‘In Australia, a lone woman
is being crucified by the Press
at any given moment.
With no unedited right
of reply, she is cast out
into Aboriginal space.’
It is with a feeling of mounting dread that I watch the media deracination of Kate McCann.
The British press – so anxious to cast the woman as a martyr to motherhood a mere four months ago – are turning on her in a manner sickeningly familiar to any Australian who remembers the anguished case of Lindy Chamberlain. Like Lindy, Kate McCann is characterised by her strong religious faith and her determination to find her missing child (the Chamberlains were Seventh Day Adventists). Like Lindy, Kate has not behaved in the manner expected of a grieving mother. Although – to use poet Les Murray‘s phrase – her fault is not ‘a defect in weeping‘; rather, it is apparently unseemly to use the media to publicise Madeleine’s disappearance.
‘It’s always for a defect in weeping:
she hasn’t wept on cue
or she won’t weep correctly.
There’s a moment when the sharks are
still butting her, testing her protection,
when the Labor Party, or influence,
can still save her’.
In the view of the media, that is. Here is Andrew Pierce in the Telegraph:
Yet, have you never felt a sense of unease at their omnipresence in the papers and on television? No aspect of their grief seemed out of bounds. We have seen them deep in prayer in church. There was the photograph of them walking arm-in-arm on a deserted beach, reminiscent of Diana photographed alone at a conveniently empty Taj Mahal.
And then there is the almost pitiful sight of Mrs McCann clutching Madeleine’s favourite cuddly toy. Was I alone in wondering whether that was for comfort or because it was what the PR advisers suggested?
I am not singling out Mr Pierce’s copy in spite; he is representative of the slow burn of a story that – from the moment the McCanns adopted to stay in the media glare – I knew could well become Britain’s Azaria Chamberlain case. This time the foreign other is a Portuguese resort popular with middle-class English tourists, rather than outback Australia and its attendant population of peculiar flora and fauna. The press have feasted on the Portuguese legal system, treating its inquisitorial method as somehow probative of something more than an ongoing police investigation.
‘Then she goes down, overwhelmed
in the feasting grins of pressmen,
and Press women who’ve moved
from being owned by men
to being owned by fashion,
these are more deeply merciless’.
For those not in the know, Kate McCann is mother of disappeared toddler Madeleine McCann, and wife of Gerry McCann. Both are doctors; she a GP, he a cardiologist. Both are sincere Catholics, a religion still the subject of some suspicion in a Britain that remembers the Troubles. Kate McCann even sought (and obtained) a papal blessing for her missing daughter. Both have had their medical titles stripped away in press reports. From the beginning, the ‘bad mother’ trope that afflicted Lindy Chamberlain has been levelled at Kate McCann: she and Gerry went to dinner, leaving their daughter unsupervised. Even the famously objective BBC had this to say:
As the couple’s search for their daughter continued, through numerous press interviews, church visits, and flying trips around Europe, she has constantly carried around a small pink toy called Cuddle Cat, a favourite of Madeleine’s.
Mrs McCann has expressed her regret at leaving her children alone in their holiday apartment while she and her husband Gerry had dinner within the Ocean Club complex on the night Madeleine disappeared.
“We are just so desperately sorry. Every hour now, I still question, ‘Why did I think that was safe?’,” she said.
But although appearing distressed and distraught, the McCanns have still managed to face a constant barrage of demands from media from across the world, in their attempts to keep their missing daughter in the minds of the public.
In doing so, and as time has gone on, Mrs McCann has grown easier with the press and has given an increasing amount of interviews, some by herself.
Here is The Independent, perhaps a little less harshly:
By Madeleine’s fourth birthday on 12 May, the McCanns’ international campaign to keep the search alive had taken off, with the footballers Cristiano Ronaldo and David Beckham making appeals for information, while Sir Richard Branson and J K Rowling contributed to rewards now totalling £2.5m. Mr and Mrs McCann launched a website, findmadeleine.com, which would get more than 170 million hits.
And now, both she and Gerry have been made arguidi, or ‘suspects’ in their daughter’s death by Portuguese investigators. That a ‘suspect’ in the civil law system is akin to someone ‘assisting the police with their enquiries’ at common law seems to have passed many people by. It has given the media free reign to speculate, in part because the civil law does not allow the police to discuss any of their lines of enquiry, thus fuelling doubt and innuendo. In an eerie echo of the Chamberlain case, traces of blood have allegedly been found in a car the McCanns hired. The foetal blood in the Chamberlains’ car, you may recall, turned out to be rust inhibitor.
‘She is rogue property,
she must be taught her weeping.
It is done for the millions.
Sometimes the millions join in
with jokes: how to get a baby
in the Northern Territory? Just stick
your finger down a dingo’s throat’.
Much of the most risible commentary comes from people who think that their personal experience as parents can be used as a template for everyone else’s experience, a mental collectivization that forgets the singularity of individual lives. Here is Andrew Pierce again:
I salute their courage in trying to prevent Madeleine becoming just another forgotten missing-child statistic. Some of my friends who are parents tell me that, if they had been trapped in the same nightmare, they would not have been able to face the media at all, let alone three times a day. But they have not lost a child, of course.
We have been transfixed by the story because Madeleine is a pretty child whose parents are as removed as it is possible to be from the stereotypical image of a single mother going to the Costa Brava leaving the kids home alone. The fact that they are doctors, who save lives rather than take them, added to our fascination.
How many times in the past 127 days have you debated whether you would leave a three-year-old and two-year-old twin siblings, without adult supervision, while dining in a tapas bar a 52-second walk away?
But the other reason we have been absorbed is because we’re filled with a mixture of admiration and disbelief at the way Kate McCann always appeared so immaculate in public, when most mums would have broken down long ago.
Only mathematicians can make firm predictions, and only in certain branches of mathematics. As a lawyer, I advise my clients on the basis of precedent, but no lawyer is foolish enough to pretend to complete predictive power, no matter how ‘regular’ the area of practice. ‘Too often’, as George Clason once wryly observed, ‘the lessons of experience are wasted on dead men’.
Kate McCann has wept on cue, has kept her womanly end of the bargain. It remains to be seen whether Les Murray’s bitter view of Australia’s treatment of prominent (but unsettling) women is true of Britain as well.
‘Most times, though, the millions
stay silent, and the jokes
are snobbish media jokes:
Chemidenko. The Oxleymoron.
Spittle, like the flies on Black Mary.After the feeding frenzy
sometimes a ruefully balanced last lick
precedes the next selection’.
The poem quoted throughout this piece is Les Murray’s A Deployment of Fashion.
44 Comments
It is unforgiveable to leave a toddler alone while you swan off to dinner. The parents ought to be charged with child neglect.
Nonetheless the tone of the media reports you sight is unpleasant and unnecessary, other than the BBC one which I found innocuous.
Thats exactly what I thought — except there are no dingos in Portugal.
Melaleuca — maybe you haven’t realized this, but no-one is perfect. I’m sure its possible to find bad things almost every parent has done if you want, especially since we have no idea of the context. Perhaps you are a saint in this matter (albeit a very judgemental one)
As a parent of three I don’t think I would do this. However every day I make compromises that could see my kids dead. Do I let them run ahead on the footpath? Do I watch them constantly as they climb trees in the yards? Do I sleep on the sofa while they play alone because frankly I’m exhausted?
I don’t think what they did was overly wise. However it is not at all hard to forgive.
When you travel it is very difficult. What is the difference between downstairs at the tappas bar and downstairs at home? Mind you, I would stay within monitor range.
personally, my greatest fear is a wrap my kids in too much cotton wool.
My first thought when this happened is it would turn into Lindy mark 2. Unfortunately, looks like it might happen.
Mrs Entropy and I were talking about Lindy the other day. I was still in senior high school, but can remember one girl telling me that Seventh Day Adventists ritually kill one of their children as a sacred rite. Anyone that knows adventists would know as a rule they are conservative christians. How many people feel guilty about the tripe that they circulated then, or are they in denial?
“It is unforgiveable to leave a toddler alone while you swan off to dinner. ”
A judgement made without any context. If the restaurant is within, say, 50m, why not. You’d check on them less frequently at home, ffs.
In the absence of an evidence trail, blame the parents.
After the feeding frenzy
sometimes a ruefully balanced last lick
precedes the next selection
Beautifully describes the media after any frenzy, whether it is an attack on an individual, or flipping out about the latest celebrity death, or the fear mongering story of the week (all too often distributed by politicians seeking re-election).
Indeed, it is worse than this, because after selling the ridiculous to our fear or horrified fascination or other base instincts, segments of the media (sometimes the same ones) sell more to us by examining whether the previous mouth foaming was oversold or irresponsible etc.
Worse again, we almost cannot blame the media, because it only happens because we buy it. If we didn’t we’d never see this guff.
That being said, every tom & jill cannot uniformly employ the same degree of sophistication that the media applies in selling their stories to us. Thus, in the end, there is really is some sense in expecting a responsible media and trying to hold them to that… just no really effective ways of enforcing responsibility.
So we live with a large degree of crap, but also still see a degree of responsibility, often partly product differentiation, in different media outlets.
PS famously objective BBC?! Only if you take a British view of the world.
I must admit that entropy’s point occurred to me as well. For some reason, as soon as I heard about this, all I could think of was ‘Lindy Chamberlain’. The McCanns’ decision to stay in Portugal and use the media sealed it for me, and I’ve been counting down until the ‘blame the parents’ trope kicked off.
As a general rule the Beeb doesn’t indulge in emotive reporting, with the exception of its reporting on Israel (uniformly anti). The latter, I suspect, is a function of British history. The Israelis haven’t been forgiven for the King David Hotel (and various other incidents), in the same way that Irish Catholics are still rather non-u over Northern Ireland.
A very fine post. The writer and the lawyer meet in it.
The pommy tabloids are of course infamous. But it looks like their broadsheets are lowering themselves too.
I think the Beeb was terrible on Ireland, & if is not bad on Russia, Central & Eastern Europe, eg, through the Yugoslavian crisis, certainly takes an anglo-saxon view, & one that does not come across as unbiased in countries as far south as Greece, and, in that line, about as far north as you want to go.
But all this strikes me as off topic.
Thanks, DD. I’m just going to see what this morning’s McCanns news brings. Likely to be depressing. I’ll report back soon.
They’ve left Portugal; this piece suggests that some members of the British press are starting to get it.
shame media shame !
Shit happens. Life goes on.
“…if is not bad on Russia, Central & Eastern Europe, eg, through the Yugoslavian crisis, certainly takes an anglo-saxon view”
BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation, Kodjo. Go figure.
I am at a loss to understnd why the parents either did not take the kiddie with them or got someone to look after the kiddie.
leaving it alone is criminal neglect
well you know homer, we’re all human beings and do things we later regret.
I recall we left our oldest kid alone in the apartment to take care of urgent business on about hree occassions.
How did you grow up. i recall I was out most of the day and only got home for lunch and dinner when i was a kid. In other words we weren’t supervised for a good part of the day.
never left them alone and never would.
Deus Ex—my point exactly.
“Even the famously objective BBC…”
You are either being sarcastic or you never follow their reporting from the Middle East.
“i recall I was out most of the day and only got home for lunch and dinner when i was a kid.”
At Madeleine McCann’s age? And you find that commendable?
The Israelis haven’t been forgiven for the King David Hotel (and various other incidents), in the same way that Irish Catholics are still rather non-u over Northern Ireland.
The Brits had been warned before the King David was blown up. But (“We don’t take orders from Jews”) didn’t follow it. It was an act of war, not terrorism. No doubt the IRA were terrorists.
To the blogger: Would you prefer a more lenient treatment of prominent (but unsettling) women, like — say — the one Marybeth Tinning received, who killed all nine of her children before somebody dared to suspect a *gasp* MOTHER? Mothers are killing their children all the time and even more mothers are taking doubtful and illegal means if they don’t want to be bothered by their children for a while. The dumb tie them to their beds or just lock them up and leave them to their own devices if they are living in a neighbourhood that allows for such a behaviour, the more sophisticated apply sedatives. That may go wrong, even for a doctor. The fact that they left their children alone at night doesn’t speak for them as parents.
And why should Kate McCann be exempt from even worse suspicion? Do you know that suffocation is virtually indistiguishable from SIDS at an autopsy? Do you know that cases of SIDS increased dramatically once science found better treatments for lung diseases? Why is that?
Sure, if Kate McCann is innocent, it’s a horrible suspicion. But a mother doesn’t deserve carte blanche treatment just because she is a mother. Such an attitude had cost the lifes of I don’t even want to know HOW many children.
Ever heard of the presumption of innocence?
“It is unforgiveable to leave a toddler alone while you swan off to dinner. The parents ought to be charged with child neglect.
Shit happens. Life goes on.”
Yeah but dickhead.
We KNOW you have a complete contempt for human life.
You should leave your ghoulish perversions out of the saloon.
20 I see where you are coming from.
And there is certainly something in womankind that makes them somewhat susceptible to the furtive killing. Like back whenever we get the traceless, odourless poisons on the market and people start dropping on the basis of executive decisions from our sheilas.
But this is not a post-natal-depression sort of deal. Two doctors. 39 years old. A toddler.
I can imagine a mistake and coverup. I CANNOT imagine a woman of 39 without grave financial pressure and depression killing her little daughter. That would go against any instinct that the human race has.
Surely if they are accusing her they would be tripping to think it was a deliberate murder. And on top of that we would have to suggest she is innocent until proved guilty to quite a very high degree.
I can see where you are coming from with your suspicion of young Mothers, under stress, Dads at work…. this sort of thing.
But surely in this case we really have to assume either accident-and-coverup or clean innocent.
Surely.
It doesn’t make sense otherwise.
Don’t be daft. Kids are oversupervised these days.
Yes I do, and so does every member of the British Press corps after three high profile miscarriages of justice against mothers thanks to the evidence of an expert witness with an even weaker grasp of statistics than facts.
The fact there are probably several witness statements about her appearance and behaviour from fellow diners before and after the bed-checks, might also have gone some way to swinging it of course…
If you can explain the difference between a warning call from Irgun and a warning call from the IRA, I’d love to hear it.
So Homer, never had a BBQ in the back yard when the kids were little?
Never had a BBQ in the back yard when the kids were little that went on after 10pm.
Never had a BBQ in the back yard when the kids were little that went on after their much earlier bedtime and popped back to their bedroom every so often to check they were okay?
What never?
Just to go OT here, I think I should point out that I’ve got no issue with pointing out the BBC’s anti-Israel bias. It did and does have one. The Poms are funny about their officer corps – so it goes.
Explanation does not equal excusal.
I’d go so far as to argue that the BBC don’t claim blanket ‘impartiality’ – that’s impossible for individuals let alone organisations – just impartiality from the opinions of the British GOVERNMENT.
no JC, the parents here were irresponsible
of course they were homer, however I also recall doing similar things and feel somehow reluctant to throw stones.
But we didn’t we never left kids at that young age. 7 or 8
speak for yourself.
Who do you think i am speaking for, homer, prison inmates? Did I say i was speaking for others, Mr. 142 Iq. did i even imply I was?
Cool it, fellahs. Parenting is just about the most emotive job there is, and (as I hope I made clear), I don’t think Kate McCann is any sort of perfect parent. Just that she shouldn’t be pilloried for the sort of parenting mistake any otherwise good parent could make.
I was merely saying JC can speak for himslef.
My kids have always been either looked after by us or by people trusted when we have been out.
I’m ignoring th swipe here, Sl. That’s the sorta guy i am. It’s homers free day at swiping me. I’m so generous of spirit it bothers me.
.
Perhaps given the age etc the parents were irresponsible. I don’t know all the details.
However I spent much of my youth out of adult supervision. We did one day expeditions up the mountains behind the farm (where there were large cliffs, frequent snakes and other significant hazards). And we did this from about the age of 8. We also walked home alone from school on a country road which was about 2 kilometres long from the age of 5 (although there were older kids with us). Kids should stretch their wings occasionally and saddly these days too few do.
It might be due to having grown up in a different era, but my reaction is a bit like Terje’s and others’ above.
Me & my 3 sibs routinely went for long periods without adult supervision. Sometimes we’d have to cook dinner (following strict instructions)… all this prior to the eldest (me) being 12. It’s true something bad could have happened & fortunate it did not, but I never once to this day imagined that my mother was a bad parent for leaving us alone.
When each of us turned 13, on virtually every school day, we walked home 3 miles on our own (rarely together). While we were among the furthest students from our school most kids we knew walked some distance, often more than a mile or two.
None of them died, were kidnapped or anything similar, though a kid I knew killed himself on a motorbike he was riding illegally (not going to or from school).
Bad things happen sometimes. Sometimes right in front of supervising adults. Sometimes because off supervising adults.
Yes, kids really do need a large degree of adult care & even oversight, but one also can exaggerate the dangers, and unduly protect or constrain kids. There is always a trade-off, and it varies by child and parent, and none of us are in any position to judge what happened in this case.
I’m with both of the above. Man, at age 8, I was climbing 50m high cliffs and swimming in the ocean, all without my parents knowledge. In fact, me and my kid brother used to chuck browneyes at cars coming back from the beach, the skeeter into the forest when they stopped to confront us. I was probably 7 at the time.
My parents were dedicated by the standards of the day, but we drove around with no seatbelt, pinched ciggies of our parents, the full box and dice.
I don’t think it made much difference in how I turned out, but it sure as hell gave me self reliance.
My own kids are in straightjackets compared to this.
If anything, this incident will make many parents even more paranoid, and they’ll restrict their kids’ activities even more.
My kids are confident and strong people. I have no problem leaving them at home for many hours as there are five of them who live in an extended family environment in middle-class Brisbane. My kids are home-schooled so the house is active all day.
The kids and their great-grandmother, who is not altogether compos-mentis anymore, are fine, happy and safe for any number of hours in our well equipped home.
Nevertheless, when my wife and I were young and newly married we were very poor and living in the worst part of inner Melbourne. We had to make difficult choices because of money and limited means. Honestly, sometimes the children got the short end of the straw.
Am I a better parent now that I have money and means and can provide additional safety net? No.
My children’s safety is so important to me that it is integral to my own personal identity, yet I’d probably be fine with the situation that the McCann’s claim to have been in at the tapas bar.
Parents who are in control of a situation and alert to the dangers in their environment have done the best they can do. Under any reasonable test, I think that parents should be given the benefit of the doubt.
That said, the McCanns are looking fairly frumpy to me around now. ‘Frumpy’ is a legal term I just made up – it means I’ve never really been happy that the police didn’t check the parents out and clear them before conducting the remainder of the investigation.
Because of course, in these sorts of cases, the parents must be eliminated from suspicion as a priority, due to the fact that parents are overwhelmingly the most common killers of children by any statistic you want to name.
-D
homer – you need to calm down a bit.
When I was 5 I used leave home at 7:30 am to walk 2 ks to catch a bus then the bus drove 25 ks to the school then at night we walked from the school down to the town where we had around 45 minutes unsupervised to wait until the bus picked us up again to eventually get home at 5:30pm.
As is still the case today the biggest danger from peadophiles was when we went to the church from school or visited relatives.
As is still the case today the biggest danger for children of violence was in the home.
As is still the case today the biggest danger of a child being murdered was in the home.
Going down the backyard to put one kid on the trampoline would have put me further away from the other sleeping child than the McCanns were on that night.
A parent in a deep sleep could sleep right through an abduction even if they were right next to a child. And it has happened.
The McCanns may be bad or good parents – I have no idea. But leaving their kids in the room while eating nearby isn’t evidence of carelessness, criminality or stupidity.
That said. It would be negligent if the police didn’t regard the parents as chief suspects. Most child violence, manslaughter and murder is committed by parents or those caring for the children or living in the same household.
In a large percentage of murders the person who reports the death or disapearance is the chief suspect and /or the guilty party. In a large percentage of murders the person who finds the body is the guilty party.
Despite all the above the Lindy Chamberlain case should be a reminder of the dangers of sloppy evidence gathering and conviction without a body.
All of these examples relate to kids 5 and up. They left 2 two year olds by themselves! Two year olds can’t open doors, use a phone or even usually comminicate anything that might be wrong to an older child.
I’ve got two young kids and I agree that some leeway should be given to parents, it’s a tough job filled with moments of uncertainty about what is right. (I also agree with the sentiments that kids are in general over-supervised these days.) But leaving 2 year olds on their own is just wrong. It is not a grey area.
yes it is unacceptable to leave a child on its own for long periods.
However, I would make this point.
Under present government policy regarding employment the government supports people to break the law in order that they comply with a directive that if you are on a pension and your youngest child reaches six years of age and regardless of whether the child is disabled requiring fulltime supervisions or whether it is normal both parents are required to register for employment.
The law says it is illegal to leave children unsupervised (0-16), yet even with both parents or sole parents and a good job but having to leave home at e.g. 6.30am returning back e.g. 7.30pm they are breaking the law because child care centres may not be availalbe and the parents have to rely on family support if availalbe.
Child minding centres for pre schooler are open from 6.30am -6.30pm and take children as young as 6 weeks old.
Primary – secondary schools only provide supervision generally to 4.30-5.00pm
As a result these children are left to themselves, many roaming the streets until their parents are due home. This completely negatives the child protection requirements that children must not be left alone without supervision. No wonder you have “latch key kids” who have little interest in repsecting community property of the community when they have no role models to look to.
Child protection act in Australia is a dismal failure.
As an advocate I spent 2 1/2 -3 days recently trying to have a Child Portection Order put on the children of a mother treated badly by government departments. I said I would take it up and she said I would be welcome but she believed the law was such I would get the same response.
I first contacted Child Protection and the response was to ask if the children were in danger and they were told that the request was to pre-empt such a possibility given past expereince.
This time it was serious as the parent proposed to take the children overseas.
I checked with Federal Police and they were unable to Advise whether the previous child Alert/Port watch was still in place due to confidentiality alws.
I checked Immigration and was told it was not their responsibility
It was Foreign affairs
I checked with them and was told it was the Passport departments responsibility
Checked with them at first they would not give me information.
I said it appeared to me that the children had to be hurt or abducted before any government department would act.
Eventually the lady I spoke with said could I hold on as she wanted to check something out that would allow her to give an indirect answer.
The answer was that a Child alert remained only 12 months and needed to be applied for again, unless it had been put in place through the Family court. In that case it last until they reached 18 years or married.
I eventually advised the different departments that they had been warned and I would record it and if the children were hurt or abducted then the government would be held accountable and responsible. I would be prepapred to go on public record on behalf of the family.
I checked whether Australia held a Geneva convention regarding Extradition between it the the particulalr country.
Answer NO, therefore the parents would have to find private means to get the children back.
I checked on the costs and was advised between $90,000 -200,000 which would place it beyond low income earners and pensioners.
There was a lot more to this case but this gives an understanding about poor laws that need to be changed or amended so that they do the job they were intended to do.