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From The Sunday Times
September 16, 2007

Madeleine McCann: You are all guilty

The public is to blame for the heartless abuse being heaped on Kate McCann. The internet has blurred the lines of news and hearsay and the result is trial by global gossip

India Knight

What do you think? Post your comments in the reader feedback section at the bottom of this article

Do you find yourself strangely drawn to articles about the McCanns? I do. It’s not edifying: most of us are uncomfortably aware that the slender line where personal tragedy becomes popular entertainment was crossed some time ago. But, like every other person in the country, the story is permanently at the back of my mind.

I want to stop reading, listening, watching, Googling, amateur sleuthing; I nauseate myself with my own prurience. My appetite for commentary – which is all that’s left, in the absence of hard facts – has been sated many times over. But I can’t stop.

Did they do it? They couldn’t have. And yet . . . And if they did do it, do they have superhuman powers, such as invisibility and Oscar-worthy acting skills? And if they didn’t, and are innocent and probably bereaved, what in God’s name have we done to them?

By that “we”, I don’t for once mean the (British) press, which seems to me, despite its inevitable mawkish descents into sentimentality, to have acted pretty responsibly. The press has urged caution, expressed compassion and been reluctant to judge the McCanns, if not the apparently sham-bolic Portuguese police.

No, by “we”, I mean the public. Forget that old chestnut “I blame the media”: now that everyone has an opinion and an embarrassment of outlets in which to express it, “I blame the public” is going to become the refrain of the coming decades. There is no shortage of online places where people may freely and anonymously air their opinions, even if their opinions are vile or demented or both; and there are millions of these newly voluble people. They have made it all right to say unspeakable things, to air the most shameful thoughts, always to think the worst, and never to give anyone a chance.

With the McCann story, this has, for the first time, resulted in a complete blurring of the boundaries between news and gossip. Sky News lists Madeleine McCann as a “category” on its interactive content screen: news, business, sport, Madeleine.

We have been here before with appalling crimes that grip the nation – we may have discussed, say, the James Bulger case among ourselves, watched the news and read the headlines, but then the news was on twice a day, the headlines came only in the morning, and the internet barely existed.

Now we have streaming information, an unstoppable torrent of truth, fiction, theory and gossip that is accessible 24 hours a day. The result is that, incredible as it may sound, there is, online (and the real world is catching up quickly), little difference in the tone of the remarks about Britney Spears’s failed comeback, and the comments made about Kate McCann, despite the fact that one is a pop star and the other the mother of a missing girl who may be dead. But there is no thought for Kate McCann’s suffering in the deluge of abuse heaped upon her; the McCanns’ local newspaper’s support website in Leicester-shire had to be closed.

We seem to have lost track of why Kate McCann’s picture-editor-pleasing face – blonde, thin, wounded, Diana-like – is in the papers in the first place. By orchestrating the kind of media campaign more usually associated with a multi-million-pound film or music launch, the McCanns have catapulted themselves into the gossip fodder league. That means suffocating 24/7 media interest; it means your choice of earrings is going to be scrutinised and discussed by millions of strangers – it means you have declared open season on yourself when it comes to public consumption.

But the public doesn’t just consume: it devours. And once you’ve invited it in, it doesn’t sit down politely and make small talk: it makes itself at home and rifles through your underwear drawer. You can’t ask it to leave, to “respect your privacy”. It’s there for the duration. If the McCanns are innocent, and even if they aren’t, it may well cause them to lose their sanity.

Despite popular thinking about journalists “making things up”, the traditional media are regulated. Things have to stand up from every angle. Facts matter. We have lawyers; we try not to libel or slander; to keep objective. The public, through the internet, can – and does – say anything, no matter how degrading or toxic, and keeps on saying it until, by a sort of insane osmosis, it stops being an outright lie and becomes a half-truth.

The theory that Kate McCann, a doctor, accidentally oversedated her daughter, causing death, has existed on the internet for months. People write about it LIKE THIS, in indignant capitals, as if it were so obvious as to be a given, and as though they were explaining something simple and obvious to somebody mulishly stupid who refused to see the truth staring them in the face. Behind the capitals, you can almost feel their quickening breath and their peculiar excitement as they comprehensively trash the reputation of a grieving woman who is a stranger to them. Power to the people!

Things are ugly out there – there aren’t many things uglier than gossip about infanticide, which is what this story has become, and why it feels so extraordinary. But they have been ugly from the start.

The news of Madeleine’s disappearance broke on a Friday evening. I wrote about it the following morning, assuming – naively, in retrospect – that people’s default mode would be compassion or pity. By Sunday evening my e-mail inbox was full. A handful of the e-mails agonised on the McCanns’ behalf. The greater part more or less said, “If you leave small children alone to go and eat tapas, you deserve everything that’s coming to you.”

I know from colleagues on other newspapers that they had the same angry reaction, which they also found themselves disconcerted by.

I’ll get back to the tapas point, because it’s central to the whole thing, with opinion dividing into people who see leaving a child as stupid, but not the world’s greatest crime – such people are broadly sympathetic to the McCanns – and people who find it inexcusable, criminal and indicative of all sorts of dark possibilities. This latter group is among the 17,000 who signed an online petition recommending that Leices-tershire social services take into care the McCanns’ remaining two children, Sean and Amelie.

The petition was not set up in the past week or so when things became murkier and question marks started mushrooming, but in May, when all we knew of Kate and Gerry McCann was that they seemed hollow-eyed with grief. The McCann story may end up being about the death of empathy.

So here we are, obsessed, in the throes of one of those weird national seizures; sitting in judgment, wallowing in what the novelist Philip Roth (apropos Bill Clinton’s infidelity) memorably called “the ecstasy of sanctimony”. The woman at the checkout at Tesco has a view, as does the dinner party guest. The hitherto unsayable – “Do you think they killed their own child?” – has become commonplace. You hear it everywhere. We’re gossiping about a four-year-old child who may be dead, or abducted and raped, or both, and there are no holds barred any more. What brutal thing does this say about us?

It’s always risky attempting to analyse the nation’s psyche based on one apparently seismic event: often, when everything settles down, you realise that underneath all the emoting, there wasn’t anything terribly unexpected happening. One thinks of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales: all that was going on was that everyone felt sad and shocked, and then got over it.

But the national fixation with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, and the incendiary emotions it has provoked, is another thing altogether. It isn’t to do with empathy, because it seems to be thin on the ground. Prurience, yes; ghoulish curiosity, certainly – but there are, alas, dozens of hideous crime stories to pick from: why focus so obsessively on this one? Sentimentality, because of the involvement of a small, photogenic child? Perhaps at first – though much of the public commentary on this story is so condemnatory that sentiment doesn’t seem to come into it.

That says something peculiar about our monstrous appetite for this tragedy – because, no matter what happened or who did what, a much-loved child has vanished.

Much of our fixation has to do with fear, and with the public’s desire to “own” a story. Within 24 hours of her disappearance, Madeleine McCann had become “Maddie”, as though we all knew her. Aside from what she looked like, we knew nothing about her whatsoever – not what toys she liked, “Cuddle Cat” aside, or what her favourite book was, or what she liked eating, or wearing (I am sorry to use the past tense, and mean nothing by it; the present tense looks even odder).

But in those early days of the investigation, she became a version of all of our children, a blank to superimpose our own child’s face onto as we peered into the abyss. This was, of course, terrifying: the idea that an ordinary-seeming family could go on holiday and have a child vanish into thin air was more than most of us could cope with.

The natural human instinct, when faced with a terrible fear, is to list the things that make us different from the victims of the frightening situation, and in this particular case there were few. Much was made at the time of the McCanns’ social class (working class gone middle), and of the fact that if a single mother from a housing estate had gone out on the razz and left her child alone, sympathy would be in short supply. This is another way of saying that if a person is recognisably different from us, the bad thing that happened to them couldn’t possibly happen to us. The problem with the McCanns is that they were so terrifyingly normal-seeming, so middle-classly resonant, with their neat Boden-esque clothes and their responsible jobs and their three little children.

How to differentiate ourselves from them, and thereby reassure ourselves that their misfortune would never be ours? By focusing obsessively on the one questionable thing they did: leaving their children alone in a strange place. Phew – instant relief. “I’d never do that,” the thought process went. “I’m safe. My children will never be harmed.”

This is clutching at straws, frankly – as everyone surely knows by now, children who come to harm usually come to harm from a person known to them, more often than not in their own home. But we chose to clutch at this one particular straw, hence, I think, the disproportionate outpouring of vitriol against Kate McCann, who, regardless of her guilt or innocence, was, is and will continue to be punished because she had the temerity to seem so much like us.

She has also (more straws) been accused of seeming “unfeeling”, of looking “too groomed” (“I’d look a mess, therefore we’re not the same, therefore it could never happen to me”), of seeming strangely “calm” (or tranquillised, surely?), of, basi-cally, not falling to her knees screaming like an animal in pain – it’s “Show us you care, Ma’am” all over again.

In some internet chatrooms and message boards, women bitch about Kate McCann for not reacting exactly like them – not that they’d know how they’d react in her situation, since they have never been in it. No matter: weird, isn’t it, how she seems so composed – and let’s not call it composure, let’s call it “arrogance” (this from the country that invented the stiff upper lip). Must make her a child killer, and not have anything to do with being told that visible distress might give pleasure to a hypothetical abductor.

And why are her clothes nice? Who thinks about clothes at a time like this? Why does she wash her hair? Couldn’t she wear rags, or sackcloth and ashes? Or – any day now – tar and feathers? And what was that nonsense with the Pope? (Who’d have thought the devout Catholic/Pope combination would be so perplexing and aggravating to so many people?)

Our fascination also exists because this story is centrally concerned with what many people perceive as a failure of parenting, a topic we are obsessed by as a nation. We are, collectively, eaten up with anxiety about raising our children. It’s a relatively new thing – people just used to have children and get on with it – and is reflected by the deluge of television programmes, books and publications devoted to how to be a parent.

Women, especially, have become almost pathologically insecure on the subject: am I a bad person if I bottle-feed; have I failed if I have a caesarean; do I harm my children by going out to work; have they got enough friends; do they sleep too much or too little; do they eat enough super-foods and fish oils; do they need to learn Mandarin; do they play outside enough; and so on and on.

With that insecurity comes the strongest desire to judge, as a means of self-reassurance: you see it every day in the ongoing working mothers versus stay-at-home ones debate. “Well, she barely sees her children because she’s in the office all day, so I’m better than her and my children will be happier” versus “She’s going out of her mind with boredom because she’s stopped working, so I’m better than her” – nobody can win, and the crazy thing is that nobody needs to: it’s hardly a competition.

Into this comes Kate McCann, who admits to a failure of parenting, to doing a stupid thing, and we fall on her like a pack of hyenas, weirdly pleased to leave behind our own failings and insecurities for a minute and concentrate on hers.

The fact is that while I would never leave small children alone, I know dozens of people who routinely do, and I do not find them irresponsible, just tired.

There are so many of them that a whole service industry has built up around them: “family” hotels with a baby-listening service where someone cocks an ear at the bedroom door every now and then while harassed parents try to grab the semblance of a date together in the dining room; holidays, like the McCanns’, with kids’ clubs attached, where children are parked with what amounts to a stranger while parents try to sunbathe in peace for a couple of hours; skiing trips where the chalet comes complete with a random nanny; gyms with crèches; restaurants with some weird bloke in a clown suit “entertaining” the children in another room; and so on.

A certain section of society routinely leaves their children in the care of somebody else whom they don’t know terribly well, no matter what the nanny agency has murmured soothingly about police checks. You can think what you like about this, but it is a fact of middle-class life, trying to reconcile loving your children with still having a life of your own, and an omnipresent source of anxiety for many people – if it weren’t, you couldn’t buy teddies with cameras hidden in them to check up on your child carer, and many women wouldn’t have the unpleasant niggling feeling that they don’t entirely trust their nanny to bring up their child.

The McCanns were foolish and wrong to leave three small children – babies, really – alone in a strange apartment. But doesn’t the subsequent calamity override the initial human error? Apparently not: only a fifth of Britons think they are completely innocent, according to a poll for this paper today. And 76% think they were wrong to leave them alone. And yet we all take risks: you take a risk every time you let a child out of your sight, every time they board a bus or a train, every time they’re a bit evasive about their whereabouts. If your house is burgled and you stupidly didn’t switch on the burglar alarm, does that mean you deserved it? Does it make your distress, your sense of violation and the loss of your goods any less significant?

Meanwhile, with hideous inevitability, the focus has shifted to Kate McCann’s being “volatile”. She “visi-bly lost control” while being questioned for 11 hours, we are told. It’s such a depressingly familiar scenario: a woman in an untenable situation is pushed to breaking point, and then when she does lose it – as lose it she will, because she’s not a robot or a monster – her sane response to an insane, unbearable set of circumstances becomes evidence with which to condemn her.

Impound her diary, call in all lap-tops: she must have done it if she shows any feelings. And she must have done it if she doesn’t. QED: she’s had it either way.

We are now told, by Portuguese newspapers who claim to have published extracts, that her diary, which the police want to see, shows she “struggled to control Madeleine”, that her children were “hyperac-tive”, and that looking after them exhausted her.

She also allegedly wrote that her husband left her to look after them too much on her own. Show me a woman with three children under four who doesn’t express the same frustrations, and I’ll show you an improbability. But even this utterly normal maternal response to child-care – it’s knackering, I wish he’d help out more – is being used as an indication of Mrs McCann’s “instability”.

And the people who’ve been there and ought to be able to sympa-thise – other women – are the ones sharpening their knives. As Madeleine Albright, the former US secretary of state, once said: “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” If that is so, hell must have got pretty crowded over the past four months.

The McCanns did themselves no favours when they embarked, deliberately, on a gigantic, modern publicity campaign. And that has contributed in no small part to making this case seem so compelling now. It is hard to criticise their original motive for hyping up the publicity, but in the process the McCanns unwittingly turned themselves into a soap opera: available to view on a screen near you 24 hours a day.

As I write, there are reports that they’re looking for a new, bigger “campaign manager” to try to stem the tide of negative comment. (In what world did Gerry McCann think it was a good idea to put in an “appearance” at the Edinburgh television festival?) But it’s too late. The tide won’t be stemmed and the appointment of a Max Clifford figure will make things worse, not better. Every soap needs a baddie and since we seem to have forgotten that we’re not, in fact, watching a brilliantly scripted and plotted episode of Portuguese Holiday, it was only a matter of time before the goodie turned bad.

What a twist! How compelling! More, more. Give me the inside story. One of these mornings, we’re going to wake up and see just how ghastly a part our own voyeurism has played in all of this. At least, I hope we are.

Vitriolic rants of the online rabble

IF you haven’t read what is on the internet about the McCanns you wouldn’t believe it. Here are a few examples of the kind of vitriol out there. Trawling through the sites to find these quotes is like a trip through the darkest recesses of people’s most ungenerous minds.

- ‘I never believed in your pain – the Find Madeleine McCann website

- Kate McCann is an ineffectual, weak and total washout of a mother and probably mentally unbalanced. Pathetic woman should never have had kids if she couldn’t cope – Mulderx, Mirror forum

- Gerry McCann does come across as a thug to me. I have no idea if wifey is involved but either way she is still as guilty as sin for leaving her children alone – Halibutswift, Mirror forum

- The McGrubs are terrible examples of parenting and should be prosecuted. At the very least, they should have to attend parenting classes. The day you put tapas and alcohol before the health and wellbeing of your offspring is a very bad day!!!! – Dr Kildare, HaloScan

- The people who must shoulder the burden of responsibility for the Maddie disappearance are Gerry and Kate McCann. If they did it, they are sick and evil and deserve to rot for ever. If they didn’t, they let her down by being selfish and indulging in their own pleasures leaving her alone and vulnerable – Val, Skynews

- The parents are a disgrace. They were on the razz every night after leaving their children in the crèche all day every day. Much wanted children? More like little fashion statements that they couldn’t be bothered to look after properly. The children unfortunately got in the way of their “me time” – Proud Parent UK, Alpha Mummy

- These people are doctors and in their professional lives would not hesitate to point the “abuse” finger at any other parent who left their children alone like they did. They should hang by their own noose – Arthur, Alpha Mummy

- I do think the McCanns have acted somewhat oddly throughout this investigation – particularly the mother. I can’t quite see it as natural for a mother in her position to make one of her immediate priorities in the days immediately following the disappearance of her daughter a visit to the Pope – without her remaining children – Krazykoolkazza, Mumsnet

- Even female doctors are subject to domestic abuse whether it be mental, physical or psychological bullying. Kate looks to me to be very submissive to Gerry. Her eyes dart towards him when the couple are questioned by the media. It’s as though she can’t speak up for herself. The running is another strange one. I’m a keep fit nut but the last thing on my mind would be to run if one of my kids were abducted. I would be spewing venom and ranting. – Ragna, Mirror forum’

The Maccans are wonderful parents and of course they had nothing to do with it.
I sincerely hope their beautiful daughter will be returned to them soon.
My heartfelt thoughts go out to them all at this very worrying time.
God Bless them always.
C. Jones, Swansea, Wales.

Mrs. C. Jones, Swansea, Wales

My heart goes out to them.. Of course you'd be acting strange if your child went missing- in despair, tired, stressed and yes feeling guilty about leaving her alone. But what a horrible price to pay.. no-one deserves to pay this much for such a mistake. Hopefully Madeleine is safe.

Louise, Brisbane, Australia

I am utterly appalled by the comments above regarding the McCanns and their "supposed" involvement in Madeleines' disapearance. It makes me sick to the stomach that this tradgedy has been been turned into some sort of perverse pastime for pathetic critics that have nothing better to do than....

G. Turley , Halmstad, Sweden

I think the only person, who is guilty in this case, is the person who has abducted Madeleine. Gerry and Kate are obviously very upset, but why on earth would they want to hurt their little girl? Whoever has taken Madeleine is a very sick person, and I hope they get their revenge. She will be found!

Stephanie Lane, Birmingham, England

Came across this randomly, and just wanted to say what brilliant writing I thought it was. Have always been a Times reader but have overlooked India's columns, and will be searching them out now.

Eleanor, Bognor,

To all the doubters,
The papers are 100% to blame for feeding their readers fiction and not facts. Ask anyone who has lost a child if they could go and sit with friends and eat a meal. firstly your stomach would not let you, secondly you would be in shock you would not be able to talk.
All the sorrys in the world cannot repay what you have put these people through. As if its not bad enough your child going missing without trace then the media heap the blame on these loving parents. If any of you doubters could be put in the shoes of the McCanns for 5 minutes you would understand what they have been put through just to sensationalise untrue stories. No millions could repair the hurt and sorrow you have caused these people.

p.gouldson, Liverpool, England

My heart goes out to Kate and Gerry, as a mother or three daughters I know how i would feel if this happened to me.

Time and interferance from other sources have turned 2 of my daughters into strangers to me, and it has now been 16 years since my eldest child had anything to do with me, i break my heart everyday about it \ BUT i know were my daughter is, and my pain is terrible, so what Kate and Gerry will be going through must be unbearable beyond comprehension.

People want to look to themselves first before being so critical of them. I know that i would not have left such young children on their own no matter what, yet i think if we are honest, years ago, when i was bringing mine up there were times when you did things that today would be unthinkable. I pray that there is a miracle and that Madeline will be found. Dont critisice Kate for trying to keep her dignity in front of the public, i know that she must be going through hell inside. Dont be hard on them, give them space.

S A Mulligan, Doncaster South Yorkshire, England

I cannot bear all the horrid things being written. It is clear as day that Kate and Jerry are simply trying their hardest to find their lovely daughter. I cannot stop thinking about them all and so very much hope that they will get some news soon.
Lucy, Devon

Lucy Goaman, Bideford, Devon

i am so sooooooo sorry kate and gerry. i am 11 years oild and i am alredy an aunty. i have not got a child obviously. but if i losdt my neice i dont know what i would do. i et we will find her somehow someday.

nicole, england, england

Always in thoughts every day, thank god the papers keep this alive

Michael & Pauline Baker, London, UK

Goood luck godbless u gerry and kate I'm 8 years old love Hannahxxxxxxxxfrom Wales

Hannah, Bala, United Kingdom

we now have the book,before we even know what has happened to her,next the film,this all means money.it all seems very odd,things do not ring true,that is why so many people believe that the parents are guilty of something.

chris, cornwall,

there,s a true saying in this world,( the eyes of truth are always watching you.)no matter were you are or who you are,my heart goes out to mr & mrs mccann.what thay must be going through,is hard to comprehend,to have ur child taken dosent bear thinking about,i say lets send gerry & kate lots of love,and ( hope) god will guide the people to find her.

godbless u gerry & kate.
love jaki x x x.

jaki, essex., england

Innocent until proven guilty in my opinion. However, the McCanns have - rightly or wrongly - helped create this situation with their publicity campaign. This publicity now has a momentum of it's own which cannot be controlled. Bearing this in mind, If I was the McCanns campaign 'manager' I would encourage them to take a polygraph test. It would not 'prove' anything, but would go a long way to stopping the vitriol from a large section of the public and allow the re-focus on the search for Madeline. If on the other hand.........

Harry, Limoges, France

Stop being spiteful and blaming Gerry and Kate because if they had employed a babysitter who wuld have been a stranger to the children how do we know they still would have been safe. How would we know if the staff wer genuine and perhaps Gerry and Kate felt looking in on them was the safest way. In hindsight - no, but we must stop blaming them as they must be near to breakdown point, they have taken so much. We can all argue regarding whether they were right or wrong but neglectful they wer not as they were on the complex. I have felt for weeks that there is a German connection and if that turns out to be correct then it seems dreadful that they were being watched constantly by someone close by and accomplices, whilst enjoying a family holiday. Lets watch this space and wait for the outcome over the next couple of weeks.
Love to you and your family and God is with Gerry and Kate.
Everyone who loves God feels you will find her.
All my love Pam x x x

Pam, Watford, England

Give the McCanns a break, you sanctimonious creeps.
They've suffered and continue to suffer.

Gabriel, Eden,

Hi well as a mom i would die to find out where my child is and get her back home, I'll go totally insane! but this story has a ugly twist and I fear that it is way not over. I just pray that Lil Made is safe if its in god's arms or just lost. I'm just so disgusted that they gave the kids sensitives to sleep. My kids are unbelievably hi-per active and Never will I do such a cruel thing! What are thy hiding?

Suzanna, Germiston, Shouth-Africa

Name and shame the lot. Let their families see every single post they have posted.
I wonder what they would say if Madeleine was found safe and well. My heart goes out to all of the McCanns. This is such a tragic tragic case. What ever happened to "There for the grace of God go I."

kate , glasgow,

People want the drama. Personally I don't know how to differentiate this case to any other missing child case. I think it is the media for they are the ones that raved on about it in the first place. If the media had kept it a little more low key then you wouldn't get all the chatter about it in the first place. The public is merely giving their opinion - if media makes a big deal of something then you are likely to get sympathy, abuse and criticism.

I can also blame the parents (only a little) for bringing it upon themselves. But I can excuse them (in a way) because they lost something very precious to them and any human would go through hell to get that thing back. If they wanted any chance of finding her again they would need some recognition.

The media sometimes annoys me because it manipulates information presenting few references to look up on. The truth is bent to suit the story. The British media has realised that a drama can be made out of this, so it has

James, Guildford, England

No, I don't find myself drawn to the story. While I might appear to be contradicting myself by even responding to this article, I the whole story should be left to simple factual reporting. The child is missing, There is little more to say than that. I usually see the mention of the name "McCann" and ignore the article, as my presumption now is that unless the headline says "child found" or "XYZ charged," it will be more uesless nonsense. All the published speculation and "analysis" perpetrated by newspapers is contemptible.

Nick, Rotherham, UK

Why are people in the world so cruel,just because a heartbroken mother can keep her dignity,she is accused of killing her little girl,as a GP she is used to hiding her emotions,she is convinced she is going to find her little girl so she holds on to that hope ,we dont see her sadness behind closed doors,she also has an inner strength which is spiritual,we cant imagine the way she must be feeling to be going through all this heartache and then to be accused ,why are people so quick to judge without having sufficient evidence,I personally would like to give them the benefit of the doubt ,lets keep looking for maddie

Yvonne, manchester, uk

I think you must have been reading the yahoo Q&A forum website as you have almost quoted forbatum word for word that written.

No wonder you felt the need to write this most excellent article which actuall y says it all about the kind of society we have created for ourselves.

Heaven help those who have helped themselves in life as they will be ostracised as has Kate McCann. It makes me wonder if all the protesting about leaving those children home along so to speak has not struck a sour chord in their own childrens upbringing.

However and perhaps if nothing else comes out of all this vitriol we will all stop and think about popping out to the next door neighbour whilst the kids are asleep upstairs. I t happens to other people not us....not!

Nettie, Aberdeenshire, United Kingdom

I was bowled over by your article which is definitely the finest piece of journalism to come out of this sad affair. It needed saying.
I think history shows that you don't actually have to LEAVE your children for them to be at risk, plenty have been abducted from under their parents noses, eg through the bedroom window while the house was occupied and the parents awake or asleep.
And I wouldn't want the determination of my child's fate to depend on the investigative capabilities of any foreign police force. If I had other resources I'd use them just as the McCann's have.

Dave, Scotland,

Lindy Chamberlain, Joanne Lees, the McCanns...

The trial by media in these cases clearly shows that the general mainstream media is worthless. It is simply unable to restrain itself. There is no such thing as 'too far'. If it were a person, it would be a spiteful obsessive compulsive.

As for blogs, it's clear from this whole affair that around 50% of people who post on this topic are self-obsessed, judgmental, brainless, pathetic examples of humanity. I can only hope that they don't reflect the general population, because if they do, western society in general is in trouble.

This case has acted as a mirror for society, and it's very ugly.

As for casting aspersions on the McCanns, it's dangerous and insulting. If there is sufficient evidence implicating them, then the police should charge them and a court can decide, otherwise the police should keep quiet about it. I would have thought this standard operating procedure.

What really matters is finding Madeleine.

Kim, Adelaide, Australia

India Knight, what a brilliant article! I have also noticed the pure venom on websites and from the mouths of supposedly well educated people. How can they possibly feel such hatred for two people they have never met? How can they proffess to know what they would feel if a child was taken from them? How can they judge Kate McCanns emotion, or her need to jog, as she is no doubt hyperactive with grief, like my mother in law was after the death of my late father in law? Where has the emotion gone? Is there no sane person in the world who can wonder how they would feel? I hope so and I shall keep my sympathy for the McCanns, as i find that the gutter press has managed to ignite the opinions of those who just love to get excited about their own poisonous speculations. Thank you for making me realise I am not alone in my thoughts!

Angela Hunter, Whitburn, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear

A magnificent and compassionate article. Those spewing venom over the McCanns in blogs and on websites are really to be pitied: such irrational attitudes suggest a need for treatment. They bring the whole blogosphere into disrepute, which -- as a compulsive blogger myself -- I profoundly regret.

Brian B.
<a href="http://www.barder.com/ephems/">http://www.barder.com/ephems/</a>

Brian Barder, London, UK

Good article.

Anyone who advertises with Yahoo especially should have a good long hard look if they want to continue the association as Yahoo has allowed disgusting and slanderous claims to be made on their website.

Caroline, London, UK

I couldn't agree more with this article. I have blogged about exactly the same thing as I was so horrified by the vitriol I have read in the last week on the internet. The McCanns deserve our pity and compassion. A very great wrong has been done to them in the last week.

Julia Williams, Epsom,

I been following the news on Madeleine these last couple of weeks, and everytime i see the face of this lovely girl, my heart melts. I just and pray that, she will be found soon. Hope the police will continue for the hunt. I still believe to the McCanns.

jennifer, abergavenny, monmouthshire

India your article was spot on. It made me question my own interest in this story - I have deliberately avoided much of the media speculation because all I really want to see is that Madeleine is found and they are reunited. I still watch the news every day hoping for that outcome for them all.

Much of the comment from ordinary people has rerminded me of the bible story about people in glass houses throwing stones. The treatment of Gerry and Kate by these people is unforgiveable. What right have they to sit in judgement - using only rumour speculation and their own bigotry as evidence to consider?

It is a very sad comment on todays society that we are unable to tolerate any differences and use those differences to attack and judge others. I admire their tenacity and dignity. I have no idea how I would behave in the same scenario and I hope I never have to find out.

I wish I could help and let Kate and Gerry know that some of us out here have the compassion and empathy.

Rachel Fawcett, Harrogate, UK

Thank goodness for India Kight's mixture of compassion and common sense. She expressed my own thoughts and feelings perfectly. Some revelations about public reaction shocked me, making me feel depressed that there are so many vindictive, judgemental people out there. This is all the more reason for journalists like India Knight to make their views public.

Jennifer ROHSLER, BIRMINGHAM, UK

Excellent article, just excellent. Perfectly sums up my feelings on this whole sorry case. This has brought out the best in some and the worst in others.

I do believe that these people are in minority though - vocal as they are, they represent a tiny proportion of soceity.

As Ghandi said :"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."

Joanne, Manchester,

What an excellent article. I absolutely agree it is so true people very often pile on other peoples failings to deflect from their own .As a hard working mum in sales i most evenings arrive home usually at 7pm or later exhausted. And im expected to sit down and help with my little ones homework. I do not think i am a failure for not doing this or the fact i like a glass of wine. The Online petition to have madeleins parents investigated set up by a Ms Marilyn Baker is very upsetting. I was so angry iv emailed Ms baker. I assume as Ms Baker if i am correct as she is a Ms not Miss or Mrs. Ms Baker is divorced she is most likely envious of the Mcanns for being middle class and intelligent . I suggest she should start looking at her own failings.

Debra Dudley, essex, uk

A new twist in this unique story is that the media are now turning on the public - shifting blame and shame - is it embarrassment?

This story was newsworthy because it had no end, it had good picture opportunities - the news channels saturated the public with 'non-news' as Team McCann graced us with statements about nothing. Reporters reported on other reporters when there was no news to report.

Now that the story has taken a macabre twist, the sentimental focus of 'parents on a mission' tastes sour - it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth - so here is the latest news - the media reports on itself again and still tries to retain a certain 'gloss' - we are not as bad as them

Great headline India but should it not read 'WE are all guilty?'

The media have neglected the real story, the real talent of investigative journalism was missing and Madeleine is forgetten yet again - without the 'panto-villain-Paedo' the public are to shoulder the 'bad' tag - long live UK journalism!

vix, derby, UK

I agree with this article completely. The reactions to this case have revealed worst kind of unthinking, herd behaviour. It is exactly like schoolyard bullying. Also appalling is the drip, drip effect of leaks from the straw-grasping Portuguese police, in a country where is is supposedly forbidden to talk about an ongoing enquiry! Sadly this has shown how many people out there have malicious imaginations, and lack the basic intelligence to separate fact, fiction, and that which is simply unknown.

Caroline Elliott, London,

This article was one of the best I've read in weeks and weeks of obsessively reading up on Madeleine -- and feeling more depressed by the nasty people in the "forums" than the actual case itself, from time to time.

I'd like to add one reason we somehow WANT Kate McCann to be guilty. (Or, in my world, this goes through my mind from time to time)...

And that is: The alternative may be worse. I hate to suggest it, but it's possible there are fates worse than death... If Madeleine is in the hands of a paedophile who has kept her alive and, say, repeatedly raped her over the past four months,, her terror has only just begun. IF she is dead, her pain is over. This is not to hope Madeleine dead, only that the idea of this girl's terror and horror and pain if she is in the hands of someone not treating her well, it's worse in a way than thinking her parents accidentally overdosed her with some sleeping pills ....
Either way, thank you for your clear-thinking article. Bless you.

Kristen, Santa Fe, USA/New Mexico

Dear India

What an excellent article and what a sad reflection on many people today who are willing to accept speculation, inuendos and trial by some members of the media! What happened to innocent till proven guilty? I would ask everyone to consider walking a mile in the shoes of Kate and Gerry. Imagine yourself in their position with many people turning against you because they let their imaginations run riot. I think they have watched too many crime thrillers. What has happened to their compassion, their understanding. They obviously do not know what the word empathy means because they seem unable to be empathic with two respectable people who went on holiday with their family and made a mistake that has cost them dearly. Can any one of those who criticise and judge Kate and Gerry put their hands on their hearts and say they never made a mistake? I think not.
I would ask each of these people to search their conscience. I hope they never find themselves in the spotlight.

Christine Redfern, Sutton-in-Ashfield, Notts, UK

The most intelligent article I've read for 3 months.

pat.R, Manchester, UK

How dare you say this? it's bad enoguh that we're hounded with this same old story as if the world's survival depended on this little girl or something and then to blame US for not caring enough!! i did care about the parents. But i think this article really killed off any sympathy i had for kate and gerry mcann. Your sarcastic saying of "power to the people" sounds like something hitler would have said. You're no better then the nazis actually, trying to force people to belive that the mcanns have done nothing wrong. Hounding them with propaganda day and night. But your little facist trick won't work these days because we DO have these internet forums. And i really don't see how slagging off everyone who uses a forum is going to make people feel any more sympathetic. Also those comments you picked out aren't even that bad compared to the things some people say. Infact i don't think they're "vitriolic" or "rabble" at all. Infact YOUR article is the DEFINITION of vitriolic!

Edward, Kingston upon Hull,

Congratulations to you for offering such a well written and thoughtful side to this case.

It restores my faith in humanity - that despite the onslaught of media availability and speculaton - there are people out there who rationalise things and choose to see situations from dlifferent points of view.

Simone Eisler, Brisbane, Australia

Terrific article India

AlisonF, London,

Amen to your article. Where or where has our compassion for other human beings gone?

Andrea, Nottingham,

I agree with all you say in your article.

I've seen some of the anonymous comments about the McCanns posted on websites .

At least Madame Desfarges had the courage to be identified sitting beside the guillotine.

Mike, Cardiff, Wales

Thanks,once again, to India Knight for her wise, well-measured article. Possibly the most distasteful and frightening aspect of the 'Madeleine' case is the merciless reaction of a seemingly large section of the public.
If such 'critics' are speaking on the basis of lengthy experience of raising children in a faultless manner then perhaps we should listen to them, but I sense this is not the case.

Jane McGoran, Renfrewshire, Scotland

Let us all wait a couple of years for the Hollywood film to find out what happened.

Adrian, Richmond, Surrey

What a load of self-righteous bullies out there.
These lynching mobs must be feeling great right now,
after kicking the McCann when they are down.
I just hope they would never have to experience the hell
they are in right now.

gs, London, UK

thank you, you have clarifeid the great who dunnit.
Any one who reads your writings will now look again at the facts and non-facts and ask themselves if they really should be making a judgement on others.

b.phillips, bremen, germany

"Sky News lists Madeleine McCann as a “category” on its interactive content screen: news, business, sport, Madeleine."

The Timesonline website does virtually the same thing.

"The ecstasy of sanctimony"?

Daniel Wild, Derby, UK

India, you wrote this on June 3rd;
"I wrote about Madeleine McCann just after she’d been abducted, and was quite startled by my postbag. Roughly half the letters sympathised impotently with Gerry and Kate McCann; the other half were entirely, and brutally, condemnatory."

Yet now you say the majority of your post bag was anti-McCann.

Mark, Glasgow,

India - you disappoint me, whilst this article appears to be mainly a criticism of (some of) the publics reaction and behaviour, you have put in far too much of the negative without counterbalancing with the positive. This gives an incorrect picture. For example the petition asking they be investigated by Social Services - there was another petition supporting the McCanns asking the other petition be disregarded (which it was). As for all the hate filled comments you have quoted -what about all the positive ones? There are many, although probably less as the people who are supportive seem more balanced and less prone to 'vent their spleen' in the way the vitriolic ones do. My experience is that the majority of people are horrified by the case - the poor child who is still missing together with the horrendous way the family are being speculated about and generally treated.

Sarah, Shrewsbury,

Along with Dominic Lawson's piece that appeared last week in the Independent, this is the very best article that I have read about this case and the ensuing media coverage. I have read much of the Sky news threads and have been consistently appalled by both the lack of humane thought and also the basis upon which so many posters seem prepared to condemn Kate and Gerry McCann; they don't address the camera directly and Kate McCann looks too good seem to be the prevalent factors. Posters also seem to be unwilling or unable to undertand that 'evidence' printed in the press that is suggestive of their supposed guilt is unverified, selective and generally not placed within a wider context that would inform its relevance or otherwise. Most importantly, the idea of presumption of innocence has been discarded: the McCanns have not been charged with any crime, much less found to be guilty but this means nothing to posters who ask, in their rhetorical caps, Y CAN'T U C THEY R GUILTY?

Jane B, Burton-on-Trent, UK

I completely agree with you. Wish every person writing in a group/chatroom/etc. would have to read this first. One question to those who are being so hard on this couple: How did you behave when your child was abducted? Ooooohhh, you mean you've never had it happen to you? Very interesting. And, by the way, when the article asks for your thoughts, it doesn't mean you have to spew venom, even if you don't agree. You could be reasonable, and imagine that the couple might be innocent of the crime on top of the grief of being without their child, then give your comments more thoughtfully.

Dawn Briscoe, Loganville, GA/USA

Thank goodness for India Knight's humane, realistic and gut-wrenchingly honest overview of Madeleinism that is slowly consuming the nation. We all feel involved - and it's reached contaminatory status. I'm a mother, I live in Leicestershire, I have two children, I'm literate, intelligent and yet I've been following this story with an almost religious fervour since it broke half-fascinated by the what ifs, and half-appalled by the implications of Worst Case Scenario. It shakes the foundations of everything I profess to believe in. I should stop centralising this issue. Before I do, I'm going to re-read this article and let the realities embed themselves. Thank you, India (and I love My Life On A Plate!).

Katie Kirk, Leicestershire, UK

What a fantastic article. I have been waiting to read something like this for some time. I was starting to wonder if I was going a bit crazy..."Am I the only one out here who sees the absolute absurdity in the way these poor people are being treated?" It blows me away how cruel people have been. How in the world could these people have been able to cover up something like this without anybody seeing them!!!!! People would rather believe the Mccanns were some kind of super humans who could magically make their daughter disappear under everyone's noses than to believe that some sick creature out there snatched their precious daughter, and subjected her to unmentionable horrors. I am so heartbroken for them. What a nightmare to be living...and to be treated like this by so many cruel heartless people. While the Mccanns are being tortured, the real monster is out there - quite possibly planning on doing this again.

j.difrancesco, Hamiton, Ont, Canada

India Knight,
You wrote all my thoughts about this case, you are righton almost everything.

Ines, Reutlingen, Germany

Tabloid journalism blurred the line between news and hearsay long ago, and I suspect the author of this piece knows that. This article is, if anything, a rather embarassing piece of premier buck-passing by a disempowered journalist who feels remorse and regret as the media's monopoly on spreading misinformation comes to an end.

Just think, you might have actually had something to complain about if you stood for anything in the first place.

James B, Brighton,

About time somebody made the point about the way the public, mainly the British public has acted. This case has been an education in human nature and almost nobody has come out with any sense of dignity, that I'm afraid to say, includes the Mcanns but they are the ones suffering and are backed into a corner. How you can say the British press have "acted pretty responsibly" is beyond me though, Reporting that a junior detective told his hair dresser Maddie might be dead and putting it in bold headlines on the front page as if it was fact is hardly responsible (not this paper).

David, Warwickshire,

I feel really sorry for them, and am sure they did not hurt Madeline. I leave my children alone sometimes, although they are abit older, and my Mother left us alone sometimes too - and it was fine. It is not their fault that Madeline was taken. I think many people are very cruel and heartless in their comments

jo tamrakar, Oxford, UK

India Knight writes a soulfull article about how "we" are all criminals for airing our unwanted and useless views about a family's very personal tragedy and the paper asks us to post our viws on it. How's that for irony!!!

Shalini, Derby, UK

I totally agree with India Knight. I think part of the reason so many people are willing to believe the McCann's are responsible is because everyone wants "closure" on this case. If it turns out to be the parents, then nobody need worry about the bogeyman. I, for one, believe the McCanns are innocent and should be left alone. Meanwhile the actual hunt for Madeleine is being overshadowed. People question their media campaign, but I know I would do anything to save my children, even if it meant 24 hour scrutiny - if it brought my child back, it would be worth it.

Tracy Forsythe, Hove, East Sussex

Thank you, India, for your thoughtful article with which I completely agree. I have every sympathy for the McCanns and I hope they will gain some respite or closure from this ongoing nightmare soon. The amount of spite and abuse heaped upon them by wide sections of the British public is deeply distressing. It reminds me of the weeks after Sept 11 when thousands of apparently normal, well-educated liberal people appeared unable to restrain their glee at the savage attacks on America. I wonder what has happened to people's reserves of natural empathy, tolerance and compassion. Somehow we have become consumed by bitterness and prejudice and have allowed our resentments to be redirected en masse against vulnerable indivduals. In group psychology parlance, I suppose you would call it negative displacement or scapegoating.

Philip M, London,

I do not think the McCanns are guilty and i would like to see wh
oever has taken her let the papers know and end this families nightmare they have been through enough knowing they may never see Madeleine again.They must be absolutely heartbroken.

Gail baguley, North Devon, United Kingdom

A good article and a good point, essentially, inasmuch as you are making the point that everyone's innocent until proven otherwise.

A couple of issues - I don't think the mainstream media has acted responsibly at all. Rumours have been published in the press as quickly as they've been made. What about this guy Murat - his name and details of his personal life were splashed all over the papers for maximum gratuitous effect and now it looks like he had nothing to do with any of it. Everything I read about him, I read first in the mainstream press.

The other thing is you could take another sample of forum comments that were as supportive of this family as the ones that you have selected are damning. There's a great range of opinion, as there always is in life, and not all of it is vicious. A lot of people are decent, and just hope that things work out for this family, and all others that have the rotten experiences that the rest of us all hope to avoid.

thinkingaloud, London, UK

Not a hint of irony here then - "have your say" on India's article on the unpleasantness of people having their say.

Agatha, edinburgh,

India has once again found the psychological pulse of this relentless drama.
The McCanns have set the stage for a public execution , with too much exposure.
Human beings at our core, are bloodthirsty, crying out for a crucifixion rather than sympathetically turning away.
Will we ever evolve to be a race of peace?
Voyerism has become an international obsession ala Big Brother . We might as well build a stadium showcasing Gladiators versus The McCanns; it is that barbaric.
We must turn the magnifier on ourselves; what if it had been me? How would anyone of us stand up to the scrutiny, the loss?

Kellan Steck-Refoy, London, Great Britain

i agree totally with everything that India Knight wrote

jacqueline nutt, wendover bucks,

Before suggesting that behaviour is "odd" please remember the Dingo Baby case. And don't forget too that there were those who frequently accused the late Jane Tomlinson of not having cancer. Presumption of innocence until proven otherwise is always the best maxim in cases where the ignorance and prejudice of the public remind us just how close to the jungle "civilised" society really is.

P Thomas, North West, UK

I, like you have found myself fascinated by this story, I was not in the earlier days, but since it has become a PR battle between the McCanns and the Portugese Press, and then the British Press and the Portugese press/police/legal system, I can not stop myself googling regularly.
I love the sense of humour / outrage etc that I often see on opinion pages, some very intelligent comments - some horrible - ALL opinionated.
Is that a bad thing? or is it just new and different?
I have my opinions, and I like to discuss them with other interested people, that doesn't make me a bad person. I also like to look at my own three children and remember how hard it was when they were toddlers. Parenting is a thankless business, is it wrong to use a story like this to acknowledge that you did OK?
I don't beleive the comments that people post are aimed at hurting the McCanns, surely nothing we could say would make their situation any worse?

jenny, leicester, uk

I agree with most of this sensible article. The judgement heaped upon the McCanns has arisen for two reasons: first, we live in a culture which is judgemental of parents; second, there is a widespread misunderstanding about the risk of child abduction. In relation to the first, I've found (as mother to 3 children) that strangers often think they know how to parent my children better than I do. It's not surprising, therefore, that the McCanns have been found 'guilty' of being bad parents by total strangers. And the second reason- the risk of stranger abduction is very rare (I think there were 5 last year). Many children go missing, but most are runaways or are taken by a parent involved in a custody dispute. Yet there is this idea circulating that abductions by strangers are common, so if you leave your children alone and they are taken, you are 'asking for it'. It's ridiculous and unfair, and only confirms in me a belief that there are many not very bright people out there.

LJ, London,

I agree with the contents of India's article. I, t oo ,find myself trying to interpret all the newspaper articles. I can find numerous loolholes in the facts , which are being used to incriminate Gerry and Kate, and I am sure that they are innocent. I shall go on believing that I am right until there is sufficient evidence to prove otherwise. Is there anything specific that we can do to make them aware of our support?
One factor I can't comprehend is the fact that I would have expected D.N.A from Madeieine to be on the twins belongings and on items belonging to the parents infact on every thing she had touched .Wouldn't this be quite normal or is there something I don't know about D.N.A.

JudithBurt, Hawarden,Flintshire, UK

All said & done I hope and pray that 'Maddie' is just fine, with a fairy tale ending to this whole affair.

Jayaprakash, Solomon, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Out of curiosity - which at times makes me feel somewhat guilty - I stumbled across a chat room and was saddened and shocked at some of the posts about the McCanns. Thank you for such an insightful article, and also the reassurance that there are others out there who are prepared to take a step back from the hype surrounding Madeleine's disappearance and show not only a little objectivity, but also empathy.

HAR, Solihull,

That is the problem with the masses they all want to have their say and they do not even know the facts.

Listen to everybody, Read everything, Believe nothing unless you can proove it for yourself"

joe bloggs , uk,

This article is spot-on - well done to India Knight for writing such a perceptive, thought-provoking piece on such a tragic situation. I feel ashamed of my own ghoulish interest in the case - desperate for the Hollywood happy ending that seems to be getting less & less likely as time goes on... Whatever the answer to this 'whodunit' there remains a family who have suffered an immense tragedy.

Sally Doyle, Surrey, UK

How bizarre! In a fairly balanced article you exonerate the media from blame"in this instance" and castigate the public for all the ludicrous comments.
But in the end you do that very thing and invite the public to "have your say"
So, sorry,Who's Guilty??

J.Alexander, Dunoon,

Beautifully analysed and expressed...a sane voice in the depressing swamp of vile banality which now threatens to engulf the McCann case

Pamela Sweetapple, Brisbane, Australia

Thank you for this article. I am terrified when I read the commentaries...

nicole laugel, Obernai, France

A superb article. It should be compulsory reading for the millions who, without a shred of evidence, sit in judgement over this tragic couple.
Dame Edna once said "I was born with the God given gift: the gift of getting pleasure out of other people's misfortunes".
Shame on those who are guilty of doing just that.

James Austin, Kingston upon Thames, England

I find the fact that people are willing to believe that a woman would not only murder her daughter (how does a mother 'accidentally' kill her daughter by the way?), but then keep her body for 3 weeks and then take it to her car and dispose of it under the intense scrutiny of the world press, absolutely ridiculous. I do not for one moment believe the McCanns killed their daughter and it's good to know that others also feel this way.

Michelle Matthews, Sothampton, United Kingdom

Thank you, India. This is the only decent piece of journalism to be written in the last 100+ days. I tthink there is a sad trend towards lack of sympathy for other people and complete disregard for anyone else's pain, let alone empathy, which is much harder to achieve anyway. We are in danger of becoming the society that is selfish to the point of bored disinterest about others. I agree about the public being the new press. Perhaps real journalists like India could start a public backlash against the decline.

SLC, Hants, U.K

Very insightful and so very true! I too have been appalled by the harsh judgement and lack of compassion expressed by "the public". Shameful. India, a well written and brilliant article. Thank you!

Sharon, Canberr, Australia

Thank you for your insight, honesty, and calling all of us on contributing to this media nightmare and human tragedy. What ever happened to "innocent until proven gulity"? I admire The McCann's for their tireless campaign to find their daughter and although, yes, this invites scrutiny from all (especially the media), I am so disgusted at the hate and anger towards them. Who are we to judge them ?? I am mostly disturbed by the people who have already condemned the parents with very little known fact and pure specualtion. It's shameful.

Carrie , Madrid , Spain

Great article India, you have excellent way of articulating what others are thinking. Well done!

sue, drayton valley, canada

Thank you for writing this article, India - I was beginning to feel quite isolated in my belief that the McCann's had nothing to do with the disappearance of Madeline. A madness seems to have taken over, the idea that somehow, a child could accidently die at the hand of her parents and the parents dispose of the body (rather than call for help) before joining their friends for dinner as if nothing had happened. Then there's the small matter of where you would hide the body for 26 days before smuggling it into your hire car in full view of the world's media. Crazy!

I have no doubt that tragically Madeline was taken from her bed by a stranger, every parent's nightmare. This poor family have had to suffer so much pain and this vitriol makes me so ashamed to be British. I think your analysis of the situation is spot on and it must be fear that produces such cruel and punitive behaviour.

jenny, London, UK

What an excellent article. My heart goes out to the McCanns and I dont, for one minute, believe they have anything to do with Madeleine's abduction.

Adele, Liverpool,

Great article with some excellent points raised. I have read that paedophile sites are encouraging their members to plant hate mail about the McCanns on forum boards and message boards. I would like to make the point that not everybody has joined this witch hunt to get the McCanns. I am part of a large group, Find Madeleine McCann and we have all given up our spare time to assist the McCanns in any way we can. For every McCann hater and basher they do have their supporters. I have seen Lindy Chamberlain be persecuted in Australia by the same type of mob mentality as well as Joanne Lees more recently. As Anne Frank said; In spite of everything, I still believe that people are basically good.
There ARE many, many people out there who care very much about Kate, Gerry and most of all - Madeleine.
The witch hunters might thrill to the sounds of the tumbril carts passing them but they have forgotten a fundamental truth - 'he amongst you who is without sin; cast the first stone'

JL, Sydney, Australia

At last an article on the whole McCann saga which shows some intelligence. Who is anyone to judge these people or sit on their pedestal lording it over them. Who wrote this rule book for how you should behave in such circumstances? I find it hard to believe that the people who have written such quotes have never made mistakes themselves but perhaps they have been able to forget them simply because nothing terrible befell them at the time. I wonder, should what seems to be the impossible happens, and Madeleine is found alive, what these people will think about themselves then. Will they still feel so justified in their comments and self rightiousness.

Helen, Bristol,

Some irony here - a discussion about the internet having too much of a say and then asking for comments!

This article is right. Free speech is one thing, but these personal and very aggressive remarks criticising this family are disgusting. We should all be ashamed. Nobody knows the truth - yet.

And messages of pure hate are acceptable yet those ones with a 'racist' or 'sexist' slant will be deleted.

This poor family have 'played' the media to help find their daughter and it has turned on them.

D Allum, London, Uk

Excellent article.Excellent!!!!

E.Azevedo, Lisbon, Portugal

Unfortunately McCanns had it coming. They never realised that by promoting the search thru media, personal appearances, visiting other countries such as the audience with the Pope made them famous. They also did not realise that the in vestigation by the Portugese Police was still open and ongoing and it had the potential to move in any direction.
Now that investigation has cast aspersions on McCanns. The media continues to be relentless. I am sorry for them.
It seems they have to pay the price due to error of judgement. My prayers and good wishes are with them.

m.a. razaq, Karachi, Pakistan

My doubts about the case only swayed when Branzo opened up his wallet; can't have upper middle classes doing things like this and not getting away with it can we now?? One doc's bad enough but two may alter the status quo. Funny how all attention's gone to saving the McCann's now that it's becoming more acceptable for people to consider Maddy as gone. If a working class family had been in the same situation as the McCanns, their kids would have been taken away from them and they woulld have been under lock and key long before any evidence had been found in a hire car. But doctors are so respected aren't they???

Magdelane Heart, Oslo,

I too cannot believe the vitriol. Oh that we were all such perfect parents! Kate and Gerry are trying to do is find their daughter. What would we do in the same position? I know I would use every resource available. The general public have lost sight of the fact that a 4 year old girl is missing. Stop the blame game and let's all get on with the job of trying to find Maddy who has parents who love her and desperately need some answers.

Shells, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

One thing is clear: the McCann's are extremelly effective in collecting funds. They have no difficulty in finding volunteeers to pay huge campaigns or expensive lawyers . But they didn't spend a single penny in private detectives up to now. Why rely on portuguese police investigation and on portuguese public funds?

Helena Vieira Alberto, Coimbra, Portugal

You are absolutely right. I have been sickened by some of the comments I've read online by members of the public. Not only their stupid arrogance - assuming that they have all the facts straight (and apparently, not realising that you have to be cautious about believing everything you read online or in the tabloid press...) but mostly the unbelievable, self-righteous cruelty and heard-heartedness. I'm so glad that you have written about this. These people should hang their heads in shame and hope that nothing ever happens to them that would allow them to be publicly torn to shreds in this way.
They're no better than a bunch of animals.

Inbxl, Brussels, Belgium

When I first heard about the McCann's tragedy, I felt a tiny echo of the pain that they are enduring. We have a pretty little blonde girl called Madeleine, who was four when this story broke, and I couldn't get the idea of my own little girl's unexplained disappearance out of my head.

As the weeks have turned into months, I now feel as much anger as sorrow. I find it hard to articulate the reasons, but I think that Ms Knight expresses the situation beautifully in this article. The sorrow was for a human tragedy. The anger is that the Portuguese police and now we, the public, can pour more anguish and pain on the heads of these unfortunate parents.

Richard Perry, London, UK

In this murder case only police is working propperly. The rest of that people who are involved in the crime scene are without any doubt "acting".
I would like to be wrong.

paco, madrid, spain

The investigation should go on without interruption or celebs involvement. The police has no other interest in the case rather than uncovering the truth. They have evidence, it is obvious. They must speak before The Team Mccann engages the whole political clan to hide what? The more defense and noise they create the less I like them. No matter how evil and unprobable the suspicions are, there is no smoke without fire. And again, if it were so unprobable, why would police come up with this version? Mccans cannot step back now, they need to fight and the color of this fight does not indicate the innocence. Also, if somebody wants to hide a body, who would do it better than a doctor who allegedly works with cadavres?

Helen, New York, NY

Shocking that 17,000 people signed to have the McCanns' two other children taken away from them in MAY. What a bunch of self-righteous busybodies. It makes me sick.

Lourdes, Madrid, Spain

I admire your audacity! How do the public know anything about this case?! From the media. If it were not for the redtops ridiculous and scare mongering headlines us 'sanctimonious' public wouldnt know half the 'facts'. Are we not entitled to our own opinions. Given such horrendous circumstances people are bound to think about it and form opinions. Im assuming that you have not for one minute even thought about more than one possibility surrounding the case. There are bound to be some crazy opinions out there, as there are crazy people, as we know from the people who took this girl. But well done for finding these extremist views, which 90% of the public will not share. Anyway, you should probably get on and write some more about this case.

S Wright, Harrogate,

Well said, India - I agree with you.

I distance myself from online Message Boards (try looking at the Radio 5 Live UK News board for evidence of normally sane people behaving in the manner you describe) because I am disgusted at the depths of depravity and vileness to which people will stoop.

It's as if they actually want the McCanns to be guilty - to satisfy a abnormal blood lust.

I am ashamed of these people and their obscene comments.

M C-W, Guernsey, Channel Islands

An excellent article. It certainly makes one stop and think "who are we to judge." I appreciate you making me turn the "glass" on myself.

AJ, Brockville, Canada

I found your article very interesting and thought provoking.With the rise of the internet the public can have much more involvement with the news process.
There are no effective checks and balances for the internet going public
The problem is it is very easy or anybody with internet access to make a point,however misconceived and for that view to look part of the process.
Generally, we the public do not think things through sufficiently and yet we are now free to let lose those misconceived prejudice onto the world.badly thought out or extreme.
I feel that we need more effective moderation to set extreme views in context and to call them into question. I do not know how this can be done but it does need to be part of the debate. As with any of the real tragedies we see on our screens they involve real people who have real feelings.
Abnormal things generally happen to normal people who cope as best as they can. Thank you for your article which ads to the debate

Simon Holborn, Hull, E Yorks

Thank you for such a fantastic article, you have just put down my views perfectly. I have been arguing the case this week on Yahoo Answers and many on there would see them thrown in jail without a trial.

H.D, Upminster, Essex

I am sick and tired of this story. I mean all this collective commotion in one of the most individualistic countries in Europe... Britons are drawn to celebs and the McCanns have indeed invested a lot of time (and donated money) into becoming just that. It’s easier to think about the McCanns than to reflect upon what is happening (or not) in your own community or to ponder about other issues. Just drop it. Get a life!

JJME, Manchester,

I have spoke to friends and family about this, and most people are sympathetic to the McCanns situation. Of the couple of people that have indicated they think the McCanns are dubious, they are probably the sort of people that winge about many things in there lives. Most parents I know are too busy bringing up their own children and balancing a hectic family life and work to spend their energies slating a family in a terrible situation. What's happened is every parents worst fear. When bad things happen to children, usually parents have been caught unawares, and spend a lifetime repenting. I think of the McCanns as stuck in the centre of a tornado, getting help and abuse chucked at them from every angle. I am not devoutly religious but what else is there for us to do expect pray for them and pray for Madeleine. There but for the grace of God go I...

Kelly Fleming, Corby, Northants

This is a superb piece of journalism. Real journalism. It is a brilliant analysis of the mob mentality. The same one that brought out the crowds to cheer a witch burned at the stake or a mother hung for stealing bread.

maggie vaughan, edinburgh, uk

When Marie Antoinette was a young queen she was criticised for spending too much on clothes; ten years later she set a fashion for simple cottons and muslins and was accused of endangering the French silk industry. She was continually bombarded behind her back with disgusting pamphlets alluding to her supposed debauchery. At her trial she was accused of committing the vilest acts with her son, the dauphin.
When she constantly failed to respond to these insults in the way the mob considered appropriate the queen was accused of being unemotional, proud and unfeeling. Finally, towards the end of her trial the queen finally spoke, and defended herself with such calm, erudition and and dignity that the mob was close to sympathysing with the poor benighted woman.
Marie Antoinette had simply been brought up to hide her true feelings behind a mask of decorum, as befitted her position as Grand Duchess of Austria and queen of France.
Little good it did her.

Colin Smith, Norwich,

This article should be read by anyone who has ever made a comment or read about the McCann's. Well said. It's all very, very true. We all need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. It's actually quite sad....what is this world becoming?

Natasha, London,

great article Indian !!

b m couls, shefield,

It is very refreshing, in these ugly times, to read a well-constructured and mature article on what has become a free for all for the general public to lay into a family who must be suffering unimagineably. Are we, as a society, turning into unfeeling monsters? What has happened to empathy and compassion and why do people judge others based purely upon rumour and gossip ? Bravo to India !

Alan Waine, Cheltenham, UK

Thank you, India. A voice of sanity in the maelstrom of vindictive hounding against a disraught family. Whatever the outcome, the McCann family deserve compassion and understanding. Their daughter is missing, surely we can all empathise with that?

Hazel, york, uk

Do I agree with India? Yes I do and would have used stronger words to express my feelings. As with the case of the Dingo Baby in Australia some years ago and with a few cases in the UK in the past few years, it is always the one who takes the most responsibility for the children ie the mother, that gets most of the blame. I would love someone to show me the evidence in any of these cases that point to the mother rather than the father. The way the public are treating kate Mc Cann in particular rather than her husband makes me feel physically ill. I happen to know what it is like to be vilified over a child, when I was the one who searched desperately for answers. Women in particular can be very harsh on other women. What they are really saying is "look at me, Im so much better than her" In other words - pick me, Im a better breeder than she is - disgusting! I very much like the quote from Madeleine Albright "There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women"

terry, dublin, ireland

Excellent article, India. Isn't there something written somewhere about he who is without sin shall cast the first stone? But maybe these pitiless people are perfect. How can anyone presume to know how anyone else should react to grief, pain, loss or any other human condition? My heart goes out to Madeleine and her family, and I hope their nightmare will come to some resolution soon.

anne, cardiff, uk

This is exactly what this media hype is all about. It is building a focus on a situation to which most ordinary people are sensitive and then twisting the events and the facts, as reported, this way and that in an endeavour to create a means of displacing guilt or responsibility through the general device of confusion. The public have absolutely no reason to be guilty or responsible in this matter. They have every reason to suspect the whole event for the way it has been treated and the surrounding facts. It has the scripted quality of a Jeffrey Archer novel. Two doctors, hence a priori moral standing; bright pretty young girl; Portugal; ambivalent basis for traumatic event leaving maximum speculation and flexibility; elevation to international status with visit to Pope and publicised tours of Europe and America. Public guilt. Do me a favour. We have no difficulty seeing where any collateral responsibility lies. Come to think of it, it has a precedent going right back to August 1483, does it not.

Henry Percy, London, UK

I totally agree with everything that has been wriiten in this article..being a member of a parenting forum myself..i have been dismayed buy the level of pure venom directed at the McCanns by some of my fellow members. It is now a sad state of affairs that the age old thing of "Innocent until proven guilty" seems to no longer exist in modern society..instead there is this frenzy that seems to have occured where the McCanns have been metophorically hung dfrawn and quatered by the public who infact should have been supporting them through this horrendous time.

michelle Peters, poole, england

Excellent article. Should win an award. I'm not surprised by what's going on. But it's not just an internet phenomenon. There was a similar phenomenon in Australia in 1986, with 'the Dingo stole my baby' story (sorry to sound callous; just that the names of the individuals escapes me just now).
My husband and I were living there at the time, and I couldn't believe the disgraceflu way the 'public' immediately condemned the poor mother concerned. Similar vitriole. One thing everyone pounced on was the fact that the family were also devoutly religious- part of an evangelical sect. I'm not religious, but that didn't make me automatically decide 'she must have done it"!. People are just ugly. I actually lost a few friends in arguments against their disgraceful pre-judgements of the case. Everyone was talking about it, constantly, just as you write in your excellent piece about the McCanns.

sooty, Boulder, CO, USA

Ms Knight,

Thank you for the article. I agree 100%.

kasia, Warszawa,

Great piece India, I learnt 3 new words, prurience, sated and voluble.

I would agree with everything apart from attempting to play down the risk they took in leaving the children alone. I honestly don't know anyone who would really ever let 3 children out of their site much less leave them alone. I have brought up my 2 and never left them alone in the evening untill they were 15 (as advised by the Police).

Tony Price, Ilford, UK

If my better half had done something to my children I have three, I would´t in anyway hide it. And I don´t think the Mc Cann´s have done anything to Madeleine either, So we all should still look for her. Another thing who is bottering me is that people think Kate Mc Cann look hardfaced. Sorry that´s not the truth , look at her eyes they are constant read of crying. And i remember when my mother died, 5 Years ago. I sat in a corner screaming, when I was alone with my family, but when outside with other people I looked like stoneface. I have picture of that.
Please keep looking for Madeleine, she is out there waiting for somebody to find her.

Marianne Aanes, Froerup, Denmark

I think this article is so well written and accurately depicts how the Madeleine McCann 'mystery' has mesmerized the British public, who seem to have an insatiable appetite for digesting the lurid and unpalatable facts that run through this case like varicose veins through a malignant swelling tumour. We now have a disconcerting array of confusing and contradicting facts. I was in the Algarve staying with resident relatives shortly after Maddy was 'snatched'. We heard from the outset that the Portuguese police suspected the parents were somehow involved. Unlike in Britain, from the start there were reports that Maddy was a difficult child, had possibly been drugged, that the children were regularly left, and how Kate McCann was highly stressed caring for three lively infants. So the big question now - is Kate the calm, saintly, immaculate and maternal beauty she looks .... or a sinisterly sly, cold and secretly volatile, celebrity seeking sinner of the very darkest type??

Judie Kingdom, Sheffield, UK

My heart goes out to this poor family and poor little Madeleine. I am disgusted that people are so quick to judge . Some of the comments I have read are so revolting I just cant believe that anyone would say such terrible things. It's almost like they are enjoying the drama of the whole tragic situation. Makes me feel ill, it really does. I pray for the Mccanns and their little baby every day, almost feel like I know them.

Kim, Devizes, Wiltshire

The whole thing has turned to a war between two cultures and two systems or ways of life, independently on if McCanns have been guilty or not. Madeleine is not in the picture. She is secondary.

Elisa C., Sollefteå, Sweden

I think that people are sub-consciously, hoping that it was the MCanns; after all it makes for much more interesting (and improbable) story than a simple abduction. People get excited at the thought it was the much as they do with a huge accident on a highway. People know there is a very small probability it was them, but just like playing the lottery , it does not stop them betting on that highly unlikely , yet exciting , outcome.

Joao Oliveira, murches, portugal

I had no idea how many people were so judgemental and condeming of the McCanns. I too have been absorbed by the events, having 2 young children and recently holidayed in Portugal, I have felt tremendous concern towards the McCann family and hope with all my heart that their daughter will still be found alive.
It saddens me enormously how people find it so easy to criticise and judge, I completely agree with your sentiments and hope that having read your article more people will be less condeming.

Nicola Enoch, Leamington Spa,

Please please please let us support Gerry and Kate; let's embrace them with compassion for they need it and deserve it.

geertje anderson, cambridge, cambridgeshire

Before suggesting that behaviour is "odd" please remember the Dingo Baby case. And don't forget too that there were those who frequently accused the late Jane Tomlinson of not having cance. Presumption of innocence until proven otherwise is always the best maxim in cases where the ignorance and prejudice of the public remind us just how close to the jungle "civilised" society really is.

P Thomas, North West, UK

Someone wrote that this is a Greek Tragedy, people being the Chorus that decries the actions of the characters.
Middle class is and has always been cruel and speedy in their judgement of others. The ecstasy of sanctimony is a real middle class must.
I cannot even start to conceive how the McCann Parents would kill their daughter; it seems a totally outlandish idea, and everything they did to find Madeleine is the dream action of any parent in the same proposition.
When Madeleine truth will come up we will all realise what a tragedy this has been. In the mean while I dare any parent to be the first to say that he has never left his children alone, not for one minute.

João Mota Campos, Lisboa, Portugal

People are entitled to their opinions. The vitriol, vileness and ignorance of those opinions may not sit well with you or me, but this is the epitome of free speech.

And whilst I wish to keep my opinion on this truly sad event to myself, I can only quote the following from Ms Knight's article for, in my mind, it is the only reason why the public is guilty for having opinions...

'The McCanns did themselves no favours when they embarked, deliberately, on a gigantic, modern publicity campaign. And that has contributed in no small part to making this case seem so compelling now. It is hard to criticise their original motive for hyping up the publicity, but in the process the McCanns unwittingly turned themselves into a soap opera: available to view on a screen near you 24 hours a day.'

Tessa, Bristol, UK

Well done India for a brilliant article. I have never doubted the McCann's innocence and just wish their daughter could be found and the real criminal be dealt with appropriately. I wish the public who are against Kate and Gerry would mind their own business get on with their lives and stop making up a pack of lies and that includes the ex coppers who think they know it all. I hope and pray Madeleine is safe and being well looked after and will be reunited with his family very very soon.

Margaret, Cheadle, England

I have never doubted the McCann's for one minute. But the public's hunger for terrible news prevails, it seems; and the tabloids feed off the latest scraps of information and gossip. The Portugese police investigation has been a deal less thorough that one could have hoped for - in fact shambolic. It's time the whole country got behind the family to do everything possibly to support them wholeheartedly and apply every means imaginable to finding that poor child. What if you were in this dire situation? It's bad enough without anyone making it worse. Surely...?

David Little, Haslemere , Surrey

A fabulous article India, I believe that the McCanns have been pounced on by a pack of hungry wolves, why people want to blame them so much I do not know. They have admitted they shouldn't have left their children alone - this does not make them capable of manslaughter or murder!
It is clear they love their children very much and are devastated, I wish people would move on and see that the person to blame is ultimately the evil perpetrator that has stolen Madeleine from her bed. No one on these forums seem to be talking about them!

Heidi Shearman, London, UK

I think this arcticle has hit the nail on the head. Some poeple are pathetic, they have turned this horrific story into theire own personal amusement and like nothing better than pointing the finger of blame towards those poor parents. Do they not think theyve had enough? Madeline was so obviously their pride and joy, I cant take anyone serisouly who even suggests that they kiled her. For a start why, if they had killed her, would they keep the story in the news? Why not just drop out of the limelight, why make such a fuss? The emotion you see in those parents faces isnt fake, and yes many people think that they have something to hide, some thing not being brought to into the open. Think about it, this is most likely just guilt for leaving madeline on her own, or even guilt (if the story turns out to be true) for drugging her to get her to sleep. It is ludicrous to suggest that they overdosed her by accident, theyre doctors for gods sake. I dont think they should be punished anymore.

Lauren, York, England

well done India Knight for articulating what I am sure most right thinking people believe but do not have the forum to say. I have not read the comments on the internet myself but was horrified to read of them. I beieve Kate and Gerry McCann to be innocent. How crass of people to comment on their clothes and demeanour, they are obviously trying to hold on to their dignity in an untenable situation. Kate McCann looks absolutely bereft and desolate to me and when her husband spoke about the disappearance of their "lovely" daughter it was clear to this parent at least that he was speaking from the heart. I applaud Richard Branson for his support. I hope with all my heart that Madeleine is returned safe and sound very soon. My thoughts and prayers are with Gerry and Kate and their children. Please God they continue to support each other and have the strength to withstand all the vile vitriole and rumour which constantly surrounds them. There but for the grace of God go all of us.

Fiona McParland, Newry,

Best write up I've read about the whole situation, great job. I think there's also a good dose of one other thing in people judging the McCanns: Jealousy. Not because they want to loose their kid too. Other things. They *want* them to be crap. They *want* to call them the McGrubs. Because, you know, it's such a fitting name for what these criminal case experts have read about them in the Sun/on Sky News; for beautiful, intelligent, successful people with three beautiful kids who were on holiday in the Algarve leaving behind a £750,000+ home in Leicestershire temporarily and, unfortunately (probably most likely), their kids at the wrong time.

Mark, Sheffield,

Thanks for your level-headed and well-reasoned column, India -- I agree with every word. People are far too quick to judge and, sadly, the internet provides so many forums in which to do so. No parent alive has ever kept their eyes on their kids 100% of the time, and nobody -- no matter how neglectful -- deserves to lose a child.

Mary, Los Angeles, US

You hit the nail on the head. Said exactly what needed to be said. I wish this ariticle could be sent personally to every person who has condemned, but hasn't gone through this... which would be almost all of them. The ones who have gone through this would never write such things. It's totally despicable, but I think in the end, it will backfire on them. The more repulsive things they say about Mrs. McCann, the more it becomes obvious to the level-headed normal people in society, that they are the sick ones. They are the ones who deserve judgment. So smug, so despicable. They have no heart, no soul, no humanity... for now, that will have to be enough punishment for them.

Dawn Briscoe, Loganville, GA/USA

yes, i do agree with India Knight and am glad she wrote the article.

thank you.

sheila, london, nw1

I think the world has become a sick and twisted place. I worry about the future of my children who will be exposed to the demented metalities of the offspring of these heartless and relentless people. I feel absolutely sick for the McCann family and extend my heartfelt wishes that by some miracle Maddy comes home to them alive. Two hardworking doctors who have devoted their lives to helping others are living in hell because they made a bad choice. A decsision that has no doubt ruined their lives. It is up to the rest of us to understand this, support them through their pain and know in our hearts that Madeleine was loved.

S. Pepper, Toronto, Ontario

I have never sent a response into a newspaper before but I read India Knight's article this morning and agreed with every single word. I cannot believe the way we have turned against Kate McCann. You only have to look at her to know this is a woman whose whole world has fallen apart. How on earth is she meant to behave? She has been stripped of everything, even sympathy. My heart goes out to her. I have no idea how she will ever get over this. You only have to think about what happened to Angela Clark who died recently in her early forties having been falsedly accused and jailed for the supposed murder of her children to know that sometimes it is impossible to get your life back. This family is being torn apart by the baying hounds. It is indeed the death of empathy and compassion and I am appalled and depressed beyond belief that other human beings can be so ruthlessly condemnatory in the sight of such obvious terrible terrible pain.

Jane Sancho, Hook, UK

I couldn't agree more with India's comments. I had an argument with someone at a dinner last week saying exactly the same thing - why can people think so badly of others - as far as I am concerned, the McCann's are innocent until proven, beyond any reasonable doubt, in a court of law (not in the media), that they are not. I prefer to think good of people until proven otherwise - what sort of society are we living in where some can be so callous and unkind to people like the McCann's so are obviously in such desperate pain.

M.A, Aberdeen,

I hope everyone who has posted their condemnations of the McCanns on the internet are thoroughly ashamed of themselves. One of the things I keep seeing is that the McCanns didn't display the emotions that these small minded people deem acceptable for parents in such a nightmare situation. Perhaps those who criticised could take on board that the police often tell parents not to display emotion in public because abductors often take perverse pleasure in seeing distressed parents on television. No one should utter a word in condemnation of the McCanns without evidence of their guilt - and there is no evidence at all. The police are so desperate for a "result" to cover up their own inefficiencies and inept handling of the matter that they are persecuting the parents and the media are playing right along with it. It is a complete disgrace and my heart goes out to the McCanns. How much more can these poor people be forced to endure?

Claire, London,

I am sure every parent has had a dark moment or two when they took their attention away for a split second or more and their child suffered as a result. Some are not as lucky as others and have paid dearly with physical or mental scars or the ultimate price by losing their precious child. Most have not had to suffer the agony of loss in such a public way - even if some of the attention has actually been courted by the McCanns. Anyone given the opportunity of mass media to help in the search may have also jumped at the chance, but in the future this will make them think twice, which in itself is sad. However, the saddest thing is a little child is missing and until found, none who have been touched by this will have peace.

Wendy, Toronto, Canada

How dare these nasty people write such vile things about a couple who have lost their child and are suffering the ultimate nightmare, it is unbelievable that any parent can not sympathise with the McCanns.
Penny

Penny Day, Cambridge, Cambs

I feel terribly sorry for the McCanns and there are certainly many nasty and resentful people out there. I hardly know what to believe from the coverage any more, so no way am I in a position to judge.

However, there is no doubt in my mind that the McCanns' attitude made a lot of people angry. Gerry McCann keeps insisting they are responsible parents. Kate McCann waited until her daughter was missing 100 days before she said she felt sorry and guilty for leaving the kids on their own that night.

I think the main reason people feel hostile is that they should have accepted responsibility for leaving their children from the outset. That they didn't, and we then had articles such as "Lay off the McCanns" from India, made a lot of people angry. We were constantly being told "We've all done it!" No, we haven't.

The whole world now thinks British parents are cavalier with their childrens' safety, selfish and neglectful. I do resent that.

Seasider, Seahaven,

Brilliant, insightful article with which I agree almost 100%. Sadly, a lack of empathy is not a recent development though. It's horribly depressing to realise that for all our advances in living standards, education and technology, the internet has merely become the latest means of expression for the same mentality which drove the witch-hunts in the 15th century. We don't seem to have moved forward one bit.

David, London, UK

Thanks for writing one of the few thoughtful articles about Maddy-mania.
There are two stories here - the actual factual story of the disappearance of Madeleine, and the media and public feeding frenzy.
The McCanns are innocent until proven guilty. This is a funny little quirk of our legal system, and it fortunately cannot be undone by any media or public outcry.
As you say, they have not doing themselves any favours by whipping up the media in the first place, or by hiring spin doctors and top lawyers left and right. For instance, they tried to get their fingers on the Find Madeleine fund for the purposes of their legal defence, and then went on a clearly visible spin campaign to convince people that they never wanted to use it for this purpose- after, of course, the board had said no. That sort of thing has a way of putting people off.
I find the whole thing lurid. May justice be done.
I feel like I've stumbled into a weird joint dream of Dostoyevsky and Andy Warhol.

TP, England,

Leave the parent's alone, they have enought to deal with

teresa, riyswiyk, holland

I agree with you completely. The likelihood of the McCanns killing their own daughter is negligible (how would they hide her body for 20+ days until they hired a car & whisk the body out in the midst of a media scrum)? Why would they have called the world's media in if they had killed her? The only reason they put themselves through this humiliation was to try to recover their beloved daughter. There is no other explanation that makes sense. The sanctimonious busybodies who criticise the McCanns for negligence clearly have no idea how holiday clubs such as Mark Warner help to lull you into a false sense of security over leaving your children in their rooms. They provide separate evening meals for children & parents are strongly discouraged (or possibly banned) from taking children to dinner in the resort. They have operated that way for probably 20+ yrs and this is the first tragedy I have heard of. I am sorry to say that I did the same thing with my own son 17 years ago.

Lee Battye, Adelaide, Australia

What a great article India.
I've never understood the mentallity of judgemental people.
Behaviour is contextual and goverened by circumstances prevailing in the present. Whether or not our behaviour in their circumstances would be similar, the fact is that a little girl, photogenic or not, may be in terrifying circumstances and it is to her that my energies are focussed.

Robbie Harrison, Hartlepool, UK

India Knight restores my faith in journalism with this great and insightful piece. Mind you my opinion of the media in general has sunk even lower in this sorry tale than ever before. Being retired I watch a lot of TV news and study how the interviewers strain to get interviewees to say what they want to hear. Manufacturing news not reporting it. In the tabloids hearsay like things said in foreign papers is put on front pages in banner headlines. The large sections of themedia have gone completely beyond any measure of decency and responsibility over this story and they are mostly to blame.
The other aspect is the internet and opinion pages kike this one. What was earlier the ill informed comment behind closed doors or in the pub after a few pints, can now be displayed for millions to read. Everybody is now an amateur criminologist and/or psychologist. I have stopped reading for the most part as I find it sickening. No wonder fascist dictators find so many willing helpers.

billcarr, Turku, Finland

Unfortunately, the 'guilty' you speak about will not read all of this. If you deviate in any way other than their views, you are on the 'other side'. The 'horse-blinker' charade will always prevail. Yet they/we/us/me always seek the term most forgotten in events of this nature : 'Spot-light-of-avoidance'. As long as you don't 'look' at me, I'll remain perfect in everyones eyes.

My sympathies are with the McCann - albeit that they drew the attention on themselves - they felt they had no other choice.
God speed the safe return of this little earthling angel.

A person from this cruel world, Durban, South Africa

Thank you. I have been struggling to find the language to put this in perspective

Name Withheld, phila, PA

Very well-observed article. But there is nothing new under the sun. The media available to the mob may have changed, but human nature of course has not. This is a very ordinary old-fashioned witch-hunt.

Nick King, Datchworth, Herts

My thoughts are with Maddie and I pray for her safe return. However, the attitude and the use of media by the McCanns leaves me perplexed and a little worried about their true nature.

Hamad lone, Thornton Heath, England

It is reported that traces of Madeleine's DNA were found in a car that her parents rented some 3 weeks after her disappearance.

Who rented that car around the time of her disappearance ?

Russell Mann, The Hague, Holland

Many people could sit and have a drink at the bottom of their own garden and be as far from their sleeping children as the McCanns were that night. Would they be regarded as such awful parents if something went wrong?

Russell Whitehorn, Durban, South Africa

I think that the whole case was blown when the police didn't do forensics when she first vanished. Also I am tired of reading everyones speculation of what might have happened. If these parents are innocent, think of how much everyone is hurting them with rumors about what might of happened on top of worrying about their daughter. So, until there is concrete evidence that they are guilty, I think everyone should back down for a while.

Alexandra Lynn Barger, Petersburg, Wv, USA

At the end of the day the McCanns have played the primary role in the creation what has become a complete circus

B Stewart, Edinburgh, UK

The McCanns should volunteer to take a lie-detector test. If the results say that they are being truthful, it might go some way in helping them to clear their names. If they refuse to take it, it may also say something about them.

Parit, London, UK

How can we all jump to conclusions so quickly? If the McCanns are guilty...it will be found out. God help us all if they are not. They have been already been convicted by the media. I don't condone leaving small children alone, but we have ALL made parenting mistakes. I don't believe that losing a child for this is deserved. This family has been through hell. Can you even, for one minute, imagine what it would be like to lose a child? Would MY response be different that Kate's? I don't know...I don't think ANYONE can know unless they have been in that situation.

I don't know if this couple is guilty or innocent. But I want to believe, truly, that they had nothing to do with this. Isn't that what we all want?

Concerned for us all, Nashville,

Thank you for your great article. it is very refreshing to read something that just lets you know they are human beings like us all and hurting in a way hopefully none of us will ever have to experience. I lost my dad this year and I barely cried at first...I was numb I guess, but I felt like I was just walking forward on a tread mill, and it wasn't real. AND I am the most emotional (cry when they boil a lobster) of the kids. So, unless you have had it happen to you, you should never assume you know how they feel. I think they are acting exactly how someone would in the face of a traumatic event. When our Golden Retriever was lost, all I wanted to know was that he was ok and not in pain, even if it meant he was dead. The unknown was horrible...I just wanted him to not be hurting. And you just function, in the face of uncertainty, you function. What else can you do? I can't even read the mean stuff...it makes me scared for our world. I can't believe people can be so cruel.

Kim, Santa Barbara, CA

i think part of what people really hate about the McCann's is their determination and - for want of a better word - ambition. They are successful people, something terrible has happened to them, and rather than giving in to bureaucratic incompetence they just keep fighting. No matter what happens or how this turns out, you can see that they have the inner resources to cope. ... I admire them.

Zoe , London,

... and at last, a calm voice amid the furore that has become 'Circus McCann'.

Thank you for a well written and balanced viewpoint of what is unfolding to be perhaps the saddest tale in recent times. The horror of what this family has had to face is almost beyond comprehension; the loss of a much loved child, the desperate search for her, and now to face increasing vitriole seemingly from all corners of society. Worst still, knowing that whilst the world looks to the McCanns' to blame, that same eye is turned away from searching for their daughter. For the record - I believe the McCanns' are innocent. Yes, they made an error of judgement , but with such tragic consequences. As a professional couple they are using all the life skills available to them to search for their daughter, and to show anguish would be - in their eyes perhaps - to give up hope.

delilah, coggeshall, UK

You blame the public? how obscene. Cannot you remember who started this media circus if not the British media? At the same time of the Madeline case, there was another case in Swizerland of a 5 year old girl whose body was found the other day in a forest. Did the public make it a meal of it? the answer is no, simply because the Swiss and Spanish media only reported the facts.

Every hour the British press, tv and radio are fueling the interest in this case.

marira, northampton, uk

Excellent article.

Mary, Oklahoma City, USA

I agree completely with India Knight's view of this case and, specifically, the link she makes between vilification of Kate McCann and the general climate of anxiety and paranoia that increasingly surrounds motherhood. Before I became a mother myself I couldn't understand what makes modern mothers so (as I saw it then) 'obsessive' and 'neurotic' about the care of their children , now I'm aware of the punitive culture of blame and condemnation which is directed at us I can all too fully understand it. Some of the coverage of this case appears to make little distinction between leaving your children unattended for a short period of time in an environment that you mistakenly assumed was safe and actually killing them.

B. London, london, London uk

India - you are absolutely right. I have been shocked and sickened by the cruel, self-righteous and ignorant comments posted online about this very sad story. Some people, apparently, have no heart.

Inbxl, Brussels, Belgium

News in the modern age - now it simply means speed of information, speed of comment and a ferocious desire to feed on ourselves at a moments notice, all in the name of "News".

Kyle Scott, Auckland, New Zealand

The comments which are critical of the McCanns are
mostly selfrighteous indignation, made by over
emotional people.It's what we do now.

J Mckay, Wellington,

I have not read all the article. I rushed thru' one commentary. Nothing new: had the sorry incident occurred in a village, a small town, a neighbourhood before tv, national press, e-mails and internet the gossip, and public trial would have been the same. Nothing new: we have always been this way, and I dare say we always will.

SCH, Lisbon, Portugal

Thank you, thank you, India, for saying so well what needed to be said.

I am stunned at the heartlessness and self-righteousness of those so willing to attack the McCanns.

The McCanns are unwilling to give up on their child. Have you read of the 13 year old American boy who was found after five years? He would watch his parents appear on tv to appeal for help in finding him. Just think of the hope this must have given him. Imagine a mother's anguish if she gave up on her child but the child was later found....the McCanns don't want one mistake to lead to yet another....how understandable this is. How greatly we should be supporting them, not condemning them.

I would like to publicly thank Richard Branson for setting up a fund to help them with their legal costs.

As Gerry McCann is on unpaid leave, income must also be a worry for Kate and Gerry. The irony is that as doctors they spend their life helping others. And what do we give them in return???

Jean Marie Pike, Inchbrook, Stroud, UK

Thank you for your humane, mother’s heart coverage of the McCann’s predicament.

I believe you voice what many of us mothers feel.
i.e.
An immense daily sadness for all of the McCann family and the missing child Madeleine.
Relief too, inasmuchas there but for the grace of God go I.

You are right to condemn and feature the evil bile which has poured forth from far too many of the British public.

What evil cradling have these poison pen minds had?
Whatever the horrible twist of fate, or evil, which visited the McCanns on May 3rd, it gives no one the right to revel in nor condemn that family without the full facts.
How sanctimonious our largely secular society has become!

God help the McCanns, God help us all.

Anita Lo Cascio (Mrs), Edgware, Middlesex

India,
Your piece is well written and brings up some excellent human dilemas. And for the most part rings true. However your very mention of the industry that exist to help us human moms that may feel we need a break is the key factor here. No one is arguing that Moms shouldnt be allowed to feel tierd from the natural overzealousness dished out by three healthy toddlers.However these services (nanny/kids activitycenter,etc)are there becasue they recognize the very thing you bring up in your pieice. And your mention of an over obsessed society about the topic of parenting is a bit naive. You make no mention of the thousands (a very conservative number Im sure)of child abuse cases across the world.Or just scan the internet to see how many children this week died in the back seat of their cars becasue Moms "forgot them".Come on.We have to do better.Yes tragedies will happen.But preventable ones are much harder to swallow.So if the publicity saves even one more child. Bring it on!

Alisen, Hollywood, Florida

This is a very good and balanced article. One can indeed imagine the writers of these cruel remarks sitting at their computers with their coffee and biscuits, tapping furiously away before storming off sanctimoniously to watch Big Brother. I am glad that Richard Branson is prepared to stick his neck out and start a fund for the McCanns' legal fees. I am glad too that the McCanns have the fight left in them to keep trying to find their daugter.

Ja, London,

Excellent article!

It is utterly shocking to see the responses of the general public in this case. Rather than sympathising with the family, we the "public" have reduced them to look like a bunch of criminals. What happened to the so called "innocent till proven guilty".

Tina Munglani, London, UK

Personally I couldn't be less interested in the McCann story - not through deliberate callousness, but through my sense of perspective. Thousands of children go missing globally; whether being gunned down by mercenaries in a favela in Rio or snatched off the street in London.

No, the reason many people may be expressing an opinion online is that the media [YES - that old chestnut] has been force-feeding us this story in every shape and form since the news broke. If the media powerhouses that pedal this stuff to sell papers/gain airtime etc. would let it lie, people would find something else to interest them and this plethora of commentary would never have materialised.

Please; stop kidding yourself that the media are blameless - media storms like this might be the subject of blogging and other prejudiced commentary but they are not created by the public. We respond to what we're force fed at every turn with an understandablly increasing skepticism as time wears on... and on...

fergus, london, uk

excellent article india that deserves a solution by returning to the source of the problem and...ahh...i have 613 characters to speak....the foundations of any truly civilised society is
to serve and be served - balance, respect and inclusion
these foundations tolerate both good/bad, right/wrong, happy/sad, love/hate and i think most people know this. how-ever, if the government believes in to serve and obey - balance, respect and social inclusion fails and your article highlights the results. just like a family, a governments role is parents to its people and leadership is by example.i suggest you print the foundations for a british referendum for the people - to serve and be served - balance respect and inclusion and with these simple words we the people would ask the government to meet these standards and also have a measure for ourselves, family, neighbours and country and only then would judgment be replaced with tolerance - let the people respond with a solution.

maria, banbury, britain

thank you for this article

katie, sterling, USA

This is probably the most brilliantly-written and insightful piece of journalism that I've read on any topic -- but this one in particular -- in many a month. It is the increasing lack of empathy that I find most troubling -- as a father of two young children myself, it's my unshakable empathy with the McCanns that drives my interest in their story. I long for resolution for the peace of mind of knowing what happened to a little girl who reminds me of my own -- from the Everton jersey to her apparent vivacity -- and so my deeply-held conviction that her parents had nothing to do with her disappearance can be vindicated with their exoneration.

David Freel, Brighton,

Excellent article India.
I am of that old fashioned opinion "innocent until proven guilty". I ache everyday with sadness for this family. Yes, they made a mistake, one that they may never recover from but ultimately the blame should lay with the perpetrator of the crime. And until we know who that is for sure, we should show this family some support.
I am in the minority of the population who believe the family to be innocent and i have argued so much over this that i think i have lost a few friends. We have all become DNA experts and experts in interpreting animal behaviour and know without a doubt that the dogs identified the smell of a dead body on Kate's clothing because it barked. Not just any dead body, but that of their child. How insane does this sound? These are the same dogs that could not find a body allegedly hidden for 25 days in the sweltering heat. How could the McCanns move an alleged body with the world's media watching their every move? Give them a break people!

Dawn, nottingham, UK, UK

"Trawling through the sites to find these quotes is like a trip through the darkest recesses of people’s most ungenerous minds."???

Kind of an exageration. Most of the comments exhibited are pretty mild and common sense.

Jim, Athens, Greece

Brilliant ! Utterly brilliant article !

The public's reaction to this whole story has been truly ghastly and has genuinely shocked me. Normally rational people pouring vitriol in the name of comment is enough to put one off ever again holding a dinner party for one's so-called friends.

It has however done one good thing. It has identified some of the real villains in our midst. Unfortunately so many others are hidden behind the internet anonymity that India describes.

Roland Smith, Amersham, UK

India, I applaud you for an excellent, intelligent article. In my belief of their innocence I am sickened daily by what those bereaved parent must be going through, having the finger of a hypocritical nation pointed at them with venom. Their daughter is gone and the guilt they will feel for the rest of their lives will be more monumental than anything else...ever. I pray that they find their daughter, peace and a huge apology from a hell of a lot of people.

F C, Manchester,

Thank you so much for writing this article. It says so much more eloquently than I ever could how I feel about this case.

A, Durham,

Brilliant article,it expresses so well the cruel,
unbelievable depths to which so many people have sunk.I don't know how Jerry and Kate McCann and their extended family are living through all of this. I have no doubt whatsoever about their innocence and I hope they get a chance to clear their names ,and of course find out what has happened to Madeleine

joan w, cork, ireland

Right on for saying what needed to be said. The shame is on us!

Chris, winthrop, USA

The appalling way in which the McCanns are being treated by the speculators for their error of judgement (and let's face it, all of us let our children out of our sight at some point unless we want to smother them), is merely a deplorable extrapolation of what is happening in society/media generally. From 'The Weakest Link' to 'The X Factor' to 'Big Brother' and the soaps, being nice and compassionate is seen as 'oh so boring' and ritual humiliation bother entertaining and acceptable. We'll be throwing them to the lions next!

K Tolley, Wells,

I agree (as always) with India. However, I'm not sure that this story marks the "death of empathy". 'Twas ever thus, from the burning and dunking of witches (if she survives she's a witch and if she drowns she wasn't one after all) to public hangings (why would anybody want to watch someone hang?) to the bullying of Shilpa Shetty - jealousy and resentment similar to that shown towards Kate McCann. The baying crowd (repugnant though it is) has always been a part of society.

Louise , Camberley, Surrey

At long last something has been written in a sensible way about the McCanns, Its untterly disgraceful how not only the public but also the media in all forms has totally twisted their story to turn the blame on Madeleins parents. We have all been guilty at some time in our childrens lives in one form or another. When we stay at hotels with baby listening services, or even asking babysitters to sit and stay over if we are to be very late. This could happen to anyone and the McCanns not only need our help and understanding they deserve it.

S.Harrison, Macclesfield,

I pray for Madeleine to return home save. I also pray for the truth to come out sooner than later. But most of the time I pray that people do not place themselves inside "God´s shoes" and make the terrible mistake to think they have the authority to judge on the matter. Non of us know for sure what happened there. I am more than sure that if these parents had anything to do with their child dissapearence, they would never have done everythig they have to put this new under the world public eyes. Common sense demands us to think first, sympathize as human beens, and then to realize that what they are going through could happend to any of us.

Victoria, Buenos Aires, Argentina

I agree wholeheartedly with India Knight. I have no idea how I would react if my children went missing and I hope I will never find out. I truly believe that Gerry and Kate McCann are totally innocent - every day I check Ceefax in the hope that Madeleine has been found. The current wave of rumours makes everybody loose sight of the fact that Madeleine is still missing.

Ann Flanagan, Dawlish, UK

There is an assumption that the McCann's will be charged.
May I asked what the charges will be for? Nobody knows including the McCann's.
So why is the jury out there taking sides for or against.
Why do the McCann's need a legal team ?
At least let us wait for the charges to be brought first if at all there will be any.
Please do not forget Madeline is still missing.

Defemi, london,

the media is little more than a reflection of the public. and it reflects badly upon the public.
now we are all, to a limited extent, part of the media, this is even more visible.
it is more difficult now for people to blame "the media" because that's just hypocritical. unless of course they/we stand firmly against the media.

my best wishes to the McCann family.

Marco, bhm, uk

A very insightful article. I do however think they do need to refocus their search for Madeleine so we can all be encouraged to stop playing detective and Madeleine can be found.

Ant, Cagnes Sur Mer, France

Absolutely the most clear, conscise, rational, compelling and accurate article EVER written about this case. Amen. We are disgusting. Shame on us. Bless the child. Comfort the parents.

Susan, Toronto, Canada

Thank you, someone, at last, for talking a bit of common sense and having a little compassion.

( Mrs ) Bobbie May, Reading, Berkshire

Please, readers be calm and rational. Let the law prevail.
A terrible injustice was done to Lindy Chamberlain in this country( 1980; convicted of murdering her baby, later over turned) based on her appearance, her reactions, her religion, her statements and no one actually listened to facts such as that the local Aborigines knew all about dingoes attacking children.
WE were all proved wrong and her life and family destroyed.

Gene, Sydney,

thank you Knight, we have met online and if i remember correctly had the same point of view. I still see we do. I sadly prowl the chatroom to set people straight who are ranting. It is not that i have firm view of the evidence and what is in the media. It is that i have a stronger beleif in the search for the truth and until we do, leave these people be.
I think Kate and Gerry should be shown some simple respect, i saw it written somewhere, "we have the rest of our lives to condemn them", but how sad to convict them before we know anything, how does one take something that horrible back.
This is a biblical case of evil and innocence, we need to make a stand globally to protect our children. We need to let everyone know not here not anywhere can children or should they be abused, abducted, whatever can cause harm. Laws need changing, and this is the one horrible incident that will bring it about.
Thank you for your insight and holding accountable the rantings of press.

Susan, lafayette, NJ

In Germany, it is more the men who pour venom over these poor people, they seemed especially heartless right from the start.
My perception of human nature has changed through this sad story.
Maybe, who knows, they might still find the little girl? Wouldn´t this be such a wonderful miracle! If only she could be returned.

anna saup, frankfurt, germany

I feel for the parents. I don't believe there is enough evidence to suggest anything else. I don't want to believe any parent could harm their child. And under the circumstances, based on the "facts" presented - not the speculations, I believe the parents are innocent. And I will stand by that belief until more facts are made clear.
I pray for Madeline everyday. May she feel safe. May she be healthy. May she be happy. May she be at ease. May she find her way home.
I pray the same for her abductor - be at ease and send Maddie home.

Melody, Houston, USA/TX

Thank you India. This is the only piece of decent journalisn in the last 136 days, There is a sad inability in present society to sympathise with others pain, let alone empathise, which is always harder to achieve. Tragedy is frequently met with bored disinterest and almost complete lack of awareness. How selfish and self-absorbed we have become. I totally agree with the public being as much if not more to blame than the press. Perhaps professional journalists of integrity should distance themselves from the larger media and world of blogs. We need a new Bill Deedes and more awareness of the responsibility of not just the media but of each individual.

SLC, Hants, U.K

India, The article today,was in my view , one of the most sensitive, balanced and perceptive piece of chronical journalism on this sad case to date.I hope you continue to pen your rationale.

tom payne, kerry, ireland

Thanks for your article. I think you bring up some very important issues in our facination with the McCanns. What are we doing to this family? Isn't it painful enough? My parents left me alone all the time as a child 30 years ago. They left me in a hot car when I was 6 to go to the store, they left me when I was 10 years old for the weekend. I was 6 years old and played outside with my friends while having to stay in earshot of my mom's whistle for supper. I would never dream of doing it now or with my own child, but more out of fear created by the media and how people might 'judge' me than any lack of faith in my child to show proper judgement and take care of herself. As for Kate McCann's exhaustion and disillusionment at parenting these days -- who can blame her. You give 300% of yourself and it is still not enough. Her diary is private and she is entitled to some privacy, your own mum still had some of it.

amy, chapel hill, USA

I usually get annoyed with India's articles - this time I'm very impressed at its thoughtfulness and honesty. Thank you.

Charles, Cambridge, MA,

Thank you for a most level-headed and objective assessment of this very disturbing saga. Long may live empathy and objectivity. Truly a worthy piece of journalism! - Just a mom, with feelings

N Visser, Johannesburg, South Africa

This is the best "my view" article I have read. Thank you for this. This comes from a German citizen obsessed with the case.

Jools, Munich, Germany

Unless Madeleine's parents are found guilty in a court of law of the things which some people seem to delight in accusing them of doing I, as a mother, and a christian refuse to judge them.
My heart goes out to these two people who, no matter what has, or has not happened, are without their child tonight. And may well be so for the remainder of their lives.
Perhaps we should all remember the words "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"
Which of us can cast that stone?

Moira Masterson, Ajax Ontario, Canada

This whole affair is beyond tragic, it has turned ghastly. God have mercy on us all, and please bring peace to the McCanns.

Michele, Brighton, Ann Arbor, Mi, USA

Couldn't agree with you more.

Tania, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

Excellent article by Ms Knight, challenging all our responses.

However India and the Editor's decision to confirm the existence of venom by reproducing a selection must be questioned. And it is offered with what amounts to an invitation to us all to go looking for more. I was quite content for Ms Knight to tell me that it existed and leave it there.

Are the McCanns guilty? I have told friends that I think I am as likely to have harmed the child as her parents are. Perhaps the appeal should be to the abductor to tell the police where she is to be found?

My household at least prays for a swift and happy resolution for this family's nightmare.

John B, Craigavon, N Ireland

JUST STOP !!! That includes you Ms Knight. The Times seems to have a 2 page "news" article, + 2 "commentary pieces", all regurgitating the same stuff and reprinting some of the worst stuff previously only accessible to Internet bores. Sorry but the media is (partly) to blame. We condsider people who push drugs worse than those who merely consume, after all.

I have no idea what happened. Let the police do thier job, leave the McCann's alone until the truth comes out (if it ever does), and the rest of us start focussing on something relevant to our lives rather than this bizarre sad episode.

Nick, France,

I agree with India Knight. As a mother of two ( now young adults) I have tried to put myself in Kate McCann's shoes. I have followed the story quite closely and everything I have read, and my own instinct, makes me 99% certain that the McCann's have nothing to do with Madeleine's disappearance. I believe that a lot of the current willingness to think the worst of them now, is because they left their children sleeping whilst they went for dinner, with no babysitter or listener. Whilst I am not sure I would have done the same, I have done similar things and totally understand how this can happen - I would not judge them for this but rather feel 'there but for the grace of God..'. I think that all the negative comments are completely unwarranted and say more about the commentators than anything else.

Caroline Nickalls, Bromley,

India
THANK YOU, thank you so much for this article. You have rightly exposed a part of us that is as much responsible for all this terrible speculation as any one else.
I have been so disturbed by some remarks on the internet that I have actually contacted the police. It has seemed to me that at times we have lost the ability to reason in all of this and we have treated the sancity of free speech as license for nothing less than libel.
Madeleine is still missing. ALL EFFORTS need to be focused on finding her and discovering what really happened that night.
I pray for Kate and Gerry McCann and their family. Irrespective of whatever mistakes they may have made (and who of us really are to judge having never been in this dreadful nightmare), what they are suffering is truly wicked.
I wonder how we would react if we were put under such scrutiny - I BET that we would all hope for understanding.

Karen, Oxford, UK

Hiring a babysitter would have prevented this entire tragedy. How sad.

Kim Righetti, Upland, Calif. USA

I support the McCanns 100% but like you have pointed out so many of the public find themselves scouring the net/news to find out what is happening and if there is any progress - myself included. However, I was sickned when I started reading some comments against the McCanns when we have no proof as to what happend to Maddie. I cannot see how her parents were involved and believe them to be totally innocent. Nobody can say 100% how they would react in any situation - so I would say to all those who have alrfeady dammned this couple look into your hearts to find compassion and stop the slandering - we all react to situations differently and we all make mistakes. The only facts that we have is that yes the children were left - something the parents bitterly regrfet - Maddie is missing - still missing turn the focus back on finding her.

Ca\, Llanelli, Wales

I agree with everything you say, India. The hatred, vitriol and lack of compassion shown on these online forums is quite unbelievable. I find it frightening that these same judgemental people could end up sitting as jurors in criminal trials. A truely terrifying prospect!

Sue, Hampshire,

I do not understand the viewpoint of this article. I assume that the writer has an opinion on this case and has discussed it outside of work. It has been in the media constantly for 4 months yet finds it abhorrent that a checkout worker - a euphamism for working class person - dares to have an opinion on this case. Why on earth shouldn't they. Is it okay for a checkout worker to discuss this if she has a positive viewpoint on the McCanns?
Or is it that the McCanns are middle class doctors and the working class should not have an opinion .
This has been a media run campaign and criticising the pysche of a nation for daring to speculate about a case that has not been out the news for 4 months is bizarre.
How this article got by the editor astounds me .
Innocent or guilty - nobody knows - but is it obscene to express an opinion - whatever background you are from?
Perhaps India could let us have a list of stories it is okay to comment upon , discuss and have an opinion on.
thanks

Gary, nether stowey, somerset

My sentiments exactly,India,albeit much more articulate.We seem to have forgotten that its about the child.. who's still missing.A child of a pair of very-human parents who made an error in judgment,of two very-human parents who have admitted to have made an error in judgment,of two very-human parents who seem to be doing all they possibly can to find their little child.I am not a parent yet but I cant begin to imagine what I would do if I were ever in such a position.I admire the tenacity of the McCann’s, who are continuing to fight to find their child with incredible composure while their primal desire might be to rant and “spew venom” at everyone in sight. Contd.

Bindu, Melbourne, Australia

people are allowed to have an opinion. especially as the story is so suspicious

nluc, london,

To be fair this article is just as biased towards the Mccann's as some of the internet drivel is against them.

All we know for certain is that the potuguese police, with the help of British police and DNA specialists, suspect that theMccann's are responsible for their daughters death. So whats wrong with discussing this.

ANdrew, Swansea,

I am not one of those who has been heaping ‘heartless abuse' on the McCanns but I am heartily sick of having this publicity-crazed pair being thrust down my throat all the time. I agree there is no evidence to show that they accidentally killed their small daughter but neither is there any that she was abducted. We only have the McCanns word for that.

Vidal, Stockton, UK

India Knight - you summed it up so comprehensively. An excellent insight into this sad incident and its aftermath.

Joanne Taylor, Manchester UK,

I agree with much of what you write. I am shocked and sickened by the hatred and malice shown to Kate McCann and her husband by people who are willing to judge and condemn. Where is the much vaunted British sense of fair play and sympathy for those in extreme trouble? I see only a traumatised couple who made a terrible mistake, as they have acknowledged, in leaving their children. What kind of people would want to turn the screw on their agony? We are becoming a truly sick nation if so many people lack the basic humanity to extend compassion for a missing child and her parents, preferring to wallow in their own self-righteousness to condemn before the truth of this awful tragedy is known.

Novena Tranter, Chester, England

i can understand that kate and gerry were wrong to leave there three children and now they are paying the biggist price ever i hope they get there little girl bak and i am a 100% behind them.so you lot that are calling them need to grow up at the end of the day no one desirves to have there child takeing away from them.

sonya, pegswood, england

I have read your article with tears in my eyes,for the very first time there is someone out there who shares the same opinions as myself.
I too am horrified with the internet comments and maybe these people should walk in Kate and Gerrys shoes if just for one day.
Whatever has happened to little Madeliene,both Kate and Gerry will have to live with the guilt of leaving her on her own throughout their lives,isnt that enough to suffer?
I truly hope we all soon find out the answers to our questions,can you imagine how the newspapers and people on these forums will feel if it does indeed come out that Kate and Gerry are completly innocent of harming this precious child.
Thank you for writing this column,hopefully it will make people think again before condemming these two people.

Bernardine Sharp, Manchester, Lancashire

India Knight, YOU stand accused of being a 'heartless abuser' yourself. The column you have written only serves to spread the venom, to 'milk 'the situation. You are GUILTY as charged!

The press are blood seeking predators, and only once they have silenced their prey will they remove themselves from the scene of the 'kill'. Or will they?
Ten years on and Diana's accident scene still makes front page news.

Michele, Cape Town,

People surely are inocent until they're proven guilty. I think the McCanns have been questioned enough and the police should look somewhere else.

John Dedman, Eltham, England

In the British press one day a sensible, factual statement is made, very often the following day another statement will counteract (or completely ignore) what's already been said.

As far as the McCann's grief is concerned, I thought it very significant that they were advised, by the police, not to show their grief as any public display of this nature may satisfy/feed the abductor(s).

So why do we have screeds written about the analysis made of the McCann's behaviour?

The vast majority of parents I know would have done exactly what the McCanns did in preparing the children for bedtime so that the adults could also have quality time together. How many parents do you know who don't take the time to play with the kids as the McCanns did? How many on holiday spend the afternoon boozing away with no real thought for their children's welfare?

As for Kate McCann's appearance - has anyone actually noticed how gaunt she is? Her physical appearance says much more than tears.

Alison Appleyard, Limousin, France

I think some people need to get a life of their own and wait for some actual evidence and facts to arrive

Ivan, Bangor,

Well said India. As a member of the one of the sites you mention ( Mumsnet) I have been astounded by some of the vitriol poured onto the McCanns, as have most of my fellow members. You are absolutely right when you say "women bitch about Kate McCann for not reacting exactly like them" - well, your child HASN'T been abducted. You AREN'T being followed every second by packs of photographers. How do you know how you would react?

I don't know if they did it. I vehemently hope that they didn't - god knows, unlikely as it seems, I still hope that poor child is alive somewhere. But since I am not privy to the inner workings of the investigation, and the media is just a sea of ill-informed speculation (I no longer read the articles), I choose not to make judgments on the McCanns.

One thing you can guarantee if that, should Madeleine be found tomorrow, and her parents proven to have played no part in her disappearance, there won't be any apologies posted for these vile comments.

Jane, Portsmouth, UK

What matters is that a child is missing, probably, by now, dead. Finding out who harmed her is therefore the imperative.
It is fact that in the majority of cases the parents are involved and therefore it is inevitable that the police will turn their attention to the parents at some stage. This does not mean that the McCanns are guilty; it does mean that they have to be investigated. No doubt that is a horrible experience for them but it is necessary.

Carol, UK,

Thank you, India Knight - I agree wholeheartedly with you. Your article expressed very much how I feel about the whole issue. I couldn't believe when friends of mine spoke such vitriol about the McCanns. I also feel drawn to reading articles about them, and feel like a voyeur to their grief. I also believe in their innocence and hope the awful accusations and nasty gossip soon stops.

ruthie , london,

It is really terrible the way society still sees women. If something bad happens we are the bad ones, malignity is on our face and our husbands are just mere observers with nothing to say and unable to do anything. I feel really sorry, and desperate to see that it is almost impossible to back people when they have problems and how easy it is to judge them without knowing anything and to come to conclusions just by looking at their faces without using common sense.
And all this partly due to newspapers that lead us, our thoughts, as they know we have no time, mood, or whatever to think over.
When papers or news on tv, radio , talk about us , being that talk untrue, we can do nothing, we have no protection and that cant be : if they lie they should pay for it, as individuals do in private life, in social life and in court. Nuria

Nuria , León, Spain

The pain in the eyes of Kate McCann is evident for the world to see. Have we all become so callous as to forget the real issue of a missing child. Is everyone so perfect as never to made a misjudgement in the care of a child. Or even in their daily lives. I believe the McCanns are innocent and are caught in a vortex that will I pray drop their daughter back home with them.

M Mays, Andover, UK

I agree with your sentiment, however, your comments regarding the Portuguese police's investigation being, "apparently shambolic", is wholly unfair. They have been working around the clock on this case, following their protocol and doing the best they can with their limited resources. Yet they are a convenient scapegoat for the British media to vent their frustration through and, while there is little to report as fact, seem to be reporting any gossip or speculation regarding the McCann case, particulary from random members of the McCann family as fact. The investigation would be best served by way of some quiet reflection from all involved & those not involved, until the facts are established

SJ, Lancashire. ,

I have to say that having 2 small children is exhausting and every now and then, it's nice to get to go out with your husband and friends without the children. It's usually a good idea to have a sitter esp. at that age(4). These are obviously intelligent parents and felt comfortable enough to make their decision that night to leave them unattended. I just don't know how someone could have timed it so perfectly to come and snatch madeleine while the parents were watching at 30 min. intervals. If the parents did this...where in the world would they have kept her while the police were around and then sneak he off in 25 days in a rental car? Sounds absolutely crazy! Maybe the child just wandered out the door since it wasn't locked and someone grabbed her then. I feel for those parents. They obviously wanted her and adored her being that she was an invitro baby. That says a lot to me.

kristian, tullahoma, tn, USA

India,

I couldn't agree more with every word you've written. We have all, to a greater or lesser degree, taken chances with our children. And, as you say, the fact of Madeleine's disappearance is so ghastly as to completely overshadow the fact that she was left alone. She was and the unthinkable happened. The important thing is her safe return and somehow for the Mc Cann family to find a kind of 'normal' family life, whatever that is. I am appalled, saddened and frightened by peoples' reaction to the Mc Canns.

Fiona Gaffney, Carlow, Ireland

I totally agree with India!! There seems to be a witch hunt for the McCann’s and at the centre of all this are a devastated family and more important a missing child. My personal belief is that they are innocent, who are we to say how they should behave in public and I hope I never have to find out.

Jackie Warner, Burton on Trent, Staffordshire

I agree with India Knight's excellent article. The treatment of Kate McCann is malicious and hypocritical. It's the ducking stool all over again.

A. Stephen, Elgin,

I agree with a lot of this article but would like to point out that there are plenty of people defending the McCanns online and shouting down the more vitriolic posters. Your quote from Mumsnet is unfair - that particular thread was shut down by many who objected to just those kinds of opinion. By quoting this poison in your article, surely you are giving more weight to it than it deserves.

Jacqueline Page, Essex,

I am in total agreement that the public are guilty!! a disgusting projection of the public's own issues piled on to a couple already grief stricken and under horrible pressure....lay off and put your own houses in order!! No one is guilty until proven!!Jil

jil bartley, Vence, Southern France

Dear India Knight,

Thank you with love for your strong unbiased views and for taking the time to write this article to stem the tide of judgement
(by the weak, ignorant and fearful masses) against the McCanns.
Again and again, unconditional love and support to Kate and to Gerry. And also to those like yourself who see the bigger picture.

with love
Tracy Ansdell
Richards Bay
South Africa

Tracy Ansdell, Richards Bay, South Africa

India, thank you for your considered and sensible article. One thing which makes me wonder about the whole situation with Madeleine is that I still do not know exactly how Kate informed Gerry that their daughter was missing. Did she run back to the restaurant and leave the twins in their beds? If she did that, how extremely stupid of her! If I had come into a bedroom to find one of my three children missing, I certainly would not have left the other two alone. There could have been an abductor hiding in the wardrobe or the bathroom, ready to spirit away the other two as well! So did she take the twins with her? Did she phone the restaurant? No one seems to have explained this, or, if anyone has, I have missed it. Yes, we are transfixed by the Madeline case. Today I am doing intercessions at church. The last time I was on the rota for intercessions was the Sunday a couple of days after the child disappeared, and I mentioned her in our prayers. Today I'll pray God's justice be done.

Anne Pollard, Bourne End, England

i don't think it is reasonable to compare leaving your children unattended at night with the risk you take boarding a bus, or letting children out of your sight. As our children grow up we have to allow them to take their own calculated risks or they would have no life. Leaving them unattended as babies, in a strange place with an unlocked door is not at all the same thing, and not remotely in their interest.

The comparison with a burglary without an alarm is also unreasonable as that is own risk, our own possessions, not someone else's life and well being that we are risking. I don't owe my mobile phone a duty of care. I do have a duty to care for my child.

rossi, watford,

How black can dark comedy get?

You reach the end of an interesting and thoughtful argument about how we, the readers, form what we thinnk are 'views' on the characters in a story, but which are often based on nothing more thatn what we proejct onto them.

And the frst thing the mighty Sunday Times asks us to do is submit our opinion.

Genius or rank stupidity?

Tom Newton, London, London

Look at all of you judging the McCann's. Maybe they are involved and maybe they aren't, but it is not your place to judge. Only one has the position of judgement, and I fear now for all of you. You all should start praying for your own forgiveness. If you are slamming the McCann's and judging them, then that is proof in and of itself that you are not in your right place with God.

Connie, Greeley, USA / Colorado

Well written, India, Its high time some folks listened and acted on the Bible quotation: "Judge NOT, that thou be not Judged, for as You judge ,so also shall GOD judge YOU, only more harshly than they, for you say you have not sinned, so therefore you LIE, for every man hath sinned, and fallen short of the grace of God, save one (CHRIST JESUS, who taketh away the sins of the world).

And god hates a GOSSIP, and listed as things God hates and which are an abomination to him. are: the winking eye, feet that are quick to rush into evil, and those who go from house to house spreading gossip,a froward mouth, and hands that shed innocent blood, and all kinds of Occult or witchcraft involvement, seances and mediums and psychic activity. The Holy Bible clearly forbids these.

Let the love and compassion of God cover this young growing family, and may Madeleine be found very soon,so that all who love and cherish her...may what they sow in tears may they reap in joy.

Mama B, Quarteira, Algarve, Algarve, Portugal

'The internet has blurred the lines of news and hearsay and the result is trial by global gossip'...............the most succinct summation ever of this atrocious act of public malevolence.

Heather Maryson, Eastbourne, UK

"The internet has blurred the lines of news and hearsay and the result is trial by global gossip"

"What do you think? Post your comments in the reader feedback section at the bottom of this article"

How can you criticise that which you encourage?

Brian, London,

There is One who will judge each of our hearts. The attacks on the McCanns come from hearts full of pride. The Bible says that he who says he has no sin is a liar. I would rather be guilty of being naive because I believe in the McCanns innocence than be guilty of "shooting the wounded". The Lord forgive us for what we have done to them.

Debbie, Halesowen, West Midlands

you've summed up my thoughts exactly. This story broke my heart the first day it happened, and continues to. People should be ashamed of themselves. No one has a right to point their finger unless they've been in the same situation.

Elizabeth, San Jose, CA

Fantastic article! Everyone should be made to read it.

There are some hideous people out there whose ignorance and vileness (and they are truly vile) are surely down to nothing but a gross lack of empathy and intelligence.

sara, Stroud, Glos

Wow! I am surprised that any one of the people responsible for the comments quoted in this article are so confident that they have superior knowledge of the true facts as to even make such remarks! Why anyone would sign a petition to have someone's children removed from them when they have no personal knowledge of the presence of risk to the children is just beyond me. I have kids and I have watched this situation unfold with a terrible sense of horror. I pray for the child's safe recovery, but try to leave the speculation to those who are actually investigating the case. I have strong feelings about the situation, but I would not publicly try to second guess or otherwise analyze the parents or anyone involved in the investigation based on media coverage or my own assumptions.

Jennifer, Chandler, Arizona

The shocking part of this tragedy is the disgusting letters left on websites, how often people judge others. I know that leaving the children that night was a mistake which will haunt Kate and Gerry for the rest of their lives It amazes me that people can say that they would not have done that, they would have dealt with it differently, how can they possibly know how they would react to a similar situation. These people have no right to begin casting stones, because none of us are perfect. Where is the compassion we should have for the McCanns? Without compassion the world would be a sad place indeed. I pray daily that Madeleine may be found, and I pray for her parents. Visiting the Pope - as a Catholic I can understand why they did. I doubt that any Catholic would lie to him. I truly believe that they are innocent and I am hopeful that this will be proven and soon.

Mary Botha, Lyttelton, New Zealand.

Could the public not learn lessons of the past? I wonder how those who pointed the damning finger of blame at Lindy Chamberlain, Angela Cannings and other mothers falsely accused of murdering their children feel now that they have been found to be innocent. To loose a child is bad enough, but to have to go to prison as well couldn't get much worse.

Have any of these awful people spared a thought for the McCann twins who have lost their big sister and could now loose both their parents.

Let's not forget about how the Australian press and police treated British subject Joanne Lees. She was fortunate that her boyfriend Peter Falconio's murderer was found - if not, the finger of guilt would still be pointed directly at her.

Dominique, Sydney, Australia

I think this is a well written article and has in every way wrapped up my sentiments regarding this case. In the end, after all has been said, this poor little girl is missing and her parents were incapable of hiding such a crime under the watchful eyes of the world. Very sad, wasting time persecuting the innocent while the guilty roam free. We are going to drive the poor mother to suicide. This family has had their whole world fall apart. It's their life and you only live one, so I pity the fact that theirs has gone this path.

Vanessa Spatz-Benitez, Miami, Fl

Thank you India for a such thoughtful and considered response - one that cuts to the chase - I too find myself compelled to read every update and while I did inititally respond negatively to the babies having been left alone - I have found I have travelled far from that point - yes they were stupid, possibly selfish but haven't thay suffered enough? Yet how can they stop the juggernaut they created - I think they have to keep going and wait till it comes to its end. It must be a nightmare for them - but now begun I think they need to see it through - and in the meantime thank goodness there are journalists who can see it as a meta-narrative of our time and have empahty for all the participants,

Fiona , Sydney, Australia

The bottom line is that NOBODY knows for sure what happened to Maddie and how good or bad parents the Mccanns are. It was a mistake to leave the children alone, granted, but that DOESNOT mean they are murderers.
All people that judge like if they were the perfect parents, and even those who dare to judge forgetting they have not even bare a child in the womb, are plain ignorant "people:. God have mercy on them all.
Great article!

Lucia, Puerto Rico, USA

Dearest India, What a brilliant and responsible piece of journalism. You have reflected so very many of my thoughts in your article. I cannot get Madeleine McCann out of my mind nor the indescribable challenges her family face. I also cannot believe the vitriol being mounted upon them. I sadly am not exempting myself from having some of the thoughts you mention, but they have been private thoughts and your counter arguements are also mine. May someone, something, bring them peace in the very near future. I genuinely wish I could quietly do something to help.

M.McGill, Edinburgh,

How dare we sit in judgement of this poor couple. Their suffering must be unbearable - my heart goes out to them. Anyone who criticises and bangs on about their irresponsible behaviour should look inward.....most I am sure if totally honest may find they could admit "there but for the grace of God go I" I just continue pray that Madeleine will be found.
Leave them alone you cruel folks and get on with a more worthwhile life without judging people who cannot fight back and what ever happened to "do unto others....."
Thank God they have a loving family network around them. How much more can they be expected to bear. I have stopped reading sensational headlines and buying the papers printing them.

H M B, Alcester, UK

In Darfur dozens of children under 5 die each day in the course of the largest relief operation in the world - so we worry about one child missing in Portugal and start a witch hunt against her parents, someone has got to be joking

pam, london,

Bravo, brilliant article India. I could not agree more.

M, Glasgow,

Spot on! From finding out the truth (and the litle girl) this has degenerated now into a disgusting circus in which basically everybody is speculating with no real facts. This country has a serious problem, since the death of Diana, with conspiracies theories of all sorts and silly hidden truths.

Even when the Police will make their views public, people will agree, and people won't. Peple know best than those who are paid to do job it seems. Paid and trained to solve crime..

I would like just to add that the circus is not just online, but even more off line, in the physical world. I have never heard so much abuse against the Portuguese people in my whole life, It seems the majority blames the parents, but give it a go to the Portuguese too, in the name of national pride (!)

As a Catholic, and with the Pope, I will pray for this family. They are paying for the crime already even if innocent, and the real sadness is that at this day Madeleine has not been found. God bless her.

JC Romanino, Devizes,

This is ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT! BRAVO India Knight!

Thank you for saying it so perfectly! I will confess, I am guilty as you say! I tune in. I worry. I speculate. AND I believe they are innocent.
I had thought quite some time ago that the McCanns life was like that of Jim Carrey's character in "The Truman Show." People click on the McCann show daily and get their daily dose of this soap opera!
It IS grotesqe. And the McCanns are bereaved, and I don't believe for a second that they WANTED this circus that has ensued since the time of losing their little girl, nor do they deserve it.

I am only one person, but I am stepping back from this drama. I am going to let this family have some space, and hopefully the police will do their job and get back on the right track.

My heart goes out to the family and to little Madeleine. Thank you for this most sincere and HONEST reminder of the perverse nature in all of us! Thank you for recognizing our human frailties and adressing them.

Kathleen, Winniepg, Canada

Ridiculous. What really stalls investigations is ceaseless media coverage (like the Sarah Pane/Holly & Jessica hysteria) for what are, ultimately, personal tragedies.

Michael Wootton, Sutton Coldfield, UK

Thank God for India Knight. What's happening here, is what any A level Social Science student would explain as labelling, stereotyping, along with a generous dose of ethnocentrism. Kate and Gerry McCann's crime is to have made a poor risk assessment about leaving their children alone. As parents we make risk assessments many times a day, and fortuitously, most things turn out all right. Now Kate McCann is being pilloried for offending against some stereotypical notion of the loving, caring, and grieving parent. It's almost as if by paying attention to her clothes and make-up, she is somehow failing to properly grieve for her lost child. You're right, India, the fact that the public face of the McCann's is so composed is also another offence, 'we' want to see them broken, ravaged. The local priest in Portugal has seen a very different side to them. This couple have been visibly destroyed by what has happened to them. Let's all pray for Madeleine to be found safe.

tracey, holmfirth, west yorkshire

Couldn't agree more. The relative anonymity of the internet makes it too easy for people to post their insane rantings.
Just imagine how you would fare if you were put on trial and had these individuals making up a jury to decide your fate.

Shirley, Lincoln, UK

Thank you for writing this. We should look inward before opening our mouths or sharpening our pens. I continue to hope that the rumors are false and that this child will be found unharmed. Even if the worst is true, the parents' suffering can only be intensified by the reality. I wish these poor parents would be left alone. Don't the rest of us have better things to do than try to solve a case with less information than the experts? Thank you thank you!

Christiane Marshall, Nelsonville, OH

The article is challenging but is wrong to compare leaving the children like other risks we take. These children cannot talk properly or fend for themselves in any situation and natural instinct would not be to take a risk and leave the children.
There are new wardrobes and a very unnatural continuation of normal life which is questionable. Time will tell.
The reaction of the public IS natural....

G Lewis, Coventry, W Midlands

Great Article. Though the press are as guilty as the public I'm afraid.

Colin, Riyadh,

Thanks, India, for adding to the restrained, thoughtful media comment on the McCanns. You clearly thought we needed another article to put it all into perspective. As soon as I got to the first lines of 'vitriol', which I haven't and don't want ever to read, I put the article down. Does repeating such foul things make you better or worse than those who write them? Or is it just good copy?

anne, bournemouth,

I have another theory. The real abductor would presumably want to detract attention away from him/herself. What better way than to start a negative strand of gossip in a chat room? I think the police investigation should round on all those who are pointing fingers at the McCanns - they seem like the guilty ones to me.

Linda Holmes, London,

Wow India Knight - who are you??! What a relief. Thank you for your brave, intelligent and important words. I identified with your experience and thoughts absolutely. I have not been able to articulate fully my own reasons for being so compelled to follow along on this story. I have never done this. To those that spit venom....but for the grace of something go you....or do you? I can't imagine the misery and fear those kind of comments are coming from.

H , NYC, USA

my message is short. The mccanns neeed support not hostility! it must be remembered that there is still a 4 year old child missing and 2 small children (sean and amilie) who need a 'normal' life. the press should back off and give them some space. It is a scary situation for them all and my best wishes are with them. I will never believe that they would harm Madeleine in any way. I will not stop praying for the family until they know either way what has happened to their daughter.

LINDSEY, Liverpool,

As usual you're absolutely spot-on India; you manage to put into words what so many of us feel...

Fiona, Paris, France

I never use or read internet chat rooms I find everything about them to be trivial and a breeding ground for the the internet masses to voice their unimportant and worthless views. They are saying look at me listen to me, my opinion is important, well I am sorry but its not.
That said I really do not think the press are blameless in the McCann case as India Knight is saying in the article. If the internet did not exist the press would still have hung drawn and quartered this couple. We live in a free society where people are able to voice their opinions and the speculation will carry on until the truth is revealed ,if ever.

Debbie Lanyon, Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria

India, thank you very much for writing this article - a beacon of sanity. Well done.

Annie, Norwich,

My initial feeling was sadness and yes, I thought 'how can these small children have been left alone'? But, also, given some time, felt that we all as mothers and fathers want to protect our children so much and yet we know, we live a different era and don't want to be paranoid. They may have thought the distance was not far and with all friends pitching in on checking the children, maybe a dinner would be okay..... We are parents, but we are not perfect, maybe poor judgement on the McCann's behalf, but it does not mean they hurt or killed their child. The diary entries that have been floating around as 'state of mind'...... What mother doesn't feel at some time or another, the way Kate McCann may have been feeling? I am a very devoted mother of 2, now 16 and 18, they are my heart and soul....... Do not judge, and everything that I have read and heard, sounds to be law enforcements view and opinion, rather than true facts. Think about it...

Ronda, Citrus Heights , California USA

She says she thought they were "safe" because the place was so family friendly. Even if the children were "safe" from a possible abductor, who was there to help them if anything happened without the inturder. One could have waken, cried hysterically and choked on their own vomit, fallen or hurt themselves wandering about. There could have been a fire. Who was to keep them "safe" from themselves. These were babies! 2 and 3 year olds. My God, what were they thinking?
I feel bad leaving my 5 year old daughter in the car while I run a couple of meters to get a grocery cart! Even if they did check on them every half hour, things can happen in a split second. Responding to one of them hurting themselves 5 minutes later could be too late. The mother wants to remind us that what they did was not a crime? Hello?

Antoninia, New York CIty, New York

Bravo, Thank You India Knight for articulating what many believe. The crude, negative finger pointing of the McCann's seems typical of a mob mentality of Dark Age proportions. Whether the McCann's are guilty or not (and I for one strongly believe they are not), the fact is, nothing has been proven and the stories across the press are riddled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Yet here are we, the Great British Public, playing judge and jury and condemning the McCanns before we've established the facts. It is one thing to think things privately, but actually taking the time and effort to publicly condemn the McCanns (such as the 17,000 individuals who on the Leicestershire County Council website asking the twins to be taken into care) is neanderthal behaviour. All those individuals, should also very publicly apologise to the McCanns should they be proved innocent. I bet not one of them has lost a child or even come close understanding the daily hell of the McCann's new life.

Linda Holmes, London,

The thing that worries me is that the people you have just quoted possess the eright to vote. To know that our democracy may depend on the weak judgement of thugs and bigots like these makes me deeply uneasy. Thanks for a sensible, well-argued article. For my part, I have never doubted the McCanns version of what happened. There are so many holes in the other stories that someone — probably someone in the Policia and someone else in the jornais — should be reprimanded for working up theories that have no evident plausibility. No-one seems to have taken into account the fact that no-one among the public has seen the McCanns as they really are. Attempts to psycho-analyse them from afar are a total waste of time.

Dr. Denis MacEoin, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

"Don't judge a book by its cover", so what if she dresses well and still looks great, thats the least she could do when everything around her is falling apart, lets just wait for the result of the investigation, and see if she really is guilty or not.
-brainscanner

juan, dubai, united arab emirates

An excellent article. I am a member of the Mirror forum and have been totally sickened by the palpable excitement and enjoyment of those you describe.

sharon, Scotland,

India, you are right. I had not read what was on the internet about the McCanns and I could not believe it! Surely people leaving such comments are not parents - could have no notion or experience of caring anything for a child; no comprehension of what it would be like to lose a daughter - whatever the circumstances which give rise to the loss. I pray that they never have to find out.

Frances Spurrier, Twickenham, United Kingdom

I feel so sorry for the McCanns, I feel the media have been responsible for providing information that just hasn't been available to a very tight liped police force in Portugal. The hunt for Madeleine has to keep going for the truth, and lets hope she she is found alive.

Karen Cosh, Glasgow, Scotland

Thank you for an article which so eloquently expresses how I feel too. I have been horrified by comments like 'I have no sympathy whatsoever for the McCann's', which I heard expressed on radio, long before they were being implicated in what seems to be the most far fetched scenario I have ever heard which try's to make us believe the grieving parents are behind the disappearance of their beloved child. Those amongst us who are so quick to point the finger of blame are so fortunate never to have been in such a terrible place. How on earth can any of us know how we would act under such circumstances?

I read the following on the BBC site a couple of days ago...

"Mrs McCann was frequently seen writing her diary in private moments after Madeleine went missing from the family's holiday apartment more than four months ago."

SHE WAS FREQUENTLY SEEN WRITING HER DIARY IN PRIVATE MOMENTS.

But no one noticed a thing when she popped out to move her daughter's body?

Oh come on!!!!

M.Pearce, Northampton,

My heart goes out to this family. We are always quick to point out the faults of others but all too often neglect to admit to our own failings. There are millions of familes who are quilty of leaving their children unattended at one time or another for. I don't. I have heard people say, well she deserved what she got for leaving her kis alone, well did Madeleline deserve it too? I am in kate's corner. i just don't believe she had anything to do with her disapperarence. The article above by India Knight has covered just about everything that I feel about this case as well...

Debbera Neilson, West Covina, California

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Diadem Homes

The best new homes in Wimbledon?

Holidays

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Virgin Atlantic 2009 Cruise Deals

Fabulous Cruise And Cruise & Stay Offers Including Virgin Atlantic Flights Prices Start From Only £699pp!


Amazing Cruise Deals With Virgin Holidays Cruises

Last Minute Cruise And Cruise & Stay Offers. Med From £499pp, Caribbean From £699pp!


5 * Moscow break from £499 pp inc flights

5 star quality at a 3 star price.


Canada for Less.. fly from £129 one way inc taxes

8 fabulous Canadian cities ...you won’t find cheaper


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