Stranger abduction is indeed exceptionally rare. As we know, the vast majority of abductions involve custody and other family disputes, or someone close to the family.
Anne Guedes, in my opinion, makes an important point when she asks if there has ever been a case of abduction from bed on the European continent. As far as I have managed to find out - and Anne has also put the question to the forum many times - there appear to be no recorded instances.
I have found half a dozen or so relatively recent American cases of abduction from bed (or from the private quarters of homes during the night). Still no European examples however.
So it is fair to say that if we speak of abduction from 5A, we are speaking about something incredibly rare indeed; possibly about something that has never before happened in Europe.
And if we are talking about abduction in the sense of Madeleine having wandered into the street and falling prey to someone who 'got lucky', that is obviously a highly unusual situation too.
Having said all that, parental involvement in the child's death or disappearance - a much more likely scenario in terms of statistics in the abstract - in this particular case, would entail the parents' guilt of other major crimes (perverting the course of justice in several countries; serious fraud, to name but two) as well.
Rare as abduction may be, one is phenomenally hard pressed to find any case of murder/serious harm to a person that involves not only the degree but the combination of different types of corruption, criminality, and deception - and the psychopathic tendencies to go with - that would be implied in accusing the McCanns of harming or concealing their daughter.
If the McCanns were guilty of all these things - because if guilty of one, they are guilty of all - the case would be a world first in its scale and scope. Can anyone find a precedent or statistics for a crime like that? I suggest there are none. In the words of King David, 'there is nothing new under the sun', and on that basis I find the likelihood of the McCanns being guilty to be almost nil.
I also note that despite the rarity of abduction from bed, there have been many abduction and missing person cases in the Iberian Peninsula and other parts of the Mediterranean in recent years, and I believe that it is within that context that we ought to be considering Madeleine's disappearance.
This cultural approach was brought home to me whilst reading some of the theories of 'profiler' Pat Brown. Her almost totally US-centric (and therefore frequently factually incorrect) vision of just about every aspect - linguistic, cultural, legal, geographic - of this case was a powerful demonstration to me that looking at life on the ground and understanding the cultural context of an event is crucial.
This all leads in the direction of the many strange people witnessed to be in the vicinity of 5A in the days prior to Madeleine's disappearance, with the knowledge in mind that there are numerous individuals and groups in the area and all around Europe who are known to be preying on youngsters for all kinds of reasons. Then there is the geographical position of Portugal itself: part of mainland Europe both legally and physically, and in close proximity also to Africa and the rest of the Mediterranean. This broadening of geographic possibilities increases vastly the number of possible predators and motives, and therefore magnifies the statistical likelihood that Madeleine could have found her way into the hands of an unsavoury person or been passed along a chain.
Apologies for the long-windedness of the answer and the dearth of percentages. Bottom line, as unlikely as it may be in the wider scheme of things, I believe abduction here to be a much more than likely scenario in comparison to the other options.
I agree. A few thoughts...
I don't, however, understand why the seeming lack of stories of abductions from bed in continental Europe is an issue, beyond contributing to a perception of rarity.
- Newborns do get abducted from hospitals by strangers, apparently generally by women desperate for a child. Therefore, the issue isn't just about a "bed", but an older child taken from a bed.
- Why the criterion of a bed, specifically? Would it have made a difference if she'd got up to go to the loo and was actually standing and about to holler?
- Kate mentioned several cases of strangers in children's bedrooms in Portugal and Redwood mentioned a case (whether that was one of the cases or a different one). None of those children appear to have been abducted, but circumstances may have prevented that happening.
Those harrowing stories weren't reported by the press. Which police force would have been responsible for investigating? If it wasn't the PJ, it would have been the GNR or PSP, dealing with minor crimes. Were the cases thoroughly investigated at the time? Without a criminal investigation, would there have been any forensic sweep to attempt to identify the perpetrators? If a child had "simply" been traumatised by a stranger, would that be sufficient to bring in the PJ? Or would it have been a strange detail in the break-in category? If some of the children had suffered a sexual assault, I can't imagine that the families would launch a publicity campaign, for privacy reasons and the fact that their children - at the end of the day - weren't missing or killed. Unless the police launched a public appeal, or leaked to the press, how would the mainstream press even know about them? Did any of these cases come to trial?
- There is the case of Caroline Dickinson who was raped and murdered in her bed in a youth hostel dorm. She wasn't abducted, and what happened to the poor girl is a thankfully rare occurrence, but it nonetheless did take place. That creep took a huge risk. If she'd been younger (and lighter), who knows if he might have disposed of the body? (As it happens, I disagree that a dog's alert represents a reliable indicator that Madeleine died in that apartment, if indeed she is dead.)
