[Z]

Originally Posted by Ammi

..I don't think there is a 'timescale' regardless of money, when a parent would give up a hope that they're child was still alive..and I do understand what you're saying Zee..it does make sense but that's kind of from an outsiders point of view..for a parent, I do think that they wouldn't think like that but hope that whatever the circumstances, their child was still alive and that one day they'll return home...

..of course, I haven't been in that situation and I'm so thankful for that..so I am only trying to imagine how it is for them....

Yeah I mean it would be horrible for her parents to start thinking that it's better she's dead than alive, but perhaps the strain of all of this would cause one or both of them to start thinking like that... I'm almost surprised they're still together, this tragedy must have deeply affected their marriage. Obviously they would much rather have their child back than discover she is dead after years of hoping she might still be alive; but they're not going to get any closure until they know for sure either way and it must be torture to live every day of your life regretting one bad decision one night.

I suppose what I find most surprising is the fact that Madeleine was taken but the twins weren't. It suggests that either it was just one opportunistic person acting alone and perhaps they had been watching the family prior to taking her; or it lends support to the view that she was murdered or otherwise died in her room and was gotten rid of. If they were being watched, then clearly it wasn't a team operation or I think all three children would have been taken. It does make you wonder if she was kidnapped for an adoption ring - but then that doesn't make much sense to me... If you're wealthy enough to pay someone to kidnap a child for adoption, why not just adopt normally? If you're kidnapping a child so you can sell them to a wealthy couple for adoption, then surely anyone adopting her would know her story... so unfortunately I don't think that's a possibility at all. I think either she died and her parents knew about it, or she was kidnapped for sexual purposes and either she was murdered right away, as is often the case when young children go missing, or she's been sold into a paedophile ring with probably the same end result...

It just makes me so sad thinking about it. I studied sex trafficking for a while and have watched interviews with women who have escaped from the cycle and have watched a documentary of a man trying to get his wife back after she was sold into slavery by a family friend... It's just devastating. Women are forced to have sex with so many men every day and are left with problems like incontinence, physical disabilities and the emotional scars run deep... Often they even have to willingly go back into sexual slavery because they're so poor, it's the only way to earn money. There was an interview I watched with a woman whose brother and sister were both dying from tumours; her sister's tumour was in her brain and had grown so big she couldn't open one of her eyes, and she had gone into sex trafficking because they had no other way of earning enough money to save up for operations... She saved up her money and her brother died before they could do anything... I know I'm going a bit off topic, but I think that if Madeleine McCann is still alive, she isn't going to know or remember her life before she was taken and she's not going to know where to go if she ever managed to escape.