Misplaced trust led to Madeleine's betrayal

This article goes on from that which we were discussing yesterday, thanks Tinks.

Terrible things happen, but we trust they are not going to happen to us.
That is one of the reasons why we continue to go out in the world with hope and confidence, and to encourage our children, and others, to do the same. In the dark times, it seems foolish and utterly absurd that we do. Yet it remains an unquenchable part of human nature to trust in the good disposition of others, to rely on their sense of morality and tacit concern. It is this web of mutual reliance and good citizenship that keeps the civilised world turning; the belief in the comfort of strangers and the inherent goodness of others are the hem stitches in the fabric of society.

We trust that the teachers taking their pupils on a canoeing trip will return home without drowning half their charges. We trust that the coach driver won't take the wet bend at 80mph because he is running late, or that the Roman Catholic priest won't sleep with the vulnerable immigrant. We trust that the pilot isn't drunk, the doctor is not distracted and that the caretaker in charge of the school is not Ian Huntley. But somehow we do it again and again; we make a leap of faith that is against rational calculation, but is part of the warmth of humanity, the excitement of life. We are idiots, of course. For there is an increasing chance these days that something awful will happen, and the brittle threads of our trust will be snapped, like the bars on a cage of spun sugar.

Gerry and Kate McCann had every reason to trust that their daughter Madeleine would be safe in their holiday complex. They chose their resort with care, they spent wisely. Then when the unthinkable happened, and their three-year-old daughter was snatched from her bed and spirited away into the warm night, as seems increasingly likely, they had every reason to trust that the Portuguese police would do everything to help bring her back to safety.

Yet with the best will in the world, it is becoming obvious that this has not happened. Even if one factors in cultural differences and the inexplicable burden of the Portuguese secrecy of justice law, which prohibits even the parents of the missing being given details of evidence collected, it is clear that the police operation has been flawed and flat-footed from the start.

I should point out that I write this as the daughter, sister and niece of policemen. So I'm not predisposed to blame the cops for everything. Nevertheless, there seems to have been unforgivable lapses of protocol and procedure in this case, and there have been times when it has seemed that the local police can't be trusted to dish out a parking ticket properly, let alone find a child on the southern tip of Europe.

All through the long, dread days since Madeleine disappeared, it seemed that the silence of the Portuguese sleuths was because they had definite leads, a game plan, perhaps even a lonely house surrounded by surveillance teams armed to the teeth.

Yet as time moves on, this appears not to be the case. At a belated and chaotic press conference on Monday, the police were, if anything, belligerent instead of supportive, with an uncomfortable whisper of southern Mediterranean machismo sweeping through their statements and body language. "We are not magicians," said Olegario Sousa, the officer leading the investigation. No, senhor, but perhaps you are clowns instead.

Sousa's insensitive remark followed days of chaos. Until yesterday morning, news crews were filing reports uncomfortably close to the McCanns' apartment, further tainting a crime scene that had already been catastrophically contaminated. Police who were supposed to be patrolling the Portuguese/Spanish border exits were filmed taking refuge from the rain in their squad cars, while ignoring the vans with blacked out windows, lorries and legions of cars that hurtled past.

And what privacy law prevented authorities from papering the entire Algarve with posters of Madeleine, or releasing important details, such as the pyjamas she was last seen in, not to mention properly co-ordinating the well-meaning but haphazard public search in the days following the child's disappearance?

The McCanns trusted the police to do all they could in the search for their daughter, while it is their agony that she trusted them to keep her safe. As vigils and prayer meetings are held in her honour, a long shadow is cast over the summer to come, and on millions of forthcoming family holidays. We hope for the best, but fear the worst, as various reports describe suspects to be a dark-skinned man, a British man, a man with a bald spot. Who can we trust now, on either side of the law?

The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/05/09/do0904.xml