madeleine mccann

Kate and Jerry and McCann have come under vitriolic media attack over the last couple of months following the loss of their daughter Madeline while on holiday in Portugal.  Here in the UK we have seen comparisons made to Joanne Lee’s case.  Joanne’s boyfriend was murdered while in the outback of Australia and she was criticised because she didn’t display what was considered appropriate responses in front of the media.  We have also seen an interview with the mother of Ben Needham, who went missing while on holiday in Greece 16 years ago.  Unlike anyone else commenting on the McCann case, she was able to talk from experience of what life is like after child goes missing.  ‘No one’, she says ‘has written a book on how you are supposed to behave when a child goes missing.’ 

 My memory goes back to the Azaria Chamberlain who went missing while on a camping trip in the Northern Territories.  After much media attention Lindy Chamberlain was tried and found guilty of her daughter’s murder before the conviction was quashed 13 months later. My memory doesn’t go back that far and I can’t remember if she was also criticised because she wasn’t sufficiently emotional or too emotional.  I don’t remember if she work ‘inappropriate’ clothes or if she was criticised on other grounds. 

What is the appropriate response and behaviour that should be shown in circumstances such as this?  I certainly can’t answer that question.

The explosion of new media has led to the relentless media hype and absurd headlines that we read about on an almost daily basis here in the UK.  They have the effect of eating away at our desires to believe that there is something in all of us that cares for and looks after the hurts in other human beings.  It also eats away at our defence mechanisms that tells us that no parent can possibly take the life of their child or to cover it up if there is an accident that leads to the death of their child. 

Why is it that journalists and news paper editors continue to spew out articles tearing to pieces this family?    

I want to believe that either collectively or individually we are much better than they are.  I want to believe that that the rest of us can see the long term consequences and feel for the surviving children. We don’t hear mention of them.  The impact for them must be monumental.  School will be hard place.  Once they are in college they will be known for being the brother and sister of missing Madeline and when they start work, they may possibly be offered a job out of morbid curiosity or indeed be turned down for jobs.  The psychological impact of hearing your parents talked about as if they are murders will have a profound affect that few of us will be able to imagine. 

I don’t want to believe that journalists or bloggers really wish any harm on Kate and Jerry McCann and their family.  I want to believe that their interest is in the well being of Madeline McCann, her brother and sister as well as her parents.  I certainly don’t want to believe that journalists are trying to satisfy their editors’ desires for news worthy stories in order to sell papers and to feed the media hungry machine which we (or maybe they) have created.

I wish the McCann family peace.  I wish that their children are able to shake off the effects and that it isn’t something that haunts them for the rest of their lives.  I wish that the media get an insight into the pain that they are perpetuating and leave the family well alone.  I wish that, when everything settles down, they this is a family that can stay together and not be torn apart by this tragedy. 

I wish this world were a better place where murder and abductions didn’t take place.  I wish it were a world in which children could be safe and grieving families could be left alone to grieve.