Sigh. The lead story on BBC news all day, and for most of the weekend was all about the startling new non-evidence and thinking, alongside yet another new e-fit, all concerned, once again, with the McCann’s search for Madeleine. How does this couple manage to get sooooo much publicity compared to anybody else?
You see, when the original news broke in 2007 about the disappearance from a holiday apartment in Portugal of a three year old, it wasn’t a particularly unusual story.
I mean that in respect of the disturbing and unacceptable fact that children go missing all the time. Thousands of them disappear every year never to be seen again. I can’t begin to imagine the agony this leaves behind. There can be nothing worse than the ‘not knowing’.
And in writing this, I am not trying to take away that pain or to be demeaning.
But, what has always puzzled me is the complete control of the media the case of Madeleine McCann has always had. That is not to say it shouldn’t, but more to ask why the tens of thousands of parents facing the knotted stomachs and anguish as the weeks, months and then years pass since their child went missing, aren’t given the same kind of coverage.
The initial investigation went through many odd twists and turns. Lots of the statements, lots of the supposed evidence, and, well, just lots of things, didn’t add up.
We, the people sitting in our armchairs watching it all, just didn’t like the McCanns for leaving tiny children unattended in an apartment whilst they were out getting drunk and partying. Indeed, people in Liverpool always bring it up to this day, suggesting the remaining twins should be taken away from them. To so many, the McCanns had committed an unforgiveable sin.
When the McCann’s were arrested and treated as suspects, especially the mother, I was convinced the truth was now out. Yep, the parents had killed the child and the case was solved. Next story please.
To this day a very large number of people still voice suspicions. These are probably quite heartbreaking for the McCanns to hear or to read.
The lack of a body and the lack of any relevant evidence meant this much touted theory of the parents covering up Madeleine’s death, was not the answer, despite the number of websites spouting the contradictory ‘evidence’ for this particular conspiracy theory.
As always, after a while – although in the McCann case it was an extremely long while – the story finally left the front pages of British newspapers.
Every now and again it pops its head up, especially on Madeleine’s birthday or the anniversary of her disappearance.
It did that yet again with the press full of the story that Scotland Yard had identified some ‘persons of interest’ that need interviewing. Or, maybe they were originally interviewed, they aren’t so sure, but they need interviewing again, definitely.
And then we got a weekend of every BBC news story leading with the new non-evidence and how there would be non-revelations on Monday’s Crimewatch programme.
How many other grieving parents wish they had such media attention to keep their case in the public eye? All of them. For nearly all of them, the national press or TV coverage of even the initial disappearance doesn’t appear. Their cases don’t make headlines. Then a handful, especially where it’s possible that others might go missing, make it to the local news for a while.
Depending on other factors, including a ‘slow news day’ only a tiny few make it into our eyeline via national headlines.
And virtually nobody gets mentioned again once the story is ‘old’ unless there’s a body found, or somebody arrested.
Parents and friends will try desperately to keep the public interested, spending a fortune in time and money, printing and distributing leaflets and posters. Tirelessly they will continue their search, but this usually doesn’t generate any media interest, not even at a local level.
In complete contrast, something bizarre happened in the case of Madeleine McCann.
Stop me if I’m wrong, but how many other parents of missing children still have, even six years later, the services of a ‘spokesman’? In theatrical terms this is a bit like having an ‘agent’, through whom all enquiries have to be made. For anybody else who has a missing child, they are their own ‘spokesman’, grabbing any opportunity they can. They will gladly do the interviews, answer questions or get involved in publicity for the search for their missing child, should the media ever bother to contact them. Meanwhile the McCanns have a ‘spokesman’ to deal with all that so they don’t have to.
Doesn’t that seem a little strange?
The other strangeness of the power of the McCanns compared to any other parents with missing children is the people they had access to. From the then Pope, with whom they got a fast-tracked audience within weeks of Madeleine’s disappearance, through to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair. Heck, maybe it’s a Catholic thing, since all parties are devoted to that particular religion, but surely there are hundreds of other Catholic parents who would have wanted the luxury of such access?
The power the McCanns have seems to be out of proportion to who they are. They are just a couple of middle class doctors, reasonably well off, but not with any particular heritage or connection to the upper echelons of the chattering and controlling or political classes.
Well, they were. Now, it seems, they are right in with them. They even have the power to bend the ear of the current Prime Minister David Cameron such that he went on to ask/command that Scotland Yard start ‘Operation Grange‘ dedicated to re-visiting the case, the preliminary results have been the massive publicity for the long segment of the Madeleine story on Crimewatch.
In contrast of course, to put this in context, when the 96 families of those football fans killed in the Hillsborough Disaster, kept asking Cameron and predecessors to re-visit the case, their pleas fell on deaf ears.
It seems the parents of a little girl disappearing hold far greater power than a group of 96 families when it comes to calling for justice. Likewise for any letters than may have arrived at Downing Street concerning any of the tens of thousands of other missing children. Nothing happens.
Don’t get me wrong, I too wish for a satisfactory answer to the mystery of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Equally, I wish for a satisfactory answer to the mystery of the disappearance of all the children whose parents don’t have the luxury of spokesmen, easy access to the media, the Pope, or the Prime Minister.
But mainly, I’m asking why doesn’t anybody else have this level of access to government, media, and the leader of their religion? Why just the McCanns?
England's England 
I cannot tell you why Madeleine again, but there is something not quite right about this. For one thing there is a libel trial in progress in Portugal at the moment. The McCanns are suing the detective Amaral who was in charge of the investigation. He claimed there was political interference when he was put off the case and wrote a book about it in order to clear his name. The McCanns claim that his book has prevented the proper search for Madeleine and caused them and the twins great distress. They are claiming 1.2 million euros in compensation. I have been following these events and know that the trial in Portugal is not going well for the McCanns. Their witnesses and their evidence is weak – but no surprise there since their friend Jane Tanner`s evidence was weak. After all, she did not see an abductor and the McCanns have sat on couches throughout the world pleading for witnesses to this non-event. That is one myth that Crimewatch was able to dispel.
So the McCanns` claim in regard to the Amaral trial has been scruppered. It is THEY who had been giving out the wrong information and interfering with the search for Madeleine.
It is a fact that 30,000 children go missing every year in the United Kingdom, many of them from the care system, and none of this is documented or reported on in the Sun or any other newspaper. If you were alluding to the possibility of a double standard, there is no doubt that there is a double standard when it comes to missing children. But Madeleine sells newspapers just as Princess Diana did in her day.
I have been reading the comments to the numerous articles in the newspapers recently, regurgitating the same old stuff, and people are sick of it and do not want any more. The McCanns are condemned for the most part for bringing this on Madeleine, one way or another, because they left three children unguarded night after night in an unlocked apartment. Had they been living in a council estate, and did that, their remaining children would have been removed and taken into that awful care system I have just mentioned.
Good detective work means that the persons closest to the child who went missing should be seriously investigated. The last person who saw the child is also an important witness. It is intriguing that Crimewatch instead of going there, had Kirsty Wark bowing in great sympathy to the two primary suspects. Nor did they mention the evidence from the dogs who pointed to blood and cadavarine in the McCann`s holiday apartment and on Kate`s clothes. This is well documented in the Portuguese police files, now freely available all over the Internet, and in Amaral`s book – you know the book that the McCanns` didn`t like.
As for the `revelation moment` as Redwood promised before we saw Crimewatch because there was such an unbelievable build up to the programme, it was not revelation at all. That sighting had been well documented, and was covered in Amaral`s book – you know that book the McCanns` didn`t like.
Don`t feel bad for having doubts. Because if you do, that`s what the media hype, and it has been relentless, has done to you – and was meant to do, for reasons yet to be understood.
I for one retain the right to think about these things for myself.
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