Madeleine McCann

You could do that as well. It's not that any of our writing to the UK DPP would have any difference.

For the rest we just disagree.

It's not what could happen. It's what did happen. Once you go into the weeds of what could happen, you're opening up every parent to potential criminal prosecution who ever left their small children to play in the garden for a few minutes while they made dinner or did the ironing, and those cases are not forthcoming. In dealing with what did happen, someone came and took Madeleine. Therefore it is that person to blame.

If you left your wedding ring in an unlocked apartment and it was stolen, the person who stole it would still be the one criminally liable, and so it follows that the monster who enters an unlocked apartment and takes one of the children sleeping within is the one criminally liable.

The example of leaving children in the garden was to illustrate a point about hypotheticals and equation. People on here acting like what the McCanns did is no less inexcusable than leaving them for the whole night and going over the other side of town, and this is evidenced by not taking the points about proximity and checks. Hey, if unattended is unattended, then it's all the same, right? So, it would follow that leaving kids in the garden to play in the back garden for a few minutes while you do something else is as bad. Unattended is unattended. After all... who knows who could be walking past? Who could be watching your routine? Waiting for an opportunity? And they only need a minute or two...

But you may be onto something with this apples and oranges thing, and it's the idea that there are levels of leaving a child alone and the context of doing so, so there are clear differences, which is why any real put-up-or-shut-up case about it against the McCanns would be swiftly deconstructed in a court room.

I never said the McCanns were to blame for their daughters kidnapping and murder (assuming that is what happened). They are guilty of negligent and duty of care towards all 3 of their kids on that holiday. You have to be a council estate, unemployed parent who went off drinking to be charged with something like that I guess.

To go back to the wedding ring analagy, while the thief would be criminally liable, I am pretty sure the insurance company would not pay out considering the door was left unlocked. There is more to 'consequences' than ending up in jail, as the McCanns have discovered in the most awful way. Most people know that and look after their kids closely while on holidays.

You don't have to pay, it's just to register.

It's in other papers as well.

As far as I know there is no mention as to what this "relevant clue" is, or how this clue can make the connection and or missing link to either convict Brueckner or evidence that Madeleine is dead?

Most likely this relevant clue is a piece of evidence which has the highest potential after analytics in the lab in Germany.

I've heard about 2 to 3 weeks until the labs will come up with something.

Their job doesn't define anything to been a parent.

At the end of the day, they choosed a few drinks etc and left the young kids unattended. Hard one for them to live with and at a big cost

You said,

I say that's incorrect. It was absolutely common for parents back then to let their little kids run off around the locality with their friends and have only a vague idea of where they might even be at a given time. It was common to have a few pints and drive them in a car because that was the limit back then. Parents were even smoking indoors around their kids back then. Yes, standards of parenting were looser back then, so no, I don't think that leaving one's kids sleeping in the holiday apartment and checking in on them every half hour would be treated with the same moral indignation as has been heaped on the McCanns for the last 16 years.

And for the part the McCanns played, they have more than paid the price and everyone who's interested has learned the lesson. Continuing to direct criticism at them achieves nothing. All that remains is to find Madeleine and the perpetrator of her abduction.

Absolutely agree. As a kid in the 80s I could head off with friends in the morning and just be told "be back by 5 for dinner" with no knowledge of where I'd go, no mobiles or anything like that. Just the assumption that everything would be fine. Times have changed.

The McCanns made a terrible mistake but in retrospect such mistakes look graver than they really are. 999 times out of 1,000 it would end harmlessly.

I wouldn't excuse them but also don't think they deserve to be pilloried constantly

You think? Parents calling in to a party a few doors down and checking back in every half hour wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows in the 80’s.

Kids were still getting a slap and told to shut up if they came back telling their parents that’s someone in a position of power, or family member, was interfering with them. That went on until 1994.

The McCann case was a watershed moment on how people looked after their kids on trips away.

Regarding predictability - was the night of the abduction the only night the McCanns and their friends had adopted this system of supervision? . . . I can't believe that it was. So the abductor might have had prior knowledge of their routine.

The McCanns were beyond stupid, but in their middle-class world perhaps nothing bad ever happened, so perhaps it never would - until their world collided with another.

I don't doubt that they've suffered turmoil/guilt/etc - but there are many drunk drivers out there who have felt the same as a result of the consequenses of their actions . . . and that doesn't stop them escaping punishment for the decisions they made.

I do feel sorry for the McCanns, but the fact is they were guilty of child-neglect . . . they left their children unattended and out-of-sight for thirty-minutes at-a-time - would anybody on this forum leave a lap-top in an unlocked car in CenterParcs/Mosney and go back and check on it every thirty-minutes?

It shouldn't happen, but it does - and you have to plan for that. I grew up in Rhodesia in the early 1970s, that's something that was drummed into us as schoolchildren.

Not in my world . I had three kids in the 80’s , my friends anf family and neighbours all had kids then . Not one of us ever left a child alone in a house . It was not common then among anyone I knew

Lets start with a comparison of the number of children who drown every year due to gross parental neglect vs the number of children abducted by strangers.

I was being facetious in using the word 'gross', instead of 'perfectly understandable'. The McCanns thought the situation was safe, and were right to do so, it's likely that most of the parents of the large numbers drowned toddlers didn't even get as far as the thinking bit.

It's never ceased to amaze me the number of toddler drownings that happen without a subsequent public witch hunt vs the McCanns and the millions of people standing in line to buy bundles of twigs to throw on the pyres when they are lashed to stakes and burnt alive - if they had their way.