I find it much more bearable to imagine parents disposing of their already deceased child than that child suffering possibly years of abuse at the hands of monsters.
I can understand how such a thing could happen too. Madeleine was not an only child. There were two more babies to consider. If something terrible had happened to Madeleine and her parents felt that the twins could end up in care because of it, well, wouldn't it be human nature to protect the children you still have?
I don't see that as abhorrent behaviour at all.
I can see why it seems more bearable on the face of it, Cariad. No long-term suffering for Madeleine. Her suffering is something that we all find difficult and want to distance ourselves from. Sometimes I have to pinch myself and remember that we are all talking about a little girl here and not just looking at case notes.
But is disposal - and possibly death - at the hands of her parents really better than the alternatives, either in moral or behavioural terms, or in terms of the suffering Madeleine had to go through?
Parents disposing of their 'already deceased' child at the drop of a hat to protect their professional reputations? Dumping their own flesh and blood down a well near a holiday resort? No proper burial? Spending the next seven years further dishonouring their child (as if the above wasn't bad enough) by protesting to the world their innocence, mobilising governments and raising vast amounts of money to try to prove it?
I will focus on the matter of burial - though that is not the only problem here - because of its significance for human nature. Giving a loved-one a proper burial is a fundamental human need and has been part of human civilisation since the earliest times. Even some higher animals such as elephants practice burial and observe collective mourning rituals of sorts.
Not to be concerned about giving one's own beloved child a burial goes so far against the grain of human nature that only the most disturbed of the disturbed would want to act that way. The idea that a person's professional reputation would over-ride something as powerful and fundamental as this is just not credible.
It is indeed distressing to consider the matter of paedophiles, but it would be a dark universe inhabited by parents who would do what the McCanns are alleged to have done in certain quarters. Harming or showing contempt for one's own flesh and blood shows a particular perversity of character that not even the paedophile demonstrates - unless he is harming his own child.
If it was 'human nature', as you say, to protect the twins, then this caring, protective human nature was in full force at the very same time that the McCanns were engaging in acts of mindboggling callousness and disregard as far as Madeleine was concerned. In fact it was care and concern for the twins that was the actual driving force behind the dumping of Madeleine, on that logic.
As for the twins ending up in care if the McCanns' negligence had been discovered, wouldn't that have been in the interest of the twins? Wouldn't that have been the right thing? Would we want to leave twins in the care of parents who lost a child through negligence and then callously dumped her?
There is absolutely no intelligibility to such actions whatsoever, either by logic or emotion, and this is why I find the contention that the McCanns are guilty of something sinister so very hard to swallow.
But of course, I could be wrong.....
