[Z]

Originally Posted by Livia

Lots of people leave their kids alone, even if it's for a few minutes. They do other stupid, endangering stuff too. My brother, when his first daughter was little, was playing with her and threw her up in the air and hit her head on the ceiling. Is he an abusive parent? No... he was beside himself with remorse and guilt for his stupidity. Luckily she was fine and he didn't have to have strangers tell him what a bad parent he is for the rest of his life. It was stupid what the McCanns did, but it's what thousands holidaymakers do every year and no one on here can argue with that, although no doubt some of you will try. Sadly, on top of having her child taken and not knowing what happened to her, some people find some kind of sick joy is sticking it to the McCanns when most of you know absolutely bugger all about the case except what you've read on the Internet.

I can see your point but ultimately I can't bring myself to agree with you; most people's stupid mistakes don't result in a missing child, a media storm, lawsuits, being uncooperative with the police, fundraising etc - these things are accountable, when they involve the public, especially on the fundraising front. I think it's a huge stretch to compare accidentally injuring your child when you're having a bit of fun with choosing to leave your children in an unlocked apartment while you go out for dinner, those are not similar scenarios, your brother didn't leave his child and came back to find her injured.

I've not seen a mass of people come out and say that they would do what the McCanns did on their holiday. I've seen people sympathise with them for their loss, I've seen people sympathise with them for making a foolish decision like that, but I've not seen people say "yeah don't worry about it I'd have done the same" - it IS stupid to leave your kids in an unlocked apartment while you go out for dinner. Would they have done that at home? I doubt it. Holiday mode madness set in. But when there were numerous options available to them, it seems maddeningly stupid. I don't agree that thousands of holidaymakers would do the same thing as them, certainly not now that this high profile case is so well known to the public - would you want to be the couple who made the same mistake as the McCanns after a decade of seeing them be vilified in the press and having no answers to where their daughter went? Nobody has anywhere near this level of vitriol for the parents of Sarah Payne, April Jones, Holly Wells, Jessica Chapman, Ben Needham, Milly Dowler... the cold lack of emotion is a factor, and so is the lack of cooperation with the police, and so is the lack of admission of guilt on their behalf (I presume because they don't want a lawsuit/court case)... that's the difference for me.

And the other thing that's always bothered me, of course, is why would a kidnapper take the toddler and not take the babies too, if they'd been planning on taking her and had been watching the property? There are far too many holes in the hypothesis for it to make any sense. I can't figure out their motivations, but it's certainly not all about finding their daughter, they've not done everything they can to do that and I find that abhorrent and I think that makes them fully accountable to the public and they deserve to be scrutinised and have people doubt their claims, because they've not done everything in their power to convince anyone otherwise. They can sue me if they want to.