Lost in France in love is hardly abduction. Why all the fuss?

WHEN that 15-year-old student and her 30-year-old teacher were on the run in France last week, it was as if the media were trying to recreate a missing child story of Madeleine McCann proportions.

The anxiety of the two families notwithstanding, the way this elopement was reported as abduction gave me the dry heaves — when the couple were caught because they went to an ex-pat pub and were instantly recognised, the headlines were all about the girl being “found safe”. As though she had been kidnapped.

Abduction is when a child is taken against their will. Like the five-year-old Welsh girl last seen being lured into a van — even writing those words sends a sick shiver through me, a cold ripple of horror.