How Long Must Kate and Gerry McCann Suffer.

How long must Kate and Gerry McCann suffer?

Posted by Keir Simmons. 8 November, 2010

More than three years ago Madeleine McCann vanished from an apartment in a Portugese seaside town. Madeleine was three years old and 11 months. She has now been missing for almost as long.
She disappeared on the evening of Thursday May 3rd. I arrived in Praia Da Luz the next day. I felt sure she would be found and that I would be back in the UK before the weekend was over. I now know how wrong I was.
So much is easy with hindsight. I can say today with confidence that the police hunt for Madeleine was utterly inadequate. One of the detectives admitted as much in a newspaper article this weekend. I didn’t once see officers searching apartments in the area.
I look back at the media’s coverage of the events that would unfold with deep disappointment. Good journalists under pressure from London took far too many risks with the truth. Collectively in my honest view, we lost our balance. Some journalists lost the plot.
At the centre of it all this were two parents who had no idea how to handle such pressure. The last time I saw Kate and Gerry McCann was at a news conference around a year ago. They looked as shell shocked as when I first saw them – perhaps more so. The suffering they are enduring is unimaginable.
And yet, there continues to be a group of individuals who use the internet to attack these two poor parents. I hear from them all the time via Twitter. They demand that I investigate this or that “if you don’t you’re not a reporter” one informed me recently. After a report I produced for NBC News over the weekend I was subjected to a torrent of abusive messages – one suspects they are co-ordinating their attacks for best effect.
There was even one sick individual who created a Twitter account pretending to be Madeleine and then ‘tweeted’ about where she was. Thank god, the account was quickly taken down.
These people say they are ‘truth seekers’. They are not. What they write is just nasty, obsessive and vicious. They are not journalists, not even campaigners, they represent the worst of the human psyche electronically unleashed.People who read this blog will know that I see free speech as fundamental. And that I love Twitter and Facebook because they make free speech available to anyone with a computer. But we now see consistent examples of that free speech used irresponsibly.
So I find myself considering cutting these people off, ‘blocking’ them in the terminology of Twitter. Is that the right thing to do? I think it might be.
After this article they will send me abuse and vitriol over the web. I can deal with that of course. But why should two parents who have suffered so much continue to have this groundless campaign against them? Those involved claim they believe in ‘truth’ yet ignore any evidence that doesn’t fit their conspiracy theory. They claim to love children, yet ignore the effect their ‘campaign’ might have on Kate and Gerry McCann’s twins as they grow up and begin to comprehend such things.
I worry that by allowing them to communicate with me, by effectively engaging with them, I am encouraging them. Perhaps it’s time for me in my own small way to say ‘stop’, I’d like to know what you think. Please send me your views on Twitter (ironically) or Facebook.

Feel free to send me your feedback – find me on twitter @KeirSimmonsITV or Facebook

http://ht.ly/35Z03


WELL SAID THAT MAN!!!

Good man. We should support and thank him.

Keir Simmonds.

I did write to Facebook on his page and thanked him on behalf of us too.

rosemary wrote:I did write to Facebook on his page and thanked him on behalf of us too.

Thank you Rosemary, is it relatively easy to do ? I'm not up on all this Facebook & Twitter malarky, lol.

I agree with you my friends, well done Rosemary.
To Keir Simmonds:
Thank you:

To Keir

Blocking the abusive twitterers wont help, they will just open new accounts, and they use multiple ones anyway, much easier to co-ordinate if there are very few of them. And they are only very few, thank God.

But they are not worth engaging. They dont deserve replies, all they deserve are restraining orders to prevent them from making any contact with you or the McCanns, or anyone associated with the McCanns.

They are evil, nasty and obsessed.

Tinkerbell43 wrote:

rosemary wrote:I did write to Facebook on his page and thanked him on behalf of us too.

Thank you Rosemary, is it relatively easy to do ? I'm not up on all this Facebook & Twitter malarky, lol.

If you are already on Facebook just type in his name. Or click on the link he gives. I don´t go there very often, it´s not really ma thang! Too much narcisiccism - all those photo albums!

I made a positive decision some time ago to save my own equilibrium and mental health NOT to ever engage with any of them. Say your piece if you see the need on a comments column somewhere like a newspaper, and then withdraw from any kind of response, preferably don´t go back to view any. The law should deal with them, not individuals. Point being you will never have any profound effect upon these people. They really are mentally ill. But you might have a positive effect upon the readers who are not properly informed. That´s my own view anyhow.

Needless to say, they proved Keir's, who seems to be a very kind person - he often writes about child protection issues on his blog - with a very bright international future, as I hear his dulcet British tones on American TV on an increasing basis, point by berating him, retweeting their own tweets at him, demanding apologies, demanding answers, and insulting him, in the two days since he wrote this.

I am happy that someone finally stood up to them. The McCanns can't, but the celebrities and journalists who have taken the abuse, too, really ought to say something. Put the final nail in the coffin and then ignore them.

It's good to see, too, as he is now UK editor of ITV, that the McCanns' experience resonates with him; he will not be putting that kind of pressure on his people when a similar case breaks.