McCanns: You can run but you cannot hide
It beggars belief that suspected child killers, Gerry and Kate McCann, have been granted VIP status. What is the world coming to? "Police pushed back hundreds of journalists camped outside the McCanns' vacation home, allowing the couple and their 2-year-old twins to leave for the airport. Less than an hour later, the car pulled into the airport's VIP entrance". The latest whine from the McCann media spin doctor machine is that they have become scapegoats for the Portuguese police incompetence. However, my understanding of a scapegoat is somebody getting blamed for something that somebody else has done wrong. But in this case the McCanns have done wrong. Here are some valid criticisms: In the resort where they lost their child, sympathy for the McCanns was threadbare last night. One British mother in Praia da Luz said: "We've been coming here for four years, and I'm convinced it's the safest place in Europe. If you keep your kids with you and you're a responsible parent, there's nothing to fear". Several British parents in Praia da Luz criticised the McCanns. One mother from Lancashire said: "To lose your child in a place like this... to leave them alone... why would you do that? It's not what any normal parent would do with a three-year-old".
We need to be asking questions how this could have happened, that is, that the government and British Media became guilty in condoning child neglect and/or child abandonment and turning the perpetrators into victims and then giving them celebrity status. "In an unprecedented move, the Government took over news-handling on behalf of the McCanns. Sheree Dodd, a former Daily Mirror journalist and long-serving senior spokeswoman for the Government, was dispatched to Portugal. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office announced that she was being deployed as “press officer responsible to act as media liaison officer for the McCann family”".
"After a couple of weeks, she was replaced by an even more prominent political figure. Clarence Mitchell, a former BBC News presenter now working as a senior government spin-doctor, became the voice of the McCanns. He was described formally as providing “consular support in exceptional circumstances”. His costs came to just over £6,000, and Ms Dodd’s are likely to be similar.
A Foreign Office source said: “This has been a completely new situation. We had to do something.”
Mr Mitchell was regarded by journalists as an impressive and helpful figure who was sensitive to the needs of the locals as well as the British".
It remains that the McCanns have not answered some very awkward questions. At least, they are guilty of child neglect and/or child abandonment. At worst, they are suspects in Madeleine's death and her disappearance.
