So, according to the statement made by Mrs Fenn to the police, she heard a child cry on the evening of 1st May for an hour an a quarter from 10.30pm until 11.45pm. She was concerned enough to talk to a friend about it as the crying became 'more expressive' as it went on. And the child cried out: 'Daddy, daddy'.
There is no reason to believe that the neighbour lied to police. Why would she?She was concerned enough to speak to a friend about it.
In actual fact, I encountered a situation recently where a child was crying quite loudly in a neighbour's house and sounded distressed. I listened for about 5 minutes. I could hear the voice of the child becoming more anguished. I hesitated. What should I do? In the end I opened the window that looked over the property so I could ascertain more clearly what was going on. I believe at this point that which ever adult was in the house then went into the child's room to calm them down. Another 5 minutes of the kind of crying I had heard and I would have knocked on the front door and expressed concern. An hour and a quarter of distressed crying when I believed there was no adult supervision, or at least inadequate adult supervision - I would have called the police.
Mrs Fenn considered that the child was older than a toddler (in other words more likely to have been Madeleine than the twins). In any event, whether it was Madeleine or the twins, one and a quarter hours of 'expressive' crying at that time in the evening when you would reasonable expect very young children to be extremely tired is not a good sign. It suggests that either there was no adult supervision for the duration of an hour and a quarter which I would suggest, given the ages of the children, is verging on child negligence/neglect; or there was an adult (or more than one adult) present but they were not comforting or calming the child.
Why would that be?
And then we have Kate McCann claiming that Maddie asked both her and Gerry on the morning of Madeleine's alleged abduction 'why did you not come when the twins cried last night?'
If true, this statement would appear to confirm that the McCann parents were, indeed, in the habit of leaving their children alone to cry at night. However, the parents did not express any guilt or shame over this or apologize to their daughter for failing to provide comfort, or reassure her that they would not let that happen again, which is what you would expect and hope for. I imagine it must have been quite scary for Madeleine to know that on at least two occasions her parents had not responded to either her or her siblings crying. However, the parents merely noted that 'she said it in passing' and then 'she dropped it'. How curious. This seems to suggest that the onus was on their three year old daughter to press them on this, rather than the onus being on them, as parents, to reassure and comfort a three year old about being left alone crying in an apartment with two year old siblings.
But curiouser still, what did they then do - how did they modify their behaviour in the light of what Maddie had supposedly said to them. Well, the following evening they left them all alone again with the same system of checking that had lead to all that crying - and, a system which is going to allow a stranger to abduct their child, or so they say.
Rather than showing remorse for ignoring their children's cries, it appears that the McCann's mentioned this alleged comment by Madeleine as a boost to the abduction theory. It raised the possibility that someone had disturbed one of the children when they were sleeping, leading to the crying. In fact, the parents suggested that the abductor entered the apartment the previous evening. They also believed the abductor drugged the children.
How could they be so sure about all this? There is no evidence that a stranger entered the apartment. They alleged that the shutters had been jammed or broken but again there is no evidence for this. If they really believed that the abductor had drugged the children, why were toxicology tests not carried out on the twins? Surely this would be crucial. Why were the twins not woken up and taken to a safe place rather than left alone while Kate ran out of the apartment? The abductor could still have been there or could have had an accomplice (it was a paedophile ring, so they claimed, so more than one person involved).
What a strange Alice in Wonderland world the McCanns seem to live in. They are not worried about child abduction so are happy to leave their children alone at night. But when one of their children disappears they suddenly become convinced that it is abduction - by a paedophile no less. They are sure that Madeleine didn't wander off because 'she would never leave the twins on their own' - good grief, so Madeleine was the babysitter, was she? Madeleine would never leave the twins on their own but it is quite alright for the McCann parents to leave their three children under 4 on their own.
Exactly who is doing the parenting here?
And having left the children on their own, allowing for the opportunity of a paedeophile abduction (even though they never thought it was a risk) the responsibility for the safety of their three year old then passes out of the hands of those who showed a lack of responsibility into the hands of a paedophile abductor. And now the responsibility for Madeleine's 'safe return' is in the hands of the general public who are urged to donate money to the fund.
