How kind Colette Douglas Home is to Gerry and Kate McCann (Comment, July 22). She uses many column inches pouring scorn on the Portuguese police (perhaps justifiably, I don't know), showering Gerry and Kate with sympathy (I, too, feel for them), but only makes passing reference to the action that, had it not happened, would have prevented this heartbreaking event from occurring in the first place.

How kind Colette Douglas Home is to Gerry and Kate McCann (Comment, July 22). She uses many column inches pouring scorn on the Portuguese police (perhaps justifiably, I don't know), showering Gerry and Kate with sympathy (I, too, feel for them), but only makes passing reference to the action that, had it not happened, would have prevented this heartbreaking event from occurring in the first place.

This is clearly their "decision to leave her sleeping while they met friends for dinner". Before we set them on a pedestal, let us not forget that they also left two younger children in the room and also clearly took a conscious decision not to use the Mark Warner child-minding services, or to take the children with them that night. I believe, in good faith, that they are guilty of nothing more than what, in other circumstances, might be considered neglect of their children but my grief for them is tempered by their actions. Sadly, none of this will bring Madeleine back.

Allistair Matheson, Selkirk.

In her column, Colette Douglas Home has much to say about policing in Portugal and, in particular, the handling of Madeleine McCann's disappearance. The reality is that no-one yet knows what happened to Madeleine.

Colette's opinion - that Gerry McCann is handsome and Kate McCann beautiful - is irrelevant. The eye of the beholder?

Colette states: "And they will always carry the burden of their decision to leave her sleeping while they met friends for dinner." What kind of parents, in a foreign land, needlessly leave their child, not yet four years old, asleep without a child-minder and out of sound or sight, while they indulge themselves with their friends?

The McCanns deserve all the anguish they brought upon themselves through poor judgment, and not endless public sympathy. Madeleine is the victim. I hope and pray that she is unharmed and is being looked after in loving care, however wrongfully.

Donald C Irving, Ayr.