When all you have left is prayer, God listens.

That's what everyone is saying unfortunately.  They're claiming that they were only 40 yards away from the apartment, that they could see the door which was locked and that they were going back to check every half an hour.  I'd never do it myself - let's face it they can be gone in a few seconds if you turn your back in a shopping centre when they're with you - remember Jamie Bulger? I'm possibly over-protective but I'm afraid these days you can't be too careful.

However my heart goes out to the parents and the abject misery they're experiencing now.  We all make mistakes and hindsight is a wonderful thing.  They'll be beating themselves up for ever, even if they get her back unscathed.

The police efforts are not very public. Have they rounded up all the people who were in the same bar, and who likely knew they were checking the kids every half hour??

There's a big article in today's Mail about people being hypocritical in criticising these people for leaving her alone.  Apparently we've all done it at some time or left children in cars alone etc.  Except of course that most of us haven't.  I wonder if the media would have been as sympathetic had the parents been non-professionals?  I expect there would have been questions in The House about how we don't educate our low-paid workers on how to properly bring up their children.   Wasn't Bliar mooting some sort of parental education scheme at one time?

I know a very wealthy lady who left her 3-year old asleep in her bedroom and went off to school to pick up the others.  When she returned, the house had been broken into and a sizeable sum of money taken.  The child was unhurt and untouched as it happened, fortunately, but I can remember being absolutely horrified at what might have been the outcome.  When I mentioned this to her she pooh-poohed it straight away and said "it was only for 30 minutes!" 

These occasions are of course mercifully very rare and one doesn't like to be over-protective but really even if it's a one in a million chance, to my mind it isn't worth taking the risk of it being your child.

Mary, you're absolutely right about the age group.  In fact my six-year old can wake up with a nightmare and need reassurance.   It would be awful if I'd "just nipped out for a pizza" if he woke up distressed.

Ah well, all we can do is hope and pray and obviously I sympathise very deeply with the poor parents.  On my news page, they're talking about looking into all the paedophile rings in Portugal - it really doesn't bear thinking about.

I'm concerned about the Potuguese police, they do not discuss their methods with the public so we don't know if they have identified all the people who were in the bar with the family watching when they went to check the kids.

Maybe the couple were saying loudly to everyone that they WERE checking the kids, so when they were both in the bar..... and the kidnappers knew which room they had.....

The UK police should be asking more about the other residents or customers in the bar, after all the kidnapper is possibly a UK citizen.


John W

I'm just watching BBC Breakfast on TV, and they (journalists etc) are STILL saying it was a normal thing to do, and "we've all done it". NO, we haven't.