![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Missing Children
May. 16th, 2007 06:01 pmA child goes missing, presumably abducted, while on holiday in Portugal.
It's a terrible thing to happen of course. I can imagine the parents being beside themselves with grief and worry. Except that, in this particular case, I can't help feeling that something doesn't ring true.
I'd like to know, for example, how these well-heeled parents went out to dinner leaving their three-year-old alone in bed. Child care was available at their accommodation, but they didn't take it up. They preferred instead to check every half an hour. Imagine the uproar if, in the uk,. a couple went to the pub leaving their child alone at home except for a half-hourly check.
Then there's the media management. The mother appearing before her daily press conference holding a teddy bear. The requests to have meetings with leading government figures (and having the requests granted - I wonder if this would happen if a child was snatched froma Peckham tower block?)
There are, of course, quite a few children currently missing. Why don't we hear an hourly update on the news, regardless of whether anything is happening, for every missing child? Hundreds of children are being abused. The great majority of those are being abused by family members and not shadowy paedophiles. How much to we get to hear about this in the media? And what about all those politicians and celebrities rushing to be seen to be 'caring' in this case (but not, one assumes, in others.)
One could almost believe this wasn't about a missing child at all, but about middle-class parents wanting the spotlight.
Or am I being unduly crass?
It's a terrible thing to happen of course. I can imagine the parents being beside themselves with grief and worry. Except that, in this particular case, I can't help feeling that something doesn't ring true.
I'd like to know, for example, how these well-heeled parents went out to dinner leaving their three-year-old alone in bed. Child care was available at their accommodation, but they didn't take it up. They preferred instead to check every half an hour. Imagine the uproar if, in the uk,. a couple went to the pub leaving their child alone at home except for a half-hourly check.
Then there's the media management. The mother appearing before her daily press conference holding a teddy bear. The requests to have meetings with leading government figures (and having the requests granted - I wonder if this would happen if a child was snatched froma Peckham tower block?)
There are, of course, quite a few children currently missing. Why don't we hear an hourly update on the news, regardless of whether anything is happening, for every missing child? Hundreds of children are being abused. The great majority of those are being abused by family members and not shadowy paedophiles. How much to we get to hear about this in the media? And what about all those politicians and celebrities rushing to be seen to be 'caring' in this case (but not, one assumes, in others.)
One could almost believe this wasn't about a missing child at all, but about middle-class parents wanting the spotlight.
Or am I being unduly crass?
