Here's something I've never understood...

[Albannach]

Why aren't the McCanns in jail for child neglect and abandonment?

[BUSHWHACKER]

We've wondered that since the begining.

[slobodan]

Why aren't the McCanns in jail for child neglect and abandonment?

Sure, really kick the poor bastirds while they are down.

[Albannach]

Sure, really kick the poor bastirds while they are down.

Yep.

[slobodan]

I dropped a bird off on the motorway near Denny yesterday, you haven't seen her have you?

[Albannach]

I dropped a bird off on the motorway near Denny yesterday, you haven't seen her have you?

Nope, but she's dead now.

[slobodan]

To your original post...
Nothing could be worse than losing a child, but I think the lack of sympathy the mcanns receive has a lot to do with them going out and leaving them alone.

[Albannach]

I agree, there can't be anything worse than losing a child. But if they hadn't left her, and her younger siblings, alone that night, she'd still be alive and well with them.

They are 100% to blame for whatever happened to Madeline, if they'd been a Jeremy Kyle couple they'd be rotting in jail by now.

[wishbone]

Ooh I love quizzes! Is it because they've been busy writing a book ?

[Rustinho]

To your original post...
Nothing could be worse than losing a child, but I think the lack of sympathy the mcanns receive has a lot to do with them going out and leaving them alone.

Especially when the hotel "baby-sitting" service was (I'm sure I read/heard somewhere) about £10 a night and given that the McCanns were doctors on holiday abroad, eating out every night at restaurants and obviously not short of a few quid to pay for it.

I have no doubt that they regret their mistake each and every day.

[Vultch]

There are scores of theories of "what really happened" and some real venom from those who support the McCanns and those who don't ..

[Apache]

They were stupid and selfish in leaving their kids alone. They've paid for it with the loss of their kiddie. However, yes they broke the law.

Why weren't they tried for that? number of reasons.

1) Possibly the law figured they were suffering enough.
2) They ran to the worlds media immediately - whether by design or not, to keep themselves from being charged with neglect as there'd be huge outcry from the emotional and the great unwashed.

One thing I don't understand is their apparent need to play all of this out in the glare of the worlds media. (They use the reasoning that its to 'find Maddy - however, I don't think it does more than photos of just the kid being distributed via interpol and in papers)

Personally, I would be destroyed by losing a child, and the last thing on my mind would be hamming it up for the papers, and I certainly wouldn't have the gaul to write and PUBLISH a book!!! That does leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth because it smacks of 'lets cash in on our misfortune' to me.

[flounderbout]

They are 100% to blame for whatever happened to Madeline, if they'd been a Jeremy Kyle couple they'd be rotting in jail by now.

100% - really? No blame attaches to the person that abducted and killed her then? Or do you buy into the "they did it" theory?

It seems to me that the McCanns get more vitriol than the mother of Shannon Matthews who arranged for her daughter to be abducted and kidnapped (by a man convicted of possessing child pornography) in the hope of generating a massive reward. She will only "rot in jail" for 4 years (of an 8 year sentence) - she'll be out in 2012. And she was a Jeremy Kyle type by anyone's reckoning.

Either they did it themselves, in which case they will rightly rot in hell, or they didn't, in which case there could be no worse thing that could happen to a family.

I don't get the class thing. The constant complaint these days is that middle classes get treated more harshly than everyone else - not least on driving or car related forums - speeding tickets, driving without insurance, paying taxes to support scroungers etc etc. But even if it is right that the middle class get treated better than other sections of society, I don't see how that is the McCann's fault, yet reading a lot of what is written about them you would think they were personally responsible. In any event the suggestion that she would have been in prison now had she not been middle class is a nonsense. Even a prolonged campaign of abuse and cruelty against a child tends to attract a sentence of less than 4 years - for a one-off instance of assault against a child a custodial sentence would be highly unusual, and would be for a few weeks at most. As for an instance of neglect amounting to leaving a child unattended while at a restaurant 120 metres away, that would never attract a custodial sentence - indeed it wouldn't even be prosecuted. And that goes for whatever background the person responsible came from.

I suspect that a lot of the criticism stems from their (and particularly the mother's) refusal/inability to display a huge outpouring of emotion for the cameras and assembled media (contrast the fraudulent mother above). If they had pandered to the modern fashion for wailing and gnashing of teeth for our (and the media's) prurient amusement then I suspect they would have received a very different response. Personally I am not a big fan of the whole public grief thing. The Princess Di mass hysteria left me completely dumbfounded.

A lot of the "anti" coverage stems from an inate feeling that there is something fishy about the whole thing and therefore they must be complicit in the abduction/death. I agree it is all a bit odd, but that is hardly a basis for suggesting that two parents are murderers of their own child. And if there was cover-up by them, it was incredibly sophisticated to have escaped discovery given the subsequent massive resource that has been directed at it (a lot of it at the McCann's instigation).

[Apache]

You don't think they've courted the press (beyond initially to ostensibly 'find Maddy) at all then Henry?

I know writing about emotional experience can be cathartic, but I fail to understand how the 'publishing' bit, and 'promoting in womens magazines and tabloids' bit continues to be cleansing.

I personally don't think they should be hung, drawn etc. I think they've been stupid (and there but for the grace of Vishnu...) and boy do they regret it now. I just think its odd how they've behaved. I guess everyone handles grief differently.

[MWS]

I don't believe that the truth will ever come out about this whole affair, but what I do strongly believe, is that the McCanns alienated themselves amongst a large swathe of the British public due to the way that they have seemed to revel in the "celebrity status" that being in the spotlight has given them. The anouncement of their book seems yet another example.....Uneasily....Mick.