Back to the original topic:

JTT wrote

I suspect that the parents thought they were in a warm, family-centred, affectionate place where everyone around would take care of their kids, and hiring a sit-in babysitter was over the top.

It may be that their children make strange with people they don't know, and wouldn't sleep with a sit-in babysitter.

The service where a sitter walks around and listens outside the door is obviously superfluous since the parents were checking their own children every 15 minutes.

Under normal circumstances, surely leaving the kids asleep while you snack a few metres away is scarcely child neglect.

You're offering POSSIBLE scenarios through which you then excuse the parental behavior based upon these scenarios. Don't confuse yourself with this stuff. Just look at the facts. They're in a foreign country and they leave their very young children ALONE in a hotel room. Hiring a sit-in babysitter is NEVER "over-the-top" or "superfluous" in a situation like this. Your whole scenario is an apologist approach to an unhappy situation. Frankly, all of the money thrown at this situation just makes it worse. And you suggest that "under normal circumstances" this is okay. It isn't. And these weren't normal circumstances, anyway, so why bring it up?

SRS