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child abduction

Does Madeleine McCann deserve never to be found?

by Rebecca Roache

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Several news sources reported today that Scotland Yard has launched a formal investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, following the emergence of ‘new evidence and new theories’. Madeleine disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007, a few days before her fourth birthday. Her parents had left her and her siblings alone in the apartment one evening while they dined with friends at a restaurant. The years since her disappearance have seen a botched Portuguese police investigation, the arrest and release of Madeleine’s parents, various unconfirmed sightings and false leads, a private investigation commissioned by the McCanns, a Scotland Yard case review, and a massive media campaign driven by the McCanns. The case is controversial: among other things, various people have complained that attention to it eclipses other abducted children, and have suggested that media interest in it is partly due to the fact that Madeleine is from a respectable, educated, white, middle-class family.

Perhaps some of this criticism is warranted—I don’t wish to engage with it here. Personally, I am happy that Madeleine’s disappearance is to be investigated, and I hope that it sends a clear indication that this sort of crime will be taken seriously even when a child disappears outside his or her community, with all the difficulties this raises for any investigation. I wish, instead, to focus on a particular complaint about Madeleine’s case that arises again and again each time the case reappears in the news: the view that the case is undeserving of serious attention because the fact that Madeleine’s parents left her unsupervised means that they are partly to blame for her disappearance. This complaint appears many times in comments on a recent Daily Mail story about Madeleine.Read More »Does Madeleine McCann deserve never to be found?