Madeleine

The events surrounding Madeleine McCann this week have been truly horrifying and it is something no parent should ever have to face. We become so hardened to bad news that few stories affect us any more yet there is something about the innocence of children that cannot fail to touch any normal person.

I look at the pictures of Madeleine and cannot help but think of my daughter, Alice, who is also 3 years old. There have been many comments made about her parents being negligent for leaving Madeleine and her 2 year old twin siblings alone in a hotel room but these comments offer no help or support to anyone. I personally would not leave my children alone in a room abroad but if this is negligence it is on the very far end of minor and there is no one else to blame for this except the person who abducted her.

Since the day my children were born my wife and I have never let them out of our site unless they are with family, at school or at nursery. I won't even leave them in the car when I am paying for petrol. It's such a shame that giving birth to children these days comes with a constant feeling of paranoia over your head for the rest of your life.

My wife and I discussed pedophelia the other night and I attempted to explain that it is in fact an illness, a fault in the genetic make-up of that individual and that there had long been arguments that it could not technically be a criminal act if it was a medical problem. Needless to say my wife did not even want to hear it. We then discussed what should happen to pedophiles and she immediately said that they should be hanged if found guilty. I am not in favour of capital punishment and believe it shows a failure of any reabilitation system when we need to kill people to get justice.

My hatred of capital punishment has one exception and that is the people described above. Call it an ilness all you like but bringing utter misery to children, their families and every parent on this planet deserves an exceptional kind of justice. Saying that "hanging is not good enough for some people" is a cliche but it fits in this situation- no matter what phsycological issues these people have when they do something like this they need to be removed from our society. It will of course never happen but there surely can be no worse crime a person can commit.

We do not know what has happened to Madeleine yet and may never know. You may know my thoughts on religion but even I said a little prayer to 'whoever' last night asking for a positive outcome.