blog -->, Family, Women, Children
Hands off the cuddly toy
So the police in Portugal are now making the contents of Kate McCann’s diary public. In it she says she is struggling to cope with three young children and that her husband leaves most of the housework to her. They are citing this as a possible motive for sedating, and accidentally killing, young Maddy.
Mothers do not in general sedate their children. They cope. Whenever mine get really bad I think back to what my grandfather once said: “You wouldn’t want children who just sat in a corner and did nothing, would you?”
As for the husband issue - well, this is not the first time I have heard a woman complain about her husband and it certainly won’t be the last. Mothers of young children are by definition tired, harassed and busy. But they know that and they deal with it. Kate McCann was dealing with it. If I kept a diary I would probably complain about my husband and children on a daily basis. As it is I don’t, my poor unfortunate friends have to listen to me instead. But my point is this, complaining about your children does not make you a murderer.
I hear the next thing they’re going to take is Madeleine’s little Cuddle Cat that Kate has been clutching to for comfort over the past few months. How cruel can you get? Will someone please put a stop to this farce?
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007
14 Sep 2007 helena
I can understand wanting to examine the diary, but I cannot see any benefit at all from making the contents public (unless it is to blacken her reputation?).
Most of the comments as well as commentary by professionals such as the FBI all support the McCanns. Is it in the UK where all the people have turned? The FBI criminologist said a number of important things: the police bungled this from day one and any reliable evidence was most likely lost but more important, police do not “leak” their case through the press trying to make their case by doing so; instead they take the evidence and proceed through the legal system. All the alleged DNA proof has holes in it including the business of hair. I can go back and collect all the observations from the criminologist if people are interested but all I can say is I agree with the FBI that what the Portuguese police are doing is what the FBI recognize as a technique because they have used it themselves: pretend you have more evidence but can’t say and lead the person to believe it so they confess.
It upsets me that the media looks at this case as a “sensational story” to sell papers etc. I feel for this family and wish people would believe in the basis of our legal system, innocent until proven guilty. Proven by evidence not by rumor and innuendo.
I was framed by the British police 20 years ago. No, it wasn’t a child abuse case. I was arrested by corrupt police officers during an industrial dispute; they claimed in court that they had caught me red-handed committing a serious crime. Fortunately my arrest was witnessed by several independent witnesses (including, bizarrely, an official of the Crown Court). 6 months later the case was thrown out of court. I was advised to sue. It took me 10 years to get justice, but the satisfaction of hearing a High Court judge describe the police officers as “corrupt liars” was worth the wait. The compensation, which was substantial, also came in handy.
Ever since then I have been sceptical of convictions based on uncorroborated police evidence, as I’m sure you can understand. In my lifetime I have seen a number of miscarriages of justice and attempts to frame innocent people, from the Guildford 4 and Birmingham 6, to non-political cases like Colin Stag.
It would be fair to say that if I have any prejudice in high profile murder cases, it is prejudice against the police and in favour of the suspect.
And yet, in this case, from day one I felt uneasy with the presentation of the McCanns as normal loving parents. Something just didn’t seem right. The thing that puzzled me from the outset was this: why would two middle class professionals, doctors of all people, leave a 3 year old in charge of a pair of 2 year olds whilst they went out drinking and eating?
I’m a father, and although I can’t speak for all fathers, I don’t think that if it was my daughter missing, I would behave like Gerry McCann. I remember saying to wife way back in May, “Something is wrong here. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but every fibre of my body is telling me that there is more to this than meets the eye”.
At the same time, I felt bad about voicing my suspicions. These were, after all, the parents whose child had gone missing, and here I was judging them on nothing more than “gut instinct”. What if I was wrong? What kind of a person would that make me?
But so many things just didn’t add up, from this “perfect couple” neglecting their children to the mysterious abduction and disappearance of Madeleine into thin air, from their curious lack of emotion to turning Madeleine’s image into a marketing commodity. So I stuck with my gut, and now that the forensic evidence is coming in thick and fast, I have to say that I think my gut was right all along.
No one knows better than me that the police can get things wrong, and the police can lie and cheat and plant evidence. But if you look at this case objectively, it really is inconceivable that that is what has happened here. There is simply no credible motive for the police to have done so. If they wanted to fit up someone, the last people on earth they would pick on are the greiving parents who are armed with a million pound fighting fund and the gushing support of the Murdoch press. No, the obvious target would be a sad unpleasant looking character, like for example Murat.
If the police really have set up the McCanns, then it must be the mother of all conspiracies. They must have murdered Madeleine themselves and then wandered around the holiday complex with test tubes of her DNA, planting a little of the contents here and there, in the apartment, on Kate McCann’s clothes, in the boot of her car. It’s possible, I suppose, in the sense that anything is possible. But it’s not very likely, is it?
The only theory that fits the forensic evidence and explains the otherwise inexplicably odd behaviour of the McCanns, is the theory that the police are working on, namely that parents killed her and disposed of the body. The more I look at the available facts, the more this appears to be the only rational explanation.
For me, the problem with this case has always been the fact that the McCanns left 3 very young children on their own while they went out for a meal. I don’t know anyone in my circle of friends who would do this, and as doctors they should know even better than the rest of us how potentially dangerous this was.
Because of this, I think public opinion has never been totally on their side, because we all say ‘I would never do that’. And we mean it.
More dangerously, it leaves the door open to all sorts of accusations - on the grounds that if they could leave such young children unattended, presumably knowing it was wrong, what else is possible?
It’s not fair, but it is human nature to feel that way.
The evidence for an abduction is pretty thin, isn’t it?