I have serious doubts that these parents were actually checking on their children every half hour or so.
Imagine your child is missing, you know that is bad enough, but you tell the police ‘I was only nearby and I was checking’, you sure as hell are not likely to say, ‘I went out for three hours enjoying myself’, anyone with the slightest imagination knows that kind of reaction that last would get.
Ours is a society of excuses and no blame (in the UK), its always someone else’s fault, not lack of personal responsibility, that’s why our prisons are full at record levels and the numbers are going up(and why my job is pretty secure)
I just do not buy it, and there has been plenty of implied criticism of Portuguese police, not too much of the parents.
Placing blame at this stage of events is probably fruitless, but most parents I know of would never leave a child alone at that age, an awful lot can happen to a child in half an hour, but I think that the ‘half hour’ was an awful lot longer than that.
This time claim also changes the investigation too, making detection more difficult.
I presume the police would have verified with other people in the restaurant how often the parents really did leave their table. If it was substantially different from what they claimed, I think it would have been leaked by now.
When I was 18 months old, I nearly drowned due to a moment’s inattention from my parents. We were at my grandparents having a cook out. I decided that I wanted to go swimming, I guess, and ran into the pool. Luckily someone noticed and pulled me out. But want if the kids in this case had thought of that?
In the part of England where I was raised it most certainly was NOT normal to leave three toddlers alone in the house (the oldest for gods sake being three years old),not even for a quick visit to a neighbours house let alone anything else and those Ive talked about it to recently share the same opinion though thats not a scientific poll I know.
I was under the impression that doing so was against British law.
You may know your kids but you cant say for definite that they are going to stay asleep particulary in a strange apartment in a foreign country.
They might have caught a local gastric bug ,they might be excited or disoriented,they wake up in unfamiliar surroundings and when nobody comes when they start crying they may well start wandering around looking for mum or dad.
As another poster has said there is the risk from falling,pulling things down on top of them ,fire,drinking cleaning chemicals, gas,electricity,sharp cutlery or managing to get outside the apartment just to name a few potential hazards.
You dont have to stay in the same room as them all of the time you have a sense of hearing and a sense of smell apart from anything else.
I think any potential abductors would be very heavily deterred just by knowing that even one of the parents would be in the apartment when the kids were there.
Was leaving them alone a regular occurance on this holiday?
Was leaving them on their own a regular occurance back home?
I hope to god that she is found safe and sound and I do feel extreme pity for her parents and what they are going through it must be hell on earth.