AN AMERICAN journalist caused a storm last week when he wrote a comment article in Philadelphian newspaper, The Bulletin, criticising Madeleine McCann’s parents for leaving their children alone.
In his piece, Chris Freind said that the parents should be “brought up on charges” when Madeleine is found.
“The McCann’s are single-handedly responsible for this situation,” he said, “and they should not be let off the hook under the rationale that ‘they have suffered enough’”.
Letters poured in after his article was printed on May 15.
A British reader praised him for being “someone with the guts to say what many of us are thinking”. She wrote that everyone hoped Madeleine would be found safe and well but went on to write that “if her parents were anything other than white middle-class professionals, they would have been hung out to dry by the British Press”.
On the other hand, another British reader criticised Freind’s commentary and wrote that “articles like yours do far more damage than good”. She defended the parents by saying that they had not done anything that most other parents had not done in one form or another.
Placing blame appears to have become commonplace in the Madeleine case. If it is not the parents, the police are being blamed for not acting quickly enough during the initial stages.
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