Madeleine McCann

why is prosecuting them ridiculous?

their actions amount to neglect which has led to their daughter being kidnapped and enduring what we can only assume is inconceivably horrific.

just because they have to suffer that does not exempt them from the law of the land. if i kill someone and then regret it and have to live with it for the rest of my life i'm still going to jail...

Neglect? Because they made a wrong judgment call?? If I'm with my son at the playground and I'm reading a book while he's having fun at the swings and someone's grabbing him while I don't pay any attention for a few mins, should I be prosecuted too then? If I'm at the grocery store where they have an (unsupervised) kiddies corner where I leave him while I am doing the groceries (which is a common thing over here in The Netherlands) and someone grabs him, should I be prosecuted? In both examples, I thought he was safe. I don't feel there's any negligence in that - as opposed to fully know some dangers and still going through with certain actions.

they thought the kids would be ok, that's obvious.

thinking they're going to be ok has absolutely no bearing on the law or what could (and in this case, has) happened.

neglect will be specifically termed in the law and if this constitutes the legal definition then there's no question about whether they should be prosecuted or not.

we should feel sympathy for them, no doubt, but we shouldn't just let them off when it's their actions that has allowed this to happen.

Madeleine father makes trip to US

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6910481.stm

This annoys me, why is he visiting George Bush in America when his child went missing 6000 miles away. I know they want to keep it in the news but if it was my daughter Id be searching every acre of Portugal before I moved onto another continenent...

And you don't think that she'd have been taken out of the country within days?

Sad to say of course, but the chances of her being even found, let alone alive, are probably near nil by now. In these sort of cases, if nothing happens within a couple of days, the chances of them being found drop exponentially.

Also - I wonder how many other little girls like her have gone missing in all this time, and not got anywhere near the same publicity

1) A door ajar does not invite trespass. No one is to blame for the situation but the kidnapper(s).

2) The whole argument is one step away from blaming rape victims for dressing provocatively.

3) Prosecuting parents for leaving their children unsupervised for 10 minutes is entirely unpresidented.

4) It would just be plain ****ing cruel.

5) Prosecutions would also have to include the countless other parents who have behaved similarly, but not had their child stolen.

The big question is whether or not it would be reasonable to assume that their actions would result in the child being harmed.

Fortunately, abduction is still so extremely rare that it would be hard to make a strong case in that fashion.

With any luck, the Mcann fighting fund is now sufficiently big that it will be spent helping others in the same situation...

I *really* hope you are exaggerating to make a point here.

Yeh probably to Spain, Morocco, etc. The reason its cos so much publicity is cos shes got blond hair, blue eyes nice and photogenic. Sad but true. I do hope they keep up the publicity where it needs it in Mainland Europe, but yes I do agree the chances of finding her, dead or alive are very slim...