Gerry's not blameless
It doesn’t often happen that the American press do a better job than the British press. Especially when it comes to interrogating people in the public eye and putting difficult questions to them.
You only have to see the way they pussyfoot around their Presidents to figure that one out.
But congratulations to my transatlantic colleagues for persistently asking absent father Gerry McCann, who has been visiting the US this week in the search for his daughter, the question the British Press corps should have asked him from day one.
“Just why did you leave your three children alone in an insecure hotel room while you and your wife had an evening out at the other end of the hotel complex?��?
Mr McCann’s answer was this: “The real issue is that we should not have a constant fear of abduction of our children.
What Kate and I did was at worst naïve and no one should forget that the real criminal is the predator who has taken a completely innocent child in such as premeditated fashion.��?
Gerry says he and Kate are not to blame but it doesn’t matter how many times you say it Gerry I don’t believe you, I doubt the majority of the public believe you and I suspect that somewhere in the back of your mind in those quiet moments you have with yourself when falling asleep or waking up you don’t believe it either.
Yes we should live in a society where we don’t fear our children will be snatched away from us – but unfortunately we don’t.
Statistically there’s more chance of winning the lottery than having your child snatched from you but that doesn’t negate all the other dangers Gerry and Kate put their three children in when they left them alone in a strange room in a foreign country while they tucked into food and no doubt shared a bottle of wine.
What if there had been a fire in the room? What if one of them had woken up in unfamiliar surroundings not able to find their parents and wandered off to find them before being hit by a car? "at worst we were naive" - no, at the very least they were naive, at worst they were plain stupid.
The McCanns have made a big deal about being able to see their apartment from where they were dining. I have to correct them on this point.
They couldn’t see their apartment – they could only see the front door. To say they could see the apartment is wrong. They couldn’t see the insecure windows out back or anything going on inside.
It’s a world of difference and on this occasion the consequences have demonstrated that.
Your three children were little miracles made possible through IVF treatment - so why go to so much effort to have children only to leave them?
Many European countries, including Portugal, encourage families to dine together and it is common to see buggies and highchairs in restaurants, so there really was no excuse for those children not to be with their parents who could have protected them.
Don’t get me wrong it’s not that I don’t have sympathy for the couple. I do and can’t imagine what they are going through.
What gets my goat is their refusal to accept they are blameless. It may be unpopular to say so but they had a duty of care to their children and they failed in that duty.
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What gets my goat is their refusal to accept they are blameless. It may be unpopular to say so but they had a duty of care to their children and they failed in that duty.
An excellent article...
Your stance on this issue is only "unpopular" though, with the editors of the British Main Stream Media.
Rather than generating press which reflects popular opinion (ie, that Mr and Mrs McCann were or are selfish/ negligent - they are trying to mould public opinion in favour of the McCanns.
I know not why they do this, but in any event, public perception of the McCanns is now way past its zenith, and plumetting inexorably toward what I suspect will be a most uncomfortable ground zero for them....
Make peace, not war!