Madeleine McCann

It's not about blame or finger pointing but it's their responsibility to take care of their kids and they didn't.

Every parent takes risks or is complacent at times.

If you were babysitting 3 kids of that age for someone else, would you pop out to a bar/restaurant 50m away for the night and check in on them in 30 minute intervals?

You simply wouldn't. You'd stay in and be responsible.

I think there's definitely a type of guilty feeling with many of them. They've done similar but nothing bad happened fortunately. Defending the McCann's is really a defence of their bad parenting.

If it wasnt ever acceptable then hotels and holiday camps wouldn't offer the "listening services" they did. Butlins did, the children would be left in the chalet and a staff member would patrol them. If they heard anything the room number would be announced in the dance halls, bingo rooms and wherever else adults were socialising.

The McCann's and their pals didn't even hire listening services. There is no defence of their behaviour. Night after night leaving their kids alone in an unlocked apartment while they wined and dined with their buddies. There shouldn't even be a discussion on whether this was ok or not.

My comment was in response to one saying that it was never acceptable.

It wasnt available in the complex they stayed in because of the layout thats why they decided to do it themselves.

Can this be put to bed once and for all.

Its not normal to leave toddlers on their own in any setting. The McCanns were absolutely wrong to do so. There are no mitigating factors at all.

The more you think about it the more shocked you are that anyone would have done this.

After 16 years though its a pointless argument. Hopefully there is a DNA breakthrough coming and this can be put the bed. The family given closure and bruckner locked up for life.

The debate of whether Gerry and Kate should face prosecution? What purpose would the outcome of a prosecution be? To further persecute a family already suffering an ongoing nightmare? To satisfy the appetite of the baying mob? I think its the latter.

I think the best outcome now is closure. Please god the child didnt suffer. Hopefully the attention the case got in the days following the abduction meant that the person responsible didnt have time to inflict anything.

But what the McCanns did that evening is in no way normal or run of the mill parenting. It opened an oppurtunity for this crime to take place. I personally wouldnt persecute them further for it.

There is an extensive article in the German media: ( pls use google translate )

Apparently new information will be shared in the coming week, however it's not expected to lead to anything further.

I'm not trying to normalise anything, just trying to point out that as risks go, it was at the absolute bottom of the scale. As the old saw goes, walk a mile in someone's shoes. The McCanns said they felt it was safe, and I believe them.

I blame Mark Warner resorts. They knew what was going on and knew the area wasn't safe, according to the nanny's, who related how they had been specifically warned as soon as they were employed not to walk alone at night in the village and were obviously aware of some goings on in the village as they said they didn't feel safe. It would seem someone might have put maintaining a facade of a family safe environment over customer safety.

I find it extraordinary that people can blame the McCanns for events while characterising the hundreds of child drownings in Europe annually as perfectly understandable and acceptable 'tragic accidents'.

We are still making assumptions about an abduction scenario and death, when still to this day all that is known is that MM went missing.

With a separate thread, posters can continue on for as long as they and others want about how neglectful the McCanns were.

We know they were neglectful, everyone knows they were neglectful so why the need - as you just did - to remind everyone again about how neglectful the McCanns were?

It's constant and some get perverse kicks out of the constant bashing imo.

I'm certainly not trying to mod it. I'm trying to make a suggestion.

So you think the McCann's were intricately involved in it? How?

Yes large green wheelie bins were in use that year .,

Well I wouldn`t be ruling them out, that`s for sure. Have you read the statement of Katherine Gaspar for example? It`s in the public domain and you will probably find it with a Google search. Are you aware that the menfolk of the Tapas 7 liked to bath each others kids? David Payne turned up late for dinner that night. When Gerry made his check on Madeleine it was remarked upon by the diners that he was gone for longer than he should have been. The bins were not properly searched and were allowed to be emptied and removed to landfill in the early hours of the following morning. Is it not all very convenient and imo very weird that the doors were not locked?

I wouldnt no. I wouldn't even leave them in the car outside my frony door if i had to run back in.

But obviously other people did seeing as there is an actual service provided by many hotels that facilities what the mcCanns and their friends done

Was it ever investigated how much alcohol was involved that night, with the Tapas 7? British tourists do remarkable things when alcohol is involved.

That's always been a persistently annoying aspect of the case where it's like the tabloids take ownership of the story by giving the child a little nickname that the parents didn't use. Same thing happened with James Bulger. It was not a nickname the parents appreciated.

Regarding the blaming of the parents, people have been making the same points on this for the last 16 years as if this is a novel opinion. And the interesting thing is that if you let these people talk in this way, it too often eventually gives way to opinions like above which is not just that the parents played a role by leaving the apartment door unlocked and so on but that they may have been actively involved. That's what seems to be sitting below the surface of a lot of this. However, like many a conspiracy theory, those promoting it never let an inconvenient thing like a complete lack of credible evidence get in the way of their scurrilous accusations, do they?

An accusation like that, if it cannot be proven, should be backed down from.

Madeleine is her name

Their daughter is gone and presumed dead because someone came and took her.

If their daughter is dead because of their selfishness, then that's wording which implies they're directly responsible. However, there is a much larger factor at play, i.e. the abductor.