Missing like Madeleine
By Claire Bagnall
During the summer of 2007, the press was dominated by stories of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal. The nation was taken on a media driven rollercoaster ride of suspects, dead-ends and even accusations against the child’s own parents. Sadly, even after provoking a heartfelt response, the little girl has still not been found. Yet, without such press coverage Madeleine would just have been another missing child publicly forgotten within a week or two. The reality is that it’s highly unlikely her disappearance would even have been acknowledged.
According to missingkids.co.uk a child goes missing every five minutes in the U.K., yet few, if any, attained the level of national attention which Madeleine McCann did. In shops throughout the country were posters of the girl with the distinctive and uncompromising eyes; she was everywhere. The fact that one girl should receive such a concerted public effort while the majority of the 100,000 children that go missing each year do so unnoticed, raised some important questions. If Madeleine’s parents weren’t doctors, if Madeleine were ugly or of an ethnic minority would this have been the case? If she had been a teenager would the nation have cared? What about the other children (and we must remember that a person of 17 is still considered a child by law) who seem to just fade into the shadows, never to be seen or found or even looked for again? The result: grieving families left searching for someone who may never be recovered. The fact that there are not pictures of all the poor children, or the children of immigrants that go missing raises questions about what our country defines as important social factors. Why should being middle-class, Caucasian, Catholic doctors enable you to the right, or more importantly the means, to launch a campaign while other families are unable to? Yet, regardless of all these socio-economic factors it is undeniable that the abduction of an innocent child was such an outrage that the whole nation could not help but speak out. However there is one thing that undermines this show of human solidarity – the fact that Madeleine McCann is still missing.
If money and several countries searching cannot find a missing child then there is little hope, not only for the impoverished and ignored, but also for those wealthy enough to launch mass scale publicity stunts and searches. Thus, it is implied that levels of benevolence in society are at fault instead. As the media clung onto desperate threads and leads, it seems that we almost forgot the little girl and instead were trying to regain the last shreds of hope we had of regaining our collective humanity. The public, it appears, needs to know that crimes like this can be overcome. It would be a small victory beside all the wars and political and religious unrest in the world. After all, it is important to realise that a few televised images of a war zone are too disconnected from most people’s everyday life, but when a single child is focused on, like in the Madeleine case, all of a sudden that child may be your own daughter, or grand-daughter or niece. Not to mention the fact that the harming of a child is still seen as one of the worst crimes that can be committed. It has been said that even amongst the worst criminals in prison there is a hatred and violence directed to those who are imprisoned for crimes towards children. An example of this is the Soham killer Ian Huntley, who killed two ten-year-old girls, and who has been repeatedly subjected to attacks and attempted killings by his fellow inmates. At the top of the criminal hierarchy, then, child-related crime is currently very much in the British press, with the sex offenders register and constant new findings of paedophilia. The story of Madeleine McCann allowed the nation to unite and fight this recurrent theme of crimes against children. However the horrifying thing is that there has been no fairytale victory, and while the media could emblazon the little girl’s face across their pages it did not result in her being found, nor was her abductor ever caught.
More importantly, if a child cannot be found with such publicity and interest – it must be acknowledged that a missing child will always incite more interest – then we may assume that those adults who go missing will never be found. On missingpeople.org.uk there are people who were reported missing over 40 years ago and still haven’t been found. Face after face which has somehow vanished. Not to mention the fact that these are the people who have someone who is concerned enough to actually report them missing. In a society of social networks and unfathomable technology, the thought of how many people must go missing without their absence even being noted is terrifying. The sad reality, then, is that people disappear between the cracks of society, and all the CCTV in the world can’t find them.
According to missingkids.co.uk a child goes missing every five minutes in the U.K., yet few, if any, attained the level of national attention which Madeleine McCann did. In shops throughout the country were posters of the girl with the distinctive and uncompromising eyes; she was everywhere. The fact that one girl should receive such a concerted public effort while the majority of the 100,000 children that go missing each year do so unnoticed, raised some important questions. If Madeleine’s parents weren’t doctors, if Madeleine were ugly or of an ethnic minority would this have been the case? If she had been a teenager would the nation have cared? What about the other children (and we must remember that a person of 17 is still considered a child by law) who seem to just fade into the shadows, never to be seen or found or even looked for again? The result: grieving families left searching for someone who may never be recovered. The fact that there are not pictures of all the poor children, or the children of immigrants that go missing raises questions about what our country defines as important social factors. Why should being middle-class, Caucasian, Catholic doctors enable you to the right, or more importantly the means, to launch a campaign while other families are unable to? Yet, regardless of all these socio-economic factors it is undeniable that the abduction of an innocent child was such an outrage that the whole nation could not help but speak out. However there is one thing that undermines this show of human solidarity – the fact that Madeleine McCann is still missing.
If money and several countries searching cannot find a missing child then there is little hope, not only for the impoverished and ignored, but also for those wealthy enough to launch mass scale publicity stunts and searches. Thus, it is implied that levels of benevolence in society are at fault instead. As the media clung onto desperate threads and leads, it seems that we almost forgot the little girl and instead were trying to regain the last shreds of hope we had of regaining our collective humanity. The public, it appears, needs to know that crimes like this can be overcome. It would be a small victory beside all the wars and political and religious unrest in the world. After all, it is important to realise that a few televised images of a war zone are too disconnected from most people’s everyday life, but when a single child is focused on, like in the Madeleine case, all of a sudden that child may be your own daughter, or grand-daughter or niece. Not to mention the fact that the harming of a child is still seen as one of the worst crimes that can be committed. It has been said that even amongst the worst criminals in prison there is a hatred and violence directed to those who are imprisoned for crimes towards children. An example of this is the Soham killer Ian Huntley, who killed two ten-year-old girls, and who has been repeatedly subjected to attacks and attempted killings by his fellow inmates. At the top of the criminal hierarchy, then, child-related crime is currently very much in the British press, with the sex offenders register and constant new findings of paedophilia. The story of Madeleine McCann allowed the nation to unite and fight this recurrent theme of crimes against children. However the horrifying thing is that there has been no fairytale victory, and while the media could emblazon the little girl’s face across their pages it did not result in her being found, nor was her abductor ever caught.
More importantly, if a child cannot be found with such publicity and interest – it must be acknowledged that a missing child will always incite more interest – then we may assume that those adults who go missing will never be found. On missingpeople.org.uk there are people who were reported missing over 40 years ago and still haven’t been found. Face after face which has somehow vanished. Not to mention the fact that these are the people who have someone who is concerned enough to actually report them missing. In a society of social networks and unfathomable technology, the thought of how many people must go missing without their absence even being noted is terrifying. The sad reality, then, is that people disappear between the cracks of society, and all the CCTV in the world can’t find them.