Armchair detectives all agree on one thing: if a child goes missing or dies in mysterious circumstances, the most likely culprits are the parents. That principle led some to question the role of Karen Matthews and her partner in the disappearance of her nine-year-old daughter, Shannon, who was eventually discovered, alive, on March 14th. This week the Express newspapers ran front-page apologies for similar speculation about another couple, Kate and Gerry McCann, whose daughter vanished in May. Finger-pointers admit that such suspicion is cruel, but claim that crime statistics are on their side.rnAre they? In fact, parents are less frequently to blame than they used to be. Whereas children under 16 are being slain in increasing numbers by friends and strangers, they are less often killed by their mothers or fathers (see chart). For parents in Britain, 2004 marked the first year in which other people were more likely to kill their children than they were themselves.
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