Mail: Proof Kate Is Right To Never Give Up Hope

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2320968/Cleveland-kidnap-case-proof-Kate-McCann-right-hope-finding-Madeleine.html

Here's proof Kate McCann's right never to give up hope

By SANDRA PARSONS
PUBLISHED: 23:55, 7 May 2013 | UPDATED: 11:08, 8 May 2013



Yesterday morning's news that three girls who were abducted almost a decade ago have been found alive in America will surely have given Kate McCann new hope that her daughter Madeleine is still alive


On Monday, Kate McCann flew to Portugal. She’ll spend a few days alone there because it’s where she feels closest to her daughter Madeleine, who was snatched from the resort of Praia da Luz six years ago.
Grief is etched permanently on to Kate’s familiar, angular face. But she’s never given up hope of finding Madeleine, convinced as only a mother can be that her daughter is still alive.
Even some of those closest to her will, from time to time, have privately asked themselves why she hasn’t given up. One or two may have gently suggested that, for her own sake and that of her other two children, eight-year-old twins Sean and Amelie, she should ‘move on’.
There have been times, no doubt, when Kate herself has wondered if she’s foolish to keep stoking the fire of her fierce maternal conviction.
But yesterday morning’s astonishing news that three girls who were abducted almost a decade ago have been found alive in America will surely have fanned the flames of her hope ever brighter.


None of us can know how we would react should the unthinkable happen and one of our children disappears. We’ve all known that heart-stopping moment when you turn back in the supermarket or on a crowded beach and suddenly they’re not there; the throat-constricting panic as you frantically search — and the sweet flood of weak-kneed relief when they turn up again.
To have to live with that dread and fear day after numbing day, year after miserable year, is almost unthinkable. Yet that’s what so many mothers do.
It’s 22 years since toddler Ben Needham disappeared while playing in fields outside a farmhouse his grandfather was renovating on the Greek island of Kos, yet his mother Kerry’s advice to Kate McCann when they met was: ‘Never stop searching and never give up — I haven’t and I won’t.’

Three years before Madeleine was abducted from the holiday apartment where she was sleeping, Gina DeJesus disappeared while walking home from school in Cleveland, Ohio. She was 14 and less than a mile from home. That was April 2, 2004, and as her mother Nancy Ruiz said just last year, on the eighth anniversary of her daughter’s disappearance: ‘It gets worse as the days go by, as the years go by.’
On that day, Nancy was wearing a bright yellow T-shirt emblazoned with Gina’s photograph and the slogan Have You Seen Me? ‘Wearing the shirt keeps me going,’ she said. And now, in what must seem to Nancy nothing less than a miracle, her faith has at last been rewarded.

Gina DeJesus — together with two other girls, Amanda Berry and Michele Knight — has been found alive.
Amanda Berry’s mother, Louwana Miller, never gave up hope her daughter would be found, but died ‘of a broken heart’ three years after she disappeared.
By contrast, Michele Knight’s mother, Barbara, has moved to Florida and seems to have believed her daughter had simply run away. If true, this is an agonising betrayal for her traumatised daughter to have to bear — a heartache made all the more bitter in contrast to the unwavering belief shown by Gina’s mother and Amanda’s sister, Beth.
Of course, fathers keep fighting, too. Gerry McCann has been unceasing in his battle to keep Madeleine’s name in the public eye. Determined to be the rock on whom his wife and other two children can depend, he projects an unbreakable quality that must have been tested repeatedly over the years.

But it’s Kate who’s kept Madeleine’s bedroom just as it was when the McCanns (‘a boring, ordinary family’ as Kate described them in her book two years ago) left their home in Leicestershire to go on holiday — and Kate who still goes in there to open and close the curtains twice a day.
It’s Kate whose face crumpled at a prayer service last week to mark the sixth anniversary of her daughter’s disappearance, and Kate who still fills Christmas stockings for three: ‘There is part of me that has to do it.’
Like Ben Needham’s mother — indeed, like every mother of the estimated 200,000-plus children and teenagers who go missing in Britain every year — she is sure her child is out there somewhere. Most are found within a few hours, but some remain missing for years.
Kate says that every time she sees a car with a Madeleine sticker go past, every time someone asks for a poster to display, she feels a little bit more hopeful: ‘You feel you aren’t on your own any more. To know people care is a huge help.’

This Sunday will be Madeleine’s tenth birthday. Her family will buy her presents as they do every year, and this week her mother will light candles for her in the tiny church in Praia da Luz as she battles to keep her daughter’s name alive.
‘I don’t think we’ll ever reach a point where we feel we’ve done everything we can,’ she says. ‘If Madeleine’s still missing then we haven’t done enough.’
Nor have we. Let’s refocus on the image of Madeleine and keep it fresh in our minds. Let’s put up more stickers and posters. And let’s pray that one day soon, like the families of Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, her mother’s unerring faith will be rewarded.


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I don't see how anyone can give up hope if there is no proof. It might simmer down a bit sometimes, but never completely.
I wake up every day briefly hoping that today will be the day, and that's just me.

I think it's correct that you could never give up hope. Why should anyone in Kate's position?

I could care less what the hounders and haters think. They don't count.

Well, that's it, isn't it, Sabot? I should think the families of the Cleveland women woke up every day thinking, Maybe it will be today... but it never was.

And then on Monday evening, the miracle happened, courtesy of a very unlikely, but wonderful, rescuer.

I do think there is going have to be a rethink about abducted children, generally. Conventional wisdom has always been that if they weren't found quickly, they were dead. But more and more are turning up alive, years later.

So, for every one found, how many are in captivity? Ten? A hundred? We just don't know.

lily wrote:I think it's correct that you could never give up hope. Why should anyone in Kate's position?

I could care less what the hounders and haters think. They don't count.

No, they don't, do they? They are increasingly a marginalised, embittered, rump of society. They can hatespam and tick tock to their shrivelled hearts' content, no-one really cares about their opinion of anything.

Whatever happens in the world, you can guarantee they will be right in there, hate spewing from their keyboards. However - IMO, ringleaders the like of Morais and Hoho need to come clean about what their real agenda is, and what's in it for them.

bb1 wrote:Well, that's it, isn't it, Sabot? I should think the families of the Cleveland women woke up every day thinking, Maybe it will be today... but it never was.

And then on Monday evening, the miracle happened, courtesy of a very unlikely, but wonderful, rescuer.

I do think there is going have to be a rethink about abducted children, generally. Conventional wisdom has always been that if they weren't found quickly, they were dead. But more and more are turning up alive, years later.

So, for every one found, how many are in captivity? Ten? A hundred? We just don't know.

That's it really, Bonny. The thinking is all wrong. Too many bloody statistics, which actually mean nothing. Just one abducted child or person found makes a complete mockery of statistics. This is people we are talking about, and not some number on a file somewhere.
But they have to start with Law Enforcement, far too many of whom would rather blame the parents or relations.
Bloodhounds could come into use here if they are used soon enough. They actually can pick up the scent of a person.

Good job the internet wasn't so widespread when these three girls went missing, isn't it, or no doubt there would have been hate sites set up proclaiming that their parents had harmed them.

And pretendy policemen and pretendy profilers could pontificate about how it's always the parents. And anyway, they were dead - a wonderwoof alerted in a perv's garage, didn't it?

The hounders and forkers should be hanging their heads in shame this week - if they knew what 'shame' meant.

I agree with this, because this is what truly matters:

"Let’s refocus on the image of Madeleine and keep it fresh in our minds. Let’s put up more stickers and posters. And let’s pray that one day soon, like the families of Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, her mother’s unerring faith will be rewarded.",

I urge everyone to spread stickers, posters, in your holidays, also to convence friends, relatives to do the same, also to wear wristbands, t-shirts available on the oficial website:

http://www.findmadeleine.com/home.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/inspiring-mothers-who-fought-missing-1874980

Alison Phillips column

Inspiring mothers who fought for missing daughters keep hope of Madeleine McCann miracle alive

8 May 2013 01:00
The discovery of three women held captive in a house for 10 years can only have reignited hope Madeleine may one day be found

Last weekend Kate McCann boarded a flight alone to return to Portugal where her daughter Madeleine was abducted almost exactly six years ago.

She was going back to the spot where she lost her three-year-old daughter and to the moment she last saw her, tucked up in bed with Cuddle Cat.

Kate was also going back to where she lost her own life, the life she had before it became defined by loss forever.

The pain of returning to that whitewashed town on the Algarve must be horrific.

And yet friends say Kate does it to feel close to Madeleine.

Presumably immersing herself in the pain of her loss is preferable to that awful alternative – forgetting about her little girl.

And Kate can’t do that. She more than anyone knows that she wasn’t there when her daughter needed her most.

So now she must fight for the rest of her life to ensure that if Madeleine is still alive, she knows her mother is there for her now.

Even if she is dead, Kate’s job remains to keep her daughter’s memory alive because while memory remains, so does life.

It must be an exhausting, agonising experience.

And this week Kate’s pain must be even more acute as the discovery of three women held captive in an American house for 10 years can only have reignited hope that Madeleine may too one day be found.

Like Kate McCann, the mothers of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, had fought tirelessly to keep the stories of their missing daughters in the public eye in the hope that one day it might help bring them home.

Gina DeJesus’ mother Nancy Ruiz had plastered posters of her missing daughter all around the neighbourhood after she went missing aged 14 as she walked home one day from school.

One of the posters somehow made it into the home where she was chained up.

However bad her life must have been in that suburban dungeon – and it must have been horrific – there must have been some crumb of comfort for Gina knowing her mum was still looking for her, waiting for her to return.

Just as Amanda Berry’s mother Louwana Miller scoured the streets for her daughter until she made herself sick and finally died, broken-hearted, seven years ago.

And that is why Kate McCann cannot give up her search, however painful it might be.

Even if it is the remotest chance, she has to ensure if Madeleine is alive she knows her mother is waiting for her.

These mothers were all extraordinary in their own way in refusing to stop fighting for their missing daughters.

But in another way they were totally ordinary – isn’t it what any mother would hope to do in this situation?

And that’s what is extraordinary about motherhood – the superhuman strength it gives to women.

“The nightmare is over,” Cleveland FBI Special Agent Stephen Anthony said during a press conference yesterday in Ohio.

For Kate McCann the nightmare goes on until she either dies herself or Madeleine is found.

Every day she must relive the nightmare for Madeleine, just as the mothers of Amanda, Gina and Michelle did for 10 years.

In doing so, these dedicated women are an inspiration to mothers everywhere.



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Like Kate McCann, the mothers of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, had fought tirelessly to keep the stories of their missing daughters in the public eye in the hope that one day it might help bring them home.

Gina DeJesus’ mother Nancy Ruiz had plastered posters of her missing daughter all around the neighbourhood after she went missing aged 14 as she walked home one day from school.

One of the posters somehow made it into the home where she was chained up

bb1 wrote:Like Kate McCann, the mothers of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, had fought tirelessly to keep the stories of their missing daughters in the public eye in the hope that one day it might help bring them home.

Gina DeJesus’ mother Nancy Ruiz had plastered posters of her missing daughter all around the neighbourhood after she went missing aged 14 as she walked home one day from school.

One of the posters somehow made it into the home where she was chained up

Heartbreaking beyond words. Never give up because you can never know what might happen.

To think that some vicious person defaced some posters.......