Who cares if the child is missing? Not the family!

On July 15, 2008, 2 year old Caylee Anthony was reported missing to the police by her grandmother. According to the 911 calls that have been released, her grandmother stated "I have someone here that needs to be arrested in my home and I have a possibly missing child. I have a 3-year-old that's been missing for a month."

As we've learned since those calls were made, little Caylee went missing on June 9th, a full five weeks before that first call was ever made. Her mother has claimed that she was with a babysitter and she had simply lost contact with the babysitter and that she did not go to the police because she was conducting her own investigation.

That probably raises as many questions and exclamations in your mind as it does my own. As an aunt, there is absolutely no way in the world I would lose contact with the person that has one of my nephews or my niece and not feel the need to alert the police, my parents, my friends... someone to that fact. If I can't get ahold of my own mother for longer than 24 hours when she has Kaia, I start to worry. Not because I don't trust her, but because he's my nephew.

It's unfathomable to me that someone could drop a child at the babysitter, have the babysitter skip town (as supposedly happened) and not be calling out the cavalry to help get that child back immediately. I don't care if the police are public enemy number one... you still call someone in such a situation and ask for help. It's a missing child for cripes sake, not a missing piece of jewelry.

But, that's not even what makes this entire case so wrong. The mother, 22 year old Casey Anthony, has been lying to police from the beginning. Her family, apparently, doesn't care that she's lying through her teeth at every available opportunity. They're still behind her 100 percent and are even lashing out at the police for worrying that their daughter had something to do with it instead of hunting down the supposed babysitter who hadn't lived in the apartment in which the child was supposedly left for months before the child was supposedly left.

That bugs me. Their daughter didn't tell them for a month that their grandchild was missing, has been lying through her teeth throughout the entire investigation and instead of being angry at her, they're pissed at the police for treating her like a suspect.

Hm. Let's review shall we? She didn't go to the police when her daughter supposedly went missing or for the 36 days after her daughter went missing, when her mom goes to the police, she refuses to cooperate, lies about her job, lies about the babysitter and about nearly everything else. Who wouldn't consider her a suspect at that point and worry that she possibly killed the child and is trying to cover her ass?!

Just the fact that she didn't report the child missing would have me considering her a suspect. Even if she were my own sister, I would consider the possibility that she had something to do with it. And if I were wrong, well then, I'd rather be wrong and concerned than right and defending someone not worthy of being defended simply because she's blood.

To hell with that!

She's an adult. If she's innocent, she can defend herself. The child on the other hand, is two years old and needs someone putting her first and foremost at every turn. That's not happening with this family and that infuriates me.

And while I'm on the subject of her family... how in the hell did they not suspect something for five weeks?! These people reportedly care about their granddaughter, so why weren't they going to the police earlier? I mean, I can maybe understand being told for a week that the child is elsewhere when I attempt to call or visit... but not being worried when the child is never there for 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks straight? I don't know anyone who would not begin to worry that something was wrong when the child is not home at all for 2 weeks, let alone any longer than that. It makes no sense to me that it took them five weeks to confront the daughter and call the police. From other reports, they knew as early as the beginning of July that she was missing... and simply didn't bother to report it. That's screwed up on so many levels I won't even start right now.

Now, obviously, the police aren't completely innocent here either. They have admitted that they have not begun to actively search for the missing child which is, in fact, a very big deal. It's been over a month and a half since the child went missing, given that the mother is a person of interest in the case, they should at least be doing a grid search. But, they aren't. They, reportedly, aren't even talking to the mother anymore because they are tired of her lying to them.

There's something just as wrong with that as there is with every other aspect of this particular case. You don't just search the yard for the child and then leave it at that. You don't just stop asking the mother for information because she's lying. If you don't find the child in the yard, you search out from that yard. If you don't find the child in any of the places her parent says she might be, you search elsewhere. You don't just say to hell with it, mom's a liar, who knows where the little girl is, let's just wait her out and stop asking questions.

If the child is alive, which I confess I sadly doubt, and is with some babysitter that took it upon herself to abscond with the child; it's not exactly a safe situation and they should be doing everything in their power to follow the clues that may lead to that little girl.

And if the child is dead; the mother probably isn't going to admit it. If they want to know what happened to the child... they're going to have to start actively searching. To hell with the odd family, to hell with the mother, form a search party and start scouring the area for the body of the child. Ask the police in these areas where the child may be with the babysitter to start knocking on the doors of every person with the same name and ask questions. Stop spending so much time playing it out in front of the media and start freaking looking.

Same for her grandparents. If they're as concerned as they say they are, they need to stop defending their idiot of a daughter and start looking for the child. Stop focusing on what the police are doing wrong, stop focusing on defending the daughter and spend every second of every media interview talking about the child. Ask for volunteers in the town to start searching if the police aren't willing to do it. Ask for volunteers in those other towns to start search searching if the police aren't willing to do it. But don't just let a communication break down between your family and the police be the deciding factor in what happens in this case. When walls appear, go around them however you must.

Simply sitting in front of the media defending the daughter and bitching about the police is not getting to the bottom of what happened and never will. Likewise, not talking to the mother and not searching isn't going to net any answers either. It stuns me that a missing child has turned into exactly what it shouldn't be. Instead of rallying and cooperating, they're dividing and fighting like children.

Grow up people! Who cares who pissed who off first? Hate each other all you want after you find the child. In the meantime, stop being ignorant and figure out what happened! That's the most important thing now. Your personal dysfunction can wait.

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