17 May 2007 This Madeleine McCann find Maddie thing has caused a bit of a stir, hasn't it? Suspect Paki hits several nails squarely on the head, as does Portugal's Gazeta Digital. Also, a Sky News special report about Madeleine’s case, broadcasted the same date [May 13, 08:00 pm], had a serious breach of basic ethical standards every journalist must respect. During that special report, Sky News gave a single example of a successful case where the British Police was able to find �?alive �?a child kidnapped. Immediately after that, it gave a single example of one case of a child missing in Portugal [Rui Pereira] that never was found.
Sky News journalist compared the two situations and the conclusion was that the track record of Portuguese Police was a bad one. This is sheer manipulation. Comparing two singles cases and taking conclusions like Sky News did, is going against basic principles from the Code of Practice enforced by the Press Complaints Office, like the obligation of the Press “not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures�?and the need to correct it, with due prominence.
I’ll remind you that in UK, according to the UK National Police Missing Persons Bureau, there was an average of 124 unsolved cases of missing children under 14, on the last four years. In Portugal, from the 80 cases of missing persons still open, from a legal point of view [missing for more than one year] only nine are children and one of them is Madeleine.
In 2006, the Instituto de Apoio à Criança (IAC, a government department in charge of monitoring child abuse) registered 31 cases of missing underage (-18 years) persons. 24 of them were found by the police. This is a rate of 77, 43 % of success in finding missing children. Two of them were found to be dead. So let’s put these figures very clear: Portuguese Police has a track record of finding 77, 43 % of missing children, even if 6,45 % of those children were found dead, and 22,58 % are still missing [mainly adolescents running from home]. From those 31 missing children, only 5 [6.45] were between one and five years old. One kid missing in Portugal, big news. 124 kids missing in the UK and who'd have known if it wasn't for Gazeta Digital? There is something very wrong with this picture as the UK exports another of its Great British values. Yet who would dare mention the complete abandonment of the McCann's parental responsibilities and the crime of neglect -- leaving toddlers home alone while parents ponce-off for a quiet dinner somewhere -- the crime without which this story and the hysteria that surrounds it would not exist. An example should be made of both mother and father for their idiotic actions. Both should be locked-up for abandoning their children and the key should be thrown away. Update 9.7.7: In keeping with the latest developments that appear to place Kate McCann in the frame, here's a minor revision to the above graphic. |