Four weeks ago today, as a sunny Sunday came to a close, I sat in the restaurant of a hotel in Clare. Perched on a clifftop, the view was of huge Atlantic waves crashing on the beach, the surfers long gone as the last light drained from the sky. My husband was putting our children to bed in a family room two floors up. Our two-day break was nearly over. I say break, but as any parent with small children will tell you, ‘break’ is the most ill-conceived description of a holiday with young kids. Tons of fun, yes. A relaxing rest, no. After adventure parks and bouncy castles, beach strolls and round towers (where I managed to convince my son that Rapunzel lived), we decided to grab an hour or two to ourselves for dinner. The babysitter was booked, I ordered our main courses and although the view bordered on romantic cliché, it was insanely pretty. The minutes ticked by, other diners looked at me sympathetically. My wedding ring and the book of short stories I was reading did nothing to dispel she’s-been-stood-up glances of pity. I texted my husband. My normally well-behaved children, bitten by the holiday hyperactivity bug, were having none of it. After milk, umpteen stories and back-rubs, there was outright mutiny. Sleep? No way!
Kate and Gerry McCann
I mentally cancelled the crème brûlée I had seen on another diner’s table. After nearly an hour of wrangling, my husband gave up and sent the babysitter away. The kindly restaurant manager offered to send our food up to our room. My heart sank. I adore my children, and I thought of their impish faces as I wearily pushed the button for the lift – but everyone needs time out. At the time, I didn’t think of Kate and Gerry McCann. A harried doctor couple with three kids under four (including daughter Madeleine) attempting a family holiday, while stealing time for themselves; for the couple they were before they had children. I didn’t think of them, because at no point did my husband or I – as good as the view looked and the steak smelled – suggest to each other that we leave our children in the room alone. The McCanns stayed in an apartment a short distance (but completely separate from) the Tapas bar where they spent that fateful night. Our room was two floors up in the same building, with key card access, 30 seconds from the restaurant, but still the thought was not there. It wasn’t even that it was unuttered – it never entered our collective brains to begin with. Watching the McCanns being interviewed on The Late Late Show recently, I had a flashback to that Clare hotel. How could they have left their children alone?
It’s a question that every armchair critic and news corporation has been demanding of Kate and Gerry McCann. It’s probably the one they ask themselves every night as they go to bed without their daughter. On the last night of their stay in Portugal, they did what they had done every other night. They gambled. They made what they thought (must have thought, as I still don’t understand their rationale) what seemed like an innocuous choice. Food and drinks with friends versus leaving their young children untended. Not only was their decision as catastrophic as it gets, it has made them parental pariahs accused of everything from wife-swapping to sedating their child and much worse. They told Ryan Tubridy the story they’ve told a thousand times to Spanish police, to newspapers, to everyone they know. Clearly, it never gets easier. Kate’s face, as she talked of the horrific moment of realising her daughter was gone, was taut with pain. Online reactions to the interview were harsh. Too harsh. Because they have paid the ultimate price, and will have to live with unquantifiable levels of regret and guilt. I understand their lives were stressful, that they were tired parents, that they were eking out some downtime together in the evenings. That’s where I understand Kate and Gerry McCann. But that’s where my comprehension ends, because of the unfathomable decision they made that night.
In a Clare hotel, the food arrived to our room and we drank a glass of wine. My son and daughter wanted to taste the potatoes, in between bouncing on the beds and giggling. My heart nearly burst looking at them. Half an hour earlier, I could have screamed at them. Tired, I lay down and my daughter cuddled up beside me, her curls tickling my cheek. Her gorgeous face, all big-eyed and cheeky staring at me. Of all the memories we made that weekend, that was the one etched in my mind during the McCann’s interview, thankful that I can feel my daughter’s skin and smell her hair every day of my lucky life. And I feel nothing but pity for the McCanns because they cannot do the same thing.
Anthea McTeirnan
Croí na Duibhlinn
Aoife Barry
Aoife McLysaght
Arlene Hunt
Attracta McCarthy-McKenna
clairehennessy
Ann Cronin
Amanda Brown
Eleanor Fitzsimons
Edel Coffey
Anna Carey
Lauren Murphy
Jennie Ridyard
Jude Leavy
Hazel Katherine Larkin
Léan Ní Chuilleanáin
Leigh
Lisa McInerney
Laura Slattery
Maman Poulet
Megan McGurk
Clare Kleinedler
Molly
Rosita Boland
Catherine Crichton
Sinéad Gleeson
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Susan Daly
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Nuala Ní Chonchúir
I wish more people would think like you and would have sympathy for the McCanns. I too watched the Twitter stream after the Late Late show and the chat forums and was really disheartened with people’s opinions. They deserved it. They neglected their children. Their kids should be taken off them. They were involved themselves. They’re rich b*stards, f*ck them. Awful awful awful things said about them. With no compassion that a monster took their child. I could barely watch the Late Late interview, Kate looks like she hasn’t eaten properly in years, her eyes are tormented.
Yes they made a mistake, a horrendous mistake that like you, I can’t fathom making. But they did. They can’t change it. And what they need now is sympathy and compassion. If it was me I’d appear on every TV show, I’d write a million books, if it meant I got my child back.
I look after my niece in the week while her parents work and when she is here, both front and back doors are permanently locked. When she sleeps both front and back doors are double locked and I creep up the stairs and check on her every 20 minutes. All internal doors are left open so I can listen out for a whimper or a sign that she’s waking up. I hover like this, directly because of what happened to the McCanns. I’m not a parent myself so I am ultra careful with other people’s children and whenever I am tired and think of taking a shortcut, I remember the McCanns.
It’s a horrific tale and all the more horrific because every single one of us has made a judgement call on the McCanns. It’s impossible not to. All the bellowing about class (if they were heroin scangers who’d left their kids, wouldn’t we think it was ‘typical’…this is not MY view btw, just the tabloid type thinking at the time). One massive mistake, four lives totally smashed apart directly, nevermind extended family members too, who must be correspondingly harrowed and crucified by thoughts of what happened that little girl. Of course, it was ‘not just’ the McCanns, their entire holiday group saw nought wrong with leaving children unattended and some were also doing the same, taking turns in half-hour rounds to ‘check’ no them. The dreadful irony that they did not want to use hotel babysitters as they were too concerned leaving their kids with strangers, must burn through their hearts now. I can’t help feeling the massive push, the enormous enterprise (fiscally, mentally, emotionally to find her is also the calisthenics of guilt. It is a total horror story, beyond the gravid judgement(s) if you didn’t feel some kind of empathy or pity, you’ve lost what it means to be human.
June – I made that point on Twitter the night they were on the Late Late, that you HAVE to have some pity for them, otherwise you’re just a machine. And I was told to shut up by several people, that the McCanns were evil incarnate, I didn’t know what I was talking about and that’s that.
I think some people are so lost in their own self righteousness that they can’t see anything else. I can’t imagine being like that.
People always react in Medieval Morality Play style at these horrific events, don’t forget we’re of the same DNA as the 4,000 strong crowds that used to turn out to public hangings a century ago (including children!), in many ways the tabloid press has taken the place of the seething/salivating hangman. There were several startling examples of this in the aftermath to Madeline going missing: some UK holidaymakers joined in the search and were ardent supporters of the McCanns, weeping into the camera at every vague chance, but as soon as they were labelled ‘arguidos’, the same mother-daughter sun-holiday combo were leaping for their jugulars. I remember thinking: ‘you stupid bastards’, the grotesque gullibility of their pendulum swing said more about their need to be needed than any kind of desire to actually help. The McCanns are prolonging their own torture with gusto as well as the public’s neverending brand. Seriously, there is no way I would be mentally capable of surviving this type of event. My heart goes out to them, and I’ve learnt a long time ago that it’s not a flaw to separate the judgement of an act from the person and all the grey sludge inbetween.
I stopped looking at Twitter on the night of the interview, such was the vitriol directed at them. I think they’ve suffered enough and deserve our compassion.
Yes, it is always difficult. Without wishing to be pious about it, the only overseas holiday we would have with our children (up to 14 years of age) was in a cottage. When we ate out so did they. In Portugal it is a legal requirement never to leave your children unattended. Of course, our rule was limiting. So what…If you have children you must accept a million restrictions. The terrible truth is that Kate and Gerry McCann put themselves first.
Charlie, do you not think parents put themselves first every time they go out to dinner and leave their children at home with a minder, every time they switch on the telly-sitter instead of having quality kid time, every time they stay up late having drinkies on a school night, every time they’re too tired to read a bedtime story, too lazy to make a meal from scratch, too busy chatting on the phone to notice that the child has written on the wall, too fed up to argue over eating greens, too damn bored to listen to a long-winded playground tale that seemingly goes around in circles, too cheap to buy organic, too listless to make an effort, too remiss not to chuck out the chicken nuggets?
I’ll salute the parent that hasn’t ever cut corners, that hasn’t wanted – and taken – me-time, just as soon as I find them.
You says four weeks ago… a very different time to four years ago! Nowadays, every parenting moment is coloured by the McCanns and what happened to them. Before this, it wasn’t. As a mum who did much the same in a hotel 18 years ago, leaving my child in a room alone with the door unlocked while I had an Irish coffee at the bottom of the stairs, I know the big fear then was a fire, your child being stuck in a room, not a stranger breaking in and taking your child.
Yes, it makes me want to vomit in retrospect, but the McCanns did what countless other parents did before them. My mum did it with me. My friends did it too.
We all take calculated risks with our children all the time, from letting them visit a friend’s house (who knows if there’s a paedo in there!) to letting them into cars without blinking. The risks then are far, far bigger, the chances of death or injury far greater than leaving your children a stone’s throw away in a shut room and checking on them regularly, specially children who sleep soundly. It’s human. In retrospect, it was wrong, but isn’t hindsight a fabulous thing?
I think the utterly cruel McCann backlash is a kneejerk reaction by terrified parents saying “it could never happen to me”. Losing your child is such a primal fear, and as such our reaction is from our very gut, kinda like wild animals tearing at the weakened pack member.
Incidentally, my child hid from me in a shop when he was about 3. He disappeared inside a rail of clothes and left me screaming for him on the streets outside, feeling sure I’d die of the pain, until the police were called. A policewoman tracked him down to his hiding place, the little terror. I’ll never forget that split-second in which he seemingly dematerialised, and the blind terror that could have ended so differently.
Luckily, for me, all was well.
Hi Jennie, am totally with you on hindsight. Retrospection is a wonderful, if cruel, thing. That said, I don’t think for a moment that pre-Madeleine most people left their children alone. Some did, and that’s totally fine – we all make our own choices, which we’re entitled to do. It definitely made parents a lot more cautious too.
I was pregnant when she went missing and still couldn’t get my head around the idea that they’d left their children alone (and the fact that they were such small kids as well). It’s the question this piece just can’t answer but one I keep wanting to ask.
My son also hid in a shop once and it was terrifying. Know that feeling of terror well!
I think where I think the backlash comes from is something similar to you Jenny – that if it’s their negligence and their fault, then it couldn’t happen to careful responsible “me” and my children. It’s a form of superstition, believing that if you play by the rules, nothing bad will happen, and for that to be true it has to be other people’s fault when bad things happen to them. I hope they find her and at least if they do, they can say they never gave up looking.
I think the backlash has been really cruel. It was a moment’s thoughtlessness that has cost them dearly. I think this stuff can happen to anyone, anywhere, no matter how careful they are. That’s the real horror of it.
oops just realised from Rosie’s post below that I unwittingly channeled Anne Enright. Her idea about magic, not her writing obviously.
I dunno. I think we forget how people used to be. Himself used to walk to school all alone age five, which meant crossing the canal and that big, busy Crumlin Road twice a day all alone. I was doing the same age six in South Africa, minus the canal but with a local shop en route where the local tramps played dice.
My folks went to work and left me and my sister at home every morning of our school holidays. I was about 7/8, which meant my older sis was 9/10. The moment mum was out of sight we’d be on our bikes and tearing about everywhere. Yes, we were older, but still, it could have been so dangerous.
When I was 4 I ran away with a friend while our mums were chatting outside my house. It was because I wasn’t allowed to go to her house. I got a well-smacked bottom for that adventure when my dad found us 2km away a few hours later.
Most poignantly, and just as an aside for interest’s sake, in South African shantytowns, oftentimes the mums have nowhere to leave their children while they go out to work in restaurants or as nighttime office cleaners. There’s no choice, no hand-outs — if there’s work and mouths to feed you take it. This all came to light when there was a fire in a squatter camp and small children were burnt to death in their corrugated-iron huts, locked in by worried, working, poverty-stricken mothers.
Jesus, Jennie, they’re some stories. And yet in a cultural context while different, aren’t really. Anyone who grew up in Ireland in the 70s/80s remembers well being turfed out on the streets all day ‘to play’ and even to head off on buses (very young) or into town at ages that are just ‘too precious’ to be true now. Times when kids were fiddled with, abused, sexually violated and taken advantage of in all kinds of ways, as we later found out (and probably knew then). Let’s face it, the sore fact of the McCanns is that they were ‘middle class’ caring professionals who made this sickening error and the story is as much about class politics as it is about the bare horror. They’ve even been criticised to high heaven for having money enough – and the means to make it – to continue with their crusade. The anger is multi-faceted. When the story broke, I was appalled, but not even as bitterly appalled as people I knew who had kids (I don’t) and felt a fuller fervour if you like. To me now their life is a purgatory and a steaming hell. Their mistake so high-profile that it’s probably irrevocably changed how people ‘are’ with their kids on holidays, although this kind of thing has always happened. Indeed, it’s still happening now when people leave their kids even in the care of ‘relations’ and refuse to believe that anything foul could ever happen them. In all probability their child has not lived much longer than that dreadful night, but they cannot live without the hope of believing otherwise, even as the tabloid judgements continue. Personally (and I’ve tried to avoid saying this) I’d rather be dead. It is the most excrutiating fate imaginable and I can’t even fathom the extent of their teeming private pain. I also can’t help feeling that people somehow want the McCanns to suffer even more, in the longer aftermath, so that the lesson is doubly laminated. My heart goes out to them and the dull awful stupidity of that insane decision. A child they battled through IVF to even have in the first place. Utterly heartbreaking.
I’m with you. I don’t know how anyone gets over something like this. It’s the most unimaginable nightmare. Constantly wondering if she’s still alive, and if she isn’t, if she suffered.
Horrific.
I completely agree with how things used to be, but then I also think the world then and now is different, but the world four years ago and today is pretty much the same place.
I remember being left with my bigger brother on a holiday in Spain, but I was about 9 and he was a teenager, so it wasn’t quite the same as tiny tots, who can’t open doors/know where to find help etc.
That squatter camp story sounds horrendous. So sad.
I’m remembering a parenting story that Libby Purves tells. (Pretty certain it was Libby.) She was packing both children into the car (boy just under three, girl just under one, as I remember, though the boy’s age is the one that’s relevant to the story), and all their ancillary goods and bundles.
The car was by a busy road which the boy had been strictly forbidden to step into without an adult holding his hand. Lifting the buggy into the car took two hands. Libby left the boy on the pavement, put the buggy into the car, looked up as she heard her son laughing, and saw her son running around in circles in the middle of the road, down which cars passed at forty_ miles an hour.
Libby got him back on to the pavement seconds before a lorry went by, followed by a string of cars. She says herself that it was a reminder that at that age they have absolutely no sense of danger and so parents must have a sense of danger for them. She also says it was a perfect example of how you can love your child more than anything else and want to smack him hard for scaring the life out of her. And if he’d been killed, no doubt Libby would have blamed herself for the rest of her life for not making sure he was in the car, firmly strapped in, before she got the buggy folded and into the boot.
But really, honestly: people make mistakes. They really do. Leaving their children alone in what seemed like a safe place, sound asleep, where the parents were minutes away, turned out to be the worst mistake the McCanns will ever make. But it was just a mistake. It doesn’t make them bad parents. Blaming them because someone abducted their daughter is like blaming a woman for getting raped because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time – and rape victims blame themselves too.
Hi Yonmei, welcome to the Anti Room.
That story is an eye-opening, cautionary tale and I agree that the McCanns made a huge error of judgement, and I certainly wouldn’t use the word ‘blame’ (a very loaded, cynical word) in connection with them. What I feel is just plain, old incomprehension. I just don’t understand why they did it.
“Blaming them because someone abducted their daughter is like blaming a woman for getting raped because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time – and rape victims blame themselves too.”
I also think we should be wary of drawing these kind of parallels. I think the two are very separate situations.
Thanks! I’ve been subscribed here since the post on hating airports, though I suppose I haven’t commented much.
I agree they’re two separate situations. But it’s struck me reading through this comment thread, for the first time, how much blame there is for the McCann’s actions or inactions with regard to the loss of their daughter.
But they didn’t abduct her. They didn’t do anything to her. If (in the illustrative story I quoted) Libby’s son had been killed, Libby would have felt responsible even though she didn’t run him down – but all she did was let go of his hand. All they did was go have tapas, a few minutes walk away.
Someone abducted Madelaine. And that person is the one to blame. Someone whose reaction to a vulnerable, sleeping child was to take that child.
Over the decades since the UK started measuring national rates of child murder, the number of children murdered by strangers has stayed at the very same, very low rate, over a period of fifty years. Most total strangers wouldn’t harm a child. The McCanns didn’t do anything wrong – they just didn’t know it wasn’t going to be safe to leave their children asleep by themselves. Most of the time it would have been – a lot safer than a child playing on a busy road!
I recently read Dan Gardner’s “Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear” and he makes some fascinating points that relate a little to this.
The Madeline story was massively publicised in news media. The Holly and Jessica murder was some years earlier too. Gardner pointed out that unusually gruesome or disturbing cases are given disporportionate attention, and this leads readers to misunderstand relative risks.
He suggested that parental terror of paedophiles and child-killers has caused some to overreact by contraining their children’s freedom to reduce the risk of attack. But nothing is zero risk. By reducing the risk of being attacked by strangers (which is very low already) they increase other risks: like health problems caused by being indoors too much instead of running around outside.
I’m reminded also of the first Freakonomics book, which pointed out that the risk to children posed by keeping firearms in the family home is lower than the risk posed by private swimming pools.
So even the “perfect” parent who constantly kept their child supervised could be risking their safety in other ways. I guess (not being a parent myself) all parents need to figure out their own balance in these matters, no way is risk-free.
There are two kinds of mistake: those that are spontaneous and arise from the flux of doing things, getting the children into a car, and those that are deliberated upon, and what sort of holiday shall we have? I have looked up the statistics on abducted children: in England 100 a year using the definition of absent for four days or more. Many of these families were highly responsible, they had not done anything wrong but they lost their children anyway. I guess many of these parents spent their life-time savings trying to find them amd jump each time the telephone rings. We the public, do not grieve for all these parents. But if I could I would. Why then the McCanns? Who coolly decided upon a holiday with their friends and then thought: What shall we do about the children?
I agree that they need our compassion. Judgment is not up to us. Sometimes tragedy hits, even to the most prepared of parents. Statistics show that the majority of child accidents happen within feet of the parents. My very hard working cousin took every precaution to protect her young child, and it was the caretaker who abused her baby… And sometimes its a close friend or acquaintance who nabs or abuses the child.
Yes they made a wrong choice, but ALL parents make wrong choices and one time or another! And he or she who is free of all sins should throw the first stone!
I consider myself a good parent, and I could judge them, but I wont, I can’t– I know that at some point I have screwed up– but I was lucky.
I pray for them and Madeleine… and all the other little ones who are kidnapped, abused or neglected… in the US only 5.4 million every year!
I think that’s how we all feel. Again, my overriding feeling is merely incomprehension, not blame or judging.
Thanks for the beautifully written post. I agree with the other posters that it’s easy to start getting all moralistic. In reality it is neither possible nor desirable to continually watch one’s children. What they did was stupid but not unusual at all. In Ireland in the 70s many is the eldest child who might only have been 9 or 10 who was left to watch the rest of the children (and there used to be plenty of siblings
.
One point that Robert Winston made on his Child of Our Time program is that a child’s area of orbit has become increasingly smaller. He used to go to a primary school on the other side of London on his own from the age of 5 I think it was!
I let my older daughters (6 &7) go out on their own in the neighbourhood as do all the other parents. If they are looking for their kids they knock on our door and vice versa.
Being too protective is really damaging to children’s development. The idea that a parent should be monitoring every move a kid makes is an unfortunate and recent development. The irony is that statistics show that the biggest dangers to children are generally acquaintances and not strangers preying.
Makes sense Aidan. You might enjoy this interesting video about an American “tinkering school” in which kids get to play with power tools and stuff. The founder is bothered by the obsessive concern with child safety, saying that they fail to learn important lessons by being overprotected.
The video is called “5 dangerous things you should let your kids do”:
http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html
For example he says that children SHOULD play with fire. I totally agree (so long as they’re doing so somewhere safe)! It’s important to learn how fire works.
Aidan, thanks for your kind words.
I am in agreement with you, and Shane, about the importance of encouraging liberty and independence in kids. I’ve frequently been in situations with my children – at parties, in playgrounds, rolling down hills – where you see other parents policing pretty much everything their children do. It’s a real ‘They’ll fall, it’ll end badly” approach. It is absolutley their right and prerogative to do that, and to raise their children how they see fit, but being overly protective is not helpful for children at all.
Another question for you all:
Do you think that the ongoing publicity, the endless round of interviews, being in the public eye, is good for the McCanns? Does it just make the nightmare ongoing and stay raw? I don’t think I could ever give up looking for my child, but is it destroying them?
No, not good for them. I do think they are actively destroying themselves at this stage. That not *stopping* and accepting what has happened, is a way of not dealing with what they did, a way of appeasing culpability. As long as there’s a crusade, there’s a reason to live. Ironically it’s become a survival mechanism. Over time the story becomes them not dealing with the story. They’ve entered a Hall of Mirrors.
I don’t know how anyone, including themselves, could possibly judge what’s best in the circumstances. Abducted kids have turned up years later, knowing that, could they stop? I see a campaign on Twitter now for Ben Needham – he is getting a bit of publicity on the back of their campaign too which is good for him and his family. You just never know.
I think that not knowing, it’s always going to stay raw. If they knew for sure that Madelaine was dead, maybe they could find closure. When they don’t know, I don’t see how they can stop.
But in any case – when you lose someone important to you (two close friends died, one a few years ago, one nearly twenty years ago) I think there’s a sense in which you never get over it. It just stops being quite so acutely painful. But I still miss my friend who died twenty years ago, not every day but every time I think of him.
As someone who grew taking the train to pre-school in Japan with my twin sister, I admittedly never thought what the McCann’s did was all that mindboggling. I suppose when I was a 4-year-old in the small town of Kamakura in the ’70s times were different, but then again all it takes is one bad seed and we very well could’ve had one lurking around all those days my sis and I walked hand-in-hand to the train station on our own.
That said, it would still never cross my own mind to leave young children in a hotel room unattended. I wouldn’t be worried so much about kidnapping but rather a fire or an accident with an electrical cord or the like. However I still feel for them, for all they’ve lost and been through. They made a mistake and they’ve paid the ultimate price. Thanks for a wonderfully sympathetic and touching story – hopefully it will bring others to a better understanding of this complicated situation.
Anne Enright wrote a brilliant essay on her own emotional response to the McCanns for the London Review of Books (Vol. 29, October 2007). She was castigated for it in the media but it’s compelling and compassionate:
“Distancing yourself from the McCanns is a recent but potent form of magic. It keeps our children safe. Disliking the McCanns is an international sport. You might think the comments on the internet are filled with hatred, but hate pulls the object close; what I see instead is dislike – an uneasy, unsettled, relentlessly petty emotion. It is not that we blame them – if they can be judged, then they can also be forgiven. No, we just dislike them for whatever it is that nags at us. We do not forgive them the stupid stuff, like wearing ribbons, or going jogging the next day, or holding hands on the way into Mass.”
Interesting, Rosie, I like that comparison with magic.
I’ve been appalled by public reaction to this, right from the start. But then, there’s so much of that sort of thing about – prison’s not meant to be a four star hotel/public hangings for politicians/etcetc. I suppose I’m getting used to it, you can’t spend your life arguing with people on the internet.
But how to give up and accept it? When you don’t know that your little girl isn’t out there somewhere in a dark room, crying for you and suffering unspeakably and wondering why you haven’t come? How do you accept that? And as you’ve said, people have reappeared again, years later, like Natascha Kampusch.
I have no idea how they stay on their feet, the McCanns. It’s horrific and they deserve more than pity.