Another “Cry In The Dark”? (1)
I was in Leicester all day yesterday visiting my sister who lives in the city. As we wandered around the city centre, the headlines on newspaper hoardings – declaring the mother of missing Madeleine McCann to be a formal suspect – seemed particularly poignant, since the family lives in the village of Rothley near Leicester.
We all like to feel that we have a sense of good and evil and, for the overwhelming majority of us, the innocence of Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry seems self-evident. Few parents are capable of killing their child or of covering up an accidental death. But the McCanns seem such utterly decent people: good-looking, educated, professionals, doctors, religious. The strength and size of the campaign around the disappearance is surely a reflection of this.
If they are guilty of a hideous crime, then our sense of good and bad is blown apart. And added to the crime would be the terrible deceit and duplicity that they would have perpetrated in respect of so many people for so long with such composure.
On the other hand, if they are innocent, then they are having to bear not just the unbelievable burden of their beautiful young child disappearing and still not found, but the staggering emotional assault of being unfairly accused of this crime.
I still cannot believe that they are other than totally innocent. Indeed I am reminded of the Australian case of Lindy Chamberlain when again a mother’s composure in the face of the unexplained loss of her child was used against her. In that case, an incompetent local police force and an irrational local populace initially led to a conviction and an imprisonment. The case was eventually filmed as “A Cry In The Dark” (aka “Evil Angels”).
I can imagine in a few years time a film being made about the McCann case – although I hope that this time they find the true perpetrator before an innocent parent is convicted. Meanwhile, however, who is looking for Madeleine and what has happened to her?
September 8th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Hmm, I can’t help but think that if they *weren’t* all the things you said they were, then the finger would have been pointed long ago. If they had been two unemployed people, living on a council estate, not upper middle class doctors, then questions about their parenting (i.e. leaving three children in a room whilst they went out) would have been raised at the start of the case and instead of sympathy in the media there would have been attack. It’s very interesting.
September 9th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
I agree, Sharon. I know several people who were critical of the McCanns from the outset, but this was not reflected in the British media until recently.