Letter to the Editor - Dr Martin Roberts

Don't know if this has been posted, I haven't noticed it I will delete if it has With thanks as always to the brilliant McCannfiles


Letter to the Editor


EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com

By Dr Martin Roberts
23 December 2010


LETTER TO THE EDITOR


Dear Gerry McCann

I should like to draw your attention to one or two comments made recently by your guest author (you know, the one who's just finished writing that book) in the context of a Christmas message posted on Facebook recently.

As far as I recall, Madeleine McCann is suspected by your lead investigator of being sequestered somewhere in the Badlands of the Portuguese Algarve, probably within a 10-mile radius of the point from which she so mysteriously vanished nearly four years ago. Very soon after her disappearance (four days afterwards in fact) you looked distinctly disapproving as your wife Kate said, during an appeal to camera:
"We would like to say a few words to the person who is with our Madeleine, or has been with Madeleine."
What, under other circumstances (to coin another of your wife's turns of phrase), might be considered an address to a baby-sitter, seems totally inappropriate as an approach to a vagrant, child-molesting abductor. You thought so then. Why do you not think so now?

“We hope with all our hearts that wherever she is, she is safe and well and whoever may be with her..."

Is it not a touch naïve, to say the least, to expect that someone presumed to have paedophile tendencies... "is treating her with the love and respect she so deserves."?

Now a word or two about 'injustice', if I may.

You have not seen fit, obviously, to question your author’s contention of 'pain by proxy.' Whilst I am sure your readers will readily understand the concept of empathy, and how we all of us will have experienced, to some degree, sympathy pains of one complexion or another, it is difficult to understand quite how such an affliction may be more onerous than the suffering endured by the actual victim. Unless, perhaps, one considers suffering from a somewhat metaphorical point of view.

At this time of year a suddenly destitute parent, unexpectedly unable to meet those inevitable requests from Santa, might not feel the absence of the latest 'must have' gadget quite so acutely as the youngster seemingly so badly in need of it. The 'knock on' effect of a cash-flow shortage, you might say. In cases of genuine hardship of course, the boot is more often than not on the other foot. Children, by and large, are remarkably resilient and adaptable. It is the hapless parent with a more complete grasp of the situation who feels for them, and in a way that they can appear oblivious to themselves. All in all it does seem rather as though the passing on of amplified 'suffering' is a phenomenon related more to money and expectation than genuine trauma. What you never had, you never miss.

An awareness of 'justice' is noteworthy nevertheless.

However, like so many concepts in life, it is easy to overlook the concomitant fact that justice is, in principle at least, a 'two way street.' Like a mathematical equation, if it doesn't balance out then something is wrong. With that in mind, might we consider Madeleine's suffering on account of injustice done to your goodselves from an alternative perspective, i.e. Madeleine's being the beneficiary of justice?
"Thank you to all those who have signed our petition calling on the UK and Portuguese Governments to conduct an independent review of Madeleine's case."
A review which, if carried out, could lead to a 're-opening' (your author's words on a previous occasion). That would indeed be a pursuit of justice and, following your approved line of argument, of direct benefit to Madeleine. And yet your Portuguese legal representative (an official of justice, if you will) has openly stated that there are circumstances in which you would not wish the investigation into Madeleine's disappearance to be re-opened. Does it not follow therefore, that with 'qualified' levels of justice there must be 'qualified' benefit to your daughter? As one concept is espoused then, another (unconditional love) is relegated.

A good editor, in my experience, will do more than simply correct aberrant punctuation. They will also question apparent statements of fact, for the very obvious and sensible reason that they might not be facts after all. Entombed within the following paragraph (concerned again with the author's own experience of 'suffering' and 'injustice') is one such.
"The Wikileaks 'news' this week has led to the repetition of many unfounded allegations and smears both in the UK and in Portugal in particular. This has been seized on as an opportunity by those who wish to compound our suffering and hamper our efforts, including the very person who was entrusted with finding our daughter. Those who could help Madeleine but choose to do nothing are also complicit in this injustice. Without the love and help from so many good people around the world we would not be able to find the strength to continue the fight to find our daughter."
Among those intent on compounding suffering and hampering 'efforts' is 'the very person who was entrusted with finding our daughter.' You know, if I were that person, I might consider this accusation of malicious interference to be libellous. It's a good job the writer didn't name the individual in question. Anyway, to set minds at rest, it cannot be Dr Goncalo Amaral, can it? He was the co-ordinator of an investigation into Madeleine McCann's mysterious disappearance, wasn't he? I don't recall his being at any time nominated for the role of (or 'entrusted with') finding your daughter, a pursuit which, somewhat strangely, has become a 'fight.' Is this the context in which we are to understand the 'efforts' previously alluded to by any chance?

I don't suppose your guest author fully grasped the ramifications of this next statement. Nor did you, since you let it pass.
"Those who could help Madeleine but choose to do nothing are also complicit in this injustice."
It's one of those observations, the truth of which is unaffected by a change of tense, i.e. 'Those who could have helped Madeleine but chose to do nothing are also complicit in (this) injustice.'

This must perforce include the likes of those who volunteered to 'look in' on Madeleine, yet deliberately saw nothing. The mother who, on entering a cold apartment (it must have been so if the window was open) had, as her first thought, closing the bedroom door without looking in on anybody, and leaving her children exposed to a draught, without so much as a thought for covering her eldest daughter; the same daughter who had been left asleep on the bed not in it, and who was subsequently, according to the mother, indistinguishable from the bedclothes. Then there are those who claim to have witnessed Madeleine's abduction yet did nothing at the time, either to prevent it or report it, and delayed commenting upon it to the parents for hours. And isn't silence in the face of repeated questioning an instance of 'doing nothing?'

All in all sir, a questionable piece by your approved scribe. Should you yourself be contemplating a career path similar to that of former editor Piers Morgan, you'd perhaps be well advised to consider avenues other than judging Britain's Got Talent hopefuls. That vacancy has already been filled.

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This has been seized on as an opportunity by those who wish to compound our suffering and hamper our efforts, including the very person who was entrusted with finding our daughter. Those who could help Madeleine but choose to do nothing are also complicit in this injustice.

They simply must stop libelling people who refuse to believe their abduction story. Some people can tell a good believable tale, and some people cannot.

Who owns the mccannfiles.com blog?

Is that a parody letter?
The mccanns annual Christmas Annual has never been as insulting to people's intelligence as this latest one.
KM has brain the size of pea if she thinks insulting Amaral is the way to make people believe her tale.

How can anyone hamper the search when they clearly didn't want Maddie back. Well, they didn't beg abductor to give her back, they only asked for her to be treated with 'love and respect'. Yeah, a paedophile who's languishing in a cave in a lawless village.would be tunning in on the radio for queen mccann royal message and would heed her plea...bloody marvellous for her!
She should make her royal pilgrimage (sp) to the holy site of burial to deliver Maddie's flower more like.

I wonder what goes through her mind when she reads that message directing it indirectly to her 'god' to treat Maddie with love and respect? I wonder whether she felt sicked to the stomach or was she wringing her hands in glee at the $ sign in her mindeye? Or was she wearing a nappie at the thought of losing the libel?