If the McCann's case is in any way one of negligence every parent in my parents generation would have been criminalised. The person or persons involved in the child's abduction are the only guilty parties.
Going to a pub/bar/restaurant for a couple of hours leaving children asleep in a locked hotel room is not negligent. Its, obviously, more risky than if you stayed in, barred the doors and sat up all night with a baseball bat ready to repel all boarders but the potential risk was minimal. They were just horribly, horribly unlucky.
I'm a child of the 60s and early 70s and with the Hindley/Brady child abductions and murders were fresh so that sort of thing was in the back of every caring parents' minds. My own parents always made it clear to me and my younger brother and sister always to get their permission and tell them where we were if we were going out alone (from the age of 6) even if it was just over the road to the newsagents to buy a comic or kick a ball around with our friends.
Warning about not talking to strangers, not accepting sweets, drinks or anything else from them and definitely not getting into the vehicles of anyone we didn't know were drummed into us. Run away and tell a policeman or other responsible adult what had happened if somebody tried to force you to. That's what we were told and I remember it to this day.
But that still did not stop them going into a pub for half an hour leaving a 7, 5, and 3 year old alone at home or locked in a car in the pub car park. Long before the age of 11 it didn't stop them allowing us out with no adult supervision to the local park and recreation grounds to meet those friends of a similar age.
That was almost a daily occurrence during the school holidays. On occasion we'd even cycle miles into the countryside alone and as long as we were back at the required time there was never any admonishment or worry.
We even knew the local town perv who we nicknamed (now considered non-PC) "The Queer", a middle aged bloke in a blue nylon raincoat, worn whatever the weather, who could be seen regularly near the two local play/sports grounds in the area. He would follow us or other kids between them. He was so obviously dodgy it was a source of amusement for me and my friends when he turned up: 'Oh oh, its The Queer'. But we always knew to give him a very wide birth because he was just the type of person we had been warned about. I could identify him from police mug shots to this day 50 years on.
This was normal parenting back then and nobody tut-tutted let alone criticised it. I had one school friend aged 7 who, with his 5 year old brother, commuted to school on their own 20 miles by train with a mile walk to catch a bus every day.
Threats to kids are probably no higher than they were back then but some parents have now become so risk averse they cotton wool their 'babies' until they are 'adults' and they're often not learning the important lessons my generation did. Add to that elements of society so disapproving and able to express and publish that disapproval so easily its all become a spiral of paranoia to the point if you put your child 'at risk' however small, its seen as your fault if something happens.
No it is not.
Going to a pub/bar/restaurant for a couple of hours leaving children asleep in a locked hotel room is not negligent. Its, obviously, more risky than if you stayed in, barred the doors and sat up all night with a baseball bat ready to repel all boarders but the potential risk was minimal. They were just horribly, horribly unlucky.
I'm a child of the 60s and early 70s and with the Hindley/Brady child abductions and murders were fresh so that sort of thing was in the back of every caring parents' minds. My own parents always made it clear to me and my younger brother and sister always to get their permission and tell them where we were if we were going out alone (from the age of 6) even if it was just over the road to the newsagents to buy a comic or kick a ball around with our friends.
Warning about not talking to strangers, not accepting sweets, drinks or anything else from them and definitely not getting into the vehicles of anyone we didn't know were drummed into us. Run away and tell a policeman or other responsible adult what had happened if somebody tried to force you to. That's what we were told and I remember it to this day.
But that still did not stop them going into a pub for half an hour leaving a 7, 5, and 3 year old alone at home or locked in a car in the pub car park. Long before the age of 11 it didn't stop them allowing us out with no adult supervision to the local park and recreation grounds to meet those friends of a similar age.
That was almost a daily occurrence during the school holidays. On occasion we'd even cycle miles into the countryside alone and as long as we were back at the required time there was never any admonishment or worry.
We even knew the local town perv who we nicknamed (now considered non-PC) "The Queer", a middle aged bloke in a blue nylon raincoat, worn whatever the weather, who could be seen regularly near the two local play/sports grounds in the area. He would follow us or other kids between them. He was so obviously dodgy it was a source of amusement for me and my friends when he turned up: 'Oh oh, its The Queer'. But we always knew to give him a very wide birth because he was just the type of person we had been warned about. I could identify him from police mug shots to this day 50 years on.
This was normal parenting back then and nobody tut-tutted let alone criticised it. I had one school friend aged 7 who, with his 5 year old brother, commuted to school on their own 20 miles by train with a mile walk to catch a bus every day.
Threats to kids are probably no higher than they were back then but some parents have now become so risk averse they cotton wool their 'babies' until they are 'adults' and they're often not learning the important lessons my generation did. Add to that elements of society so disapproving and able to express and publish that disapproval so easily its all become a spiral of paranoia to the point if you put your child 'at risk' however small, its seen as your fault if something happens.
No it is not.
Not a chance I'd risk them
), the thing about paedophiles is they're sexual attracted to children, not OAPs and generally 
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