Help Find Madeleine McCann

My stomach churned and twisted as I watched Madeleine McCann's mom and dad's tortured faces as they pleaded with the person or persons out there who might hold the key to their happiness, who might have Madeleine or have information that would help them find their daughter. Madeleine would be approximately five years old today. I am a mother and I know I would have gone crazy by now if anything like this should have happened to my child.

The McCanns made headline two years ago when their daughter then 3, was kidnapped from their holiday apartment in Portugal. At first there was an outpouring of public sympathy and then at one point the public appeared to turn on them and accused them of being responsible for killing their child accidentally and trying to cover it up. This change had come about because Mrs. McCann had showed no emotions during her first public interview. She told Oprah, she did not show emotion because that what she was advised to do by a behavioral specialist who felt she should appear strong and resolute. She would have done anything if there was a chance of successfully bringing her daughter home safely. It was difficult for me to watch her on TV. The grief and sense of helplessness was palpable.

How absurd, how absolutely cruel, on the face of it, that parents should be accused of the most heinous crime of being responsible for their own children's disappearance while experiencing unspeakable grief of real loss at the same time. Unfortunately, there are precedents where parents themselves led the public down the garden path, looking all over the place for lost children when they themselves were the culprits.

Remember Susan Smith's case in the USA who accused a black man of killing her children when it was she herself who drove her car into the river with her children in it and left them there to die a watery death? More recently Penny Boudreau of Nova Scotia, Canada strangled her daughter to keep a boyfriend and sent hundreds of people on a wild goose chase looking for her missing daughter. This made the public rethink cries for help from grieving parents. These days it appears routine that parents are among the top persons of interest in the case of missing children.

These are the exceptions, however, rather than the rule and I think that we should never start off thinking that parents would do harm to their own children. Most parents are good parents who love their children and make every effort to keep their children safe and we as the public should help parents during the critical period of loss, to find their children, instead of wasting time focusing our energy on parents.

Losing a child through natural death is hard enough but if you know your child is out there somewhere, not being able to protect her, not being able to find her, not knowing what has happened to her and imagining the worst every day, it is torture. Personally, I think my life would be over because the thought of that daughter will be the first thing I think about and the last thing I think about each and every day. How conflicted it must be for the McCanns to love their other children and be in continuous mourning for the other. How conflicting is that?

Someone must know something, and that someone must come forward for God's sake and put these parents' hearts and souls at rest. If Madeleine is with people who kidnapped her because they wanted a child for themselves so badly that will offer some solace to the parents and they may be willing to forgive and forget. It is much better than the alternative scenario of the predator scum of the earth who steals children and sells them into slavery. The depraved men of the world appear to have all kinds of needs that they are willing to pay big bucks for thus creating a lucrative market for trafficking in women and children.

This is a call to the internet community on behalf of the McCanns to put our forces for good together and help to find this little girl.

After watching Oprah's show which airs from 12:30 to 1:30 Est. on Monday May 4, I was moved to pen this piece to put it out there, hoping someone may be moved to come forward, that someone is the person or persons who know something about Madeleine.

If you have any information at all, any tip for this family, please go to Findmadeline.com now.