Girl snatched from tranquil home recalls tragic McCann case

YOU could hardly imagine a more homely or tranquil scene: a young couple take time out to do a spot of gardening while their toddler plays happily nearby.

But, then, the unthinkable happened. One moment two-year-old Aisling Symes was playing with her dolls, at her home near Auckland, New Zealand. The next, she had vanished without a trace.

Her sudden disappearance and the absence of any serious leads by police has a ring of familiarity about it. It was two years ago last May when little Madeleine McCann disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal. Madeleine, then aged three, was left in her hotel room with her two-year-old twin siblings while her parents went to eat at a restaurant. During that time, someone got into the room through a window and took her.

Despite enormous international media interest and a wave of public hysteria, no trace of her has ever been found. Police in Britain and Portugal are understood to believe that she was abducted by an international paedophile ring and is most likely dead.

That terrible prospect is what now faces Aisling’s distraught parents, Angela and Allan.

“These recent days have proven to be the most harrowing of our lives. No sleep, and we feel like we’re barely existing,” said Allan, who is originally from Co Waterford.

Like the McCanns they, too, have made a public appeal for their child’s return but police fear that, just like Madeliene, Aisling was ‘stolen to order’ by a gang for a paedophile ring.

Police Inspector Gary Davey, who is leading the investigation, says the fact that Aisling has not been found after three days suggests it is “more likely than not” that the toddler has been abducted. Inspector Davey said police were “absolutely confident” they would have found Aisling if she’d fallen into a creek behind her home.

Choking back tears, Angela Symes implored those who abducted her to return her, saying the family did not care who took her... “just as long as they are looking after her”.

While child abduction is rare in New Zealand, paedophile rings work internationally and go for easy targets. In the United States alone, a child goes missing every 40 seconds, more than 2,000 a day.

By all accounts, Aisling was a bright, cheerful and bubbly little girl but her family fear that outgoing nature would make her easy to snatch. “She didn’t have any inhibitions that I could see,” said her uncle, David Ball. Her aunt, Aithne Potts said she was often with large groups of people – be they family, friends or church members – with no qualms.

“She was a maternal little girl who would dress her dollies up and put them to bed.”

Just as in the McCann case, police are speaking cryptically of “suspicious activity” in the area in the past few weeks. “There have been some reports of suspicious activity,” said Inspector Davey. “I am not prepared at this stage to say it is linked but we are looking through all those.”