I was 8 or 9 at the time and I took care of my sister who was only 4!!!
If I remind them now they are completely distraught by this and can't believe that they felt completely safe doing so.
But it was a different time,people just felt safe.
I don't know of anyone leaving their small children alone nowadays back home.

 

[little_miss_smart]

It most certainly is not the 'norm' for parents to leave children at the ages of the McCann children and to learn it wasn't only the McCann's who left their children, the rest of the group also left their children. Oh and one of the children, I think the O'Brien and Tanner child, IIRC she was 18 month old was vomiting, O'Brien returned to the Tapas bar in the full knowledge that his daughter had been sick.....he cleaned up before returning to his friends...

They are disgusting people.

 

[BritsKate]

Question: In the USA, leaving children this age alone in these circumstances would be considered neglectful. Is there a different "standard of care" that makes this acceptable in the UK?

There actually is not a law on the books regarding leaving children of any age unattended unless doing so places them at risk.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/Yourchildshealthandsafety/Yourchildssafetyinthehome/DG_070594

However, there is not a single caring British parent I know that would ever condone or participate in leaving toddlers to fend for themselves for any length of time. I'm American so I'm outside looking in so to speak but most people here were shocked and mortified that the children had been left alone.

I believe there may be a cultural divide among the safety regime of children here compared to America - e.g. in the area in which I live bike helmets and booster seats aren't enforced; small children (and even often babies) are seated in the front seat of a car; kids are allowed to roam around alone a bit more at younger ages than where I'm from in the States.

All that being said these were babies left alone, out of sight, in rooms in a foreign country so their parents could live it up. There are few parents anywhere, I believe, that would be accepting of that behaviour. FWIW

 

[anne11]

It is not good let alone illegal to leave such small children alone especially when there is childcare on offer imo

 

[Robin Hood]

IMO it was staged to hide the death of Maddy. I think Maddy died days earlier (by what means I don't know) and the only way to 'lose' her was to have her abducted.

Edited to add - the abduction was a complete smokescreen, while it's debated the real reason is clouded. Smoke and mirrors at it's best.

 

[Jackalyn]

The way the law works here is there is no law that tells you an age that you can leave children, but the law does come into full force if those children are harmed. I am not sure how it works when the adults and children are in a foreign country, but assume that there is no similar law in Portugal and that if the parents were in Portugal the prosecution would be under Portugese law.

There is also a kind of 'it happens to other people' mentality. I had that until someone (thankfully very briefly) took my daughter in our local market. (I turned to pay the market stall holder and the market stall holder actually watched as a woman took the pushchair and said 'Have you lost something,' leaving me looking at the stool for my purse thinking he meant that. It was a woman I knew with mental health problems and the child was quickly returned. However, until that day, having a child abducted happened to other people. It just was not on my radar because as a child I played outside happily and my mother regularly left prams outside shops and in the front garden, as did everyone else. Even after a schoolboy in the neighbourhood was abducted. Nobody believed it could happen twice. I have just been searching for the story as the boy was never found but can find nothing.

I can envisage a group somehow inspiring a false sense of security in each other: as in "it is really safe here, so the kids will even be safe if we leave them." Not what I would do, but I can see it happening. I have always suspected that there was a controlling person in the group and that the Mccanns got sucked in.

I have no idea what happened. I don't get why anyone would leave children alone in a room vulnerable to the street. However, I have seen and heard otherwise loving parents do some bizarre things. I know a University lecturer Mother who told me quite happily that she 'put her baby twins in the garage so that she was not disturbed by their crying.' The family was loving in other ways but did something that crazy. I can not figure out why the even thought that was O.K.

These Mccanns are clever intellectually, and I am not sure even if doctors, that makes people clever in terms of parenting. I worked teaching parenting programmes and sometimes you had to undo the damage done by idiotic statements by social workers or health visitors who had completely misunderstood "time out," for example. Clever people are not always sensible people. My ex husband's family actually had their kitchen on fire and left four children upstairs asleep while they called the fire brigade to put it out. They are genius level in IQ, but apparently not in common sense, left a HUGE swimming pool unfenced for the duration of eleven grandchildren's childhood and would not buckle my infant daughter in in the car in snowy and icy weather until I raised hell. MIL also tried to prevent us from phoning the doctor when we had a very sick child indeed. The house was not heated when we brought young babies there and so on. Yet, all these children of the MIL (four) felt loved and wanted and were.


I do think it was an abduction. Madeleine had the long blond attractiveness that so often seems to be a feature of abductions. A lot of the so called evidence has been disproved.

She cannot have died days earlier as she was seen earlier that day by staff at the facility.

I do think that out of fear, there are things that the Mccanns have not said.My guess is they will not until the twins are old enough not to be taken away from them for any reason. I would think that would centre around fears of having their twins taken away.

I personally think English law needs revising where it comes to leaving children. My own take is that Madeleine was abducted to sell or for pornographic purposes and is probably somewhere far away. I suspect her parents are in denial about some aspects of the abduction as to how they could better have protected their children - maybe seeing and hearing things they dismissed at the time?

 

[Robin Hood]

I found this very interesting http://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t1189-100-reasons-why-madeleine-was-not-abducted

 

[UKgirl]

There is no age that you cant leave your child at home, but there is common sense. I believe the child has to know what to do if there is a fire, and be able to fend for themselves, so usually it would be early teens. From speaking to people here, we are all quite shocked that parents would leave young children alone, so far away from them and for such a period of time.

I do not believe madeline is alive, I also believe it was due to one of the parents, which one I am not sure, but the other is certainly trying to cover up. I am not sure, but I believe it was reported that Calpol had been used on madeline numerous times to help her to sleep. Just makes me wonder if it was a case of overdose.

 

[josie1986]

There is no age that you cant leave your child at home, but there is common sense. I believe the child has to know what to do if there is a fire, and be able to fend for themselves, so usually it would be early teens. From speaking to people here, we are all quite shocked that parents would leave young children alone, so far away from them and for such a period of time.

I do not believe madeline is alive, I also believe it was due to one of the parents, which one I am not sure, but the other is certainly trying to cover up. I am not sure, but I believe it was reported that Calpol had been used on madeline numerous times to help her to sleep. Just makes me wonder if it was a case of overdose.

Just out of curiosity if indeed it was an overdose do you think it was accidental or deliberate?

 

[rpgman]

Just out of curiosity if indeed it was an overdose do you think it was accidental or deliberate?

I believe whatever happened to Maddie, was all accidental, just like the Caylee Anthony and Ramsey cases.

An accidental death, then a coverup.

All JMO.

 

[Robin Hood]

From Jackalyn's post upstream

''She cannot have died days earlier as she was seen earlier that day by staff at the facility''

A CHILD was seen, the McCann's friends had blonde children too, all similar age/size.

Look here, skim two thirds down and see Jane Tanner with her child.
http://thetapas9janetanner.blogspot.co.uk/2012_03_01_archive.html

 

[brit1981]

Can I just say that in most Mark warner resorts there was a nanny listening service, where parents woudl go out for the evening and leave their children in the rooms, and every half hour a nanny (norammly a young person with a childcare qualifation) would listen outside the door for signs of crying. Thousands of people used this service every year. The resort they stayed at did not offer this service as it was so spread about te village, so the McCanns just did the checks themselves.
I think it was a foolhardy thing to do, but I can see why people would get sucked into thinking it was safe.
I think it is more likely the man responsible for the other attacks in that area (one hour area) on british children on holiday (eight children woke up to find a man in their room, and in five cases he got into their beds and sexually abused them) is responsible for the disappearance.
As for the calpol, there was never any evidence put forward that this was the case and tests showed the McCanns were not medicating their other children. And if it was why not say she got hold of it and drank it herself. I know when I was a kid I loved the stuff, so it is reasonable to think a child would guzzle it down if they found it (child proof caps do not always work in my experience). Why launch a huge cover-up, get over ten witnesses to lie for you, get the british police and forensic service to lie for you when you could just say she drank the calpol herself?
And as the kids club staff at the resort all knew the children as they looked after them everyday, they were able to say they had looked after madeleine on the day she disappeared, and people confirmed that the photos of madeleine taken on the day she disappeared were real and they could confirm the situation occurred (i.e collecting tennis balls, and sitting with legs in the pool).

 

[rpgman]

Can I just say that in most Mark warner resorts there was a nanny listening service, where parents woudl go out for the evening and leave their children in the rooms, and every half hour a nanny (norammly a young person with a childcare qualifation) would listen outside the door for signs of crying. Thousands of people used this service every year. The resort they stayed at did not offer this service as it was so spread about te village, so the McCanns just did the checks themselves.
I think it was a foolhardy thing to do, but I can see why people would get sucked into thinking it was safe.
I think it is more likely the man responsible for the other attacks in that area (one hour area) on british children on holiday (eight children woke up to find a man in their room, and in five cases he got into their beds and sexually abused them) is responsible for the disappearance.
As for the calpol, there was never any evidence put forward that this was the case and tests showed the McCanns were not medicating their other children. And if it was why not say she got hold of it and drank it herself. I know when I was a kid I loved the stuff, so it is reasonable to think a child would guzzle it down if they found it (child proof caps do not always work in my experience). Why launch a huge cover-up, get over ten witnesses to lie for you, get the british police and forensic service to lie for you when you could just say she drank the calpol herself?
And as the kids club staff at the resort all knew the children as they looked after them everyday, they were able to say they had looked after madeleine on the day she disappeared, and people confirmed that the photos of madeleine taken on the day she disappeared were real and they could confirm the situation occurred (i.e collecting tennis balls, and sitting with legs in the pool).

You have a link stating that the children were tested for calpol?

I'm under the impression that they weren't and that Kate wouldn't allow them to test until months later when it was out of their system. The parents being doctors would know when it was out of their system.

 

[brit1981]

I cannot find a link off the top of my head, do you have a report saying tests were done. But calpol has paracetamol in it, and any amount that would take weeks to wear off would kill a child. Also if parents were giving their children large doeses of it every night, they would have become ill over a period of days before they died. Like you say the parents being doctors would mean they knew what a safe dose of calpol was.
can I just ask do you think because someone cannot prove something is untrue, then it must be true i.e because the children were not tested straight away it must mean they were drugged and this is evidence against the McCanns?
Do you have any links (reliable ones, not ones from dodgy sites) that show the McCanns refused testing. I have never heard of the police making attempts to test the children and being refused.

 

[rpgman]

I cannot find a link off the top of my head, do you have a report saying tests were done. But calpol has paracetamol in it, and any amount that would take weeks to wear off would kill a child. Also if parents were giving their children large doeses of it every night, they would have become ill over a period of days before they died. Like you say the parents being doctors would mean they knew what a safe dose of calpol was.
can I just ask do you think because someone cannot prove something is untrue, then it must be true i.e because the children were not tested straight away it must mean they were drugged and this is evidence against the McCanns?
Do you have any links (reliable ones, not ones from dodgy sites) that show the McCanns refused testing. I have never heard of the police making attempts to test the children and being refused.

I didn't state that the testing actually took place.

I stated that I thought that they wouldn't allow testing until months later. I believe I read it somewhere.

If that testing did take place I have never read that it actually did.

Sent from my VM670 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Robin Hood]

I also read that testing never took place.
At the time it was commented that if there was an abductor then the parents surely would have wanted them tested incase they had ingested something toxic.