Quote:
Originally Posted by Niamh.
They went to a restaurant though, doesn't matter how close it was to the apartment. I personally don't know any parents who would leave two 3 year olds and a four year old alone at night and go to a restaurant.
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It was just unlucky. Not to drop my parents in it or anything, but I do remember one occasion where they left my younger brother and I in their hotel room while they went down to the restaurant to celebrate my mum's 40th birthday - we were put to bed and that was that. I don't know if that's something I would ever do if I had children, because I don't know what I'd be like as a parent - but obviously they were happy enough in the knowledge that we were safely locked away and weren't going to come to any harm. We would have been about 6 and 3 respectively? So I was a little bit older than Madeleine was, but my brother was a similar age. We're both obviously alive and well today and no worse off for the experience, and I only remember it whenever I think about this case because it's so similar.
I don't believe they are hiding any kind of information, I think they are just being lambasted for not playing up to the British expectations of what a victim of crime should be like. We like to support the underdog in this country in pretty much every emotional aspect. Emotional appeals to the public really hype up our views on certain subjects. Compare the disappearance of Holly and Jessica in Soham to this case. The parents were in floods of tears giving interviews and the public really rallied behind them. It's normal to suspect the immediate family because most murder victims tend to know their murderers - but due to the international media coverage of the McCanns, they were being analysed tenfold. People particularly homed in on Kate McCann, saying she wasn't showing enough emotion. How dare anyone tell a woman whose little girl has gone missing how she should and shouldn't conduct herself? People deal with trauma in different ways. I have a friend whose brother was tragically killed a couple of years ago - she never once cried in front of any of her friends about what happened, and she told me that she just felt empty and that she didn't even really feel like she understood what had happened. In other words, she didn't immediately break down and cry over what had happened, she dealt with it in her own way. I think it's tragic that people are convinced that she murdered her own child and has been covering it up
just because she didn't show the 'right' amount of emotion. I don't know if she's innocent or guilty any more than the next person, but I do know that that is entirely what this notion is based on. Her perceived lack of emotion. I just think it's really, really unfair. My heart has always gone out to them.