SHE’S STILL OUT THERE
Ten years after Maddie McCann went missing her parents refuse to give up hope
IT’S one of the most recognisable pictures around. A three-year-old girl staring straight into the camera, a distinctive dark streak in one of her grey-blue eyes. This is the photograph that first caught the world’s attention, the snapshot of tot Madeleine McCann who vanished during a family trip to Portugal in 2007. It’s also an image that causes endless heartache for her parents, Kate (49) and Gerry (48), because it’s a distressing reminder of their daughter’s mysterious disappearance, which even a R172-million investigation involving the world’s top investigators has been unable to solve.
Madeleine’s disappearance divided people worldwide, with as many sympathising with the McCanns as blaming them for their daughter’s disappearance.
It’s been 10 years – and still no answers.
“My hope for Madeleine being out there is no less than it was almost 10 years ago,” Kate recently said in a candid interview with BBC journalist Fiona Bruce a few days before the 10th anniversary of the disappearance on 3 May 2007 of Maddie, as the little girl was affectionately known.
Kate and Gerry look noticeably older than they did in photos taken at the time of Maddie’s disappearance when the media descended on the Portuguese seaside town of Praia da Luz.
But the pain in their voices hasn’t subsided at all from those early days.
“I never thought we’d still be in this situation, so far along the line,” says Kate, the strain etched on her face.
“It’s a huge amount of time. In some ways it feels like it was only a few weeks ago; at other times it has felt really long.”
Madeleine would have turned 14 on 12 May.
Just like every other year since she went missing, her parents will choose a birthday present for her which will stay untouched in her bedroom.
“I obviously have to think about what age she is and [choose] something that, whenever we find her, will still be appropriate,” Kate says.
“A lot of thought goes into it. But I couldn’t not . . . she’s still our daughter; she’ll always be our daughter.”
Shortly after Madeleine went missing the couple from Leicestershire were accused of faking their daughter’s abduction to cover up her death, but in 2008 the Portuguese police declared there was no proof that Kate and Gerry – both doctors – were involved.
Still, it did little to silence critics and many still believe the McCanns’ hands aren’t clean, including Portuguese police officer Gonçalo Amaral.
When the investigation was wrapped up he wrote a book that placed the guilt squarely in Kate and Gerry’s court.
“It’s been very upsetting,” Kate said about the book – The Truth Of The Lie – which alleges Madeleine died at the hands of her parents. “It’s caused a lot of frustration and anger.”
ON THAT fateful night Kate and Gerry were with seven of their friends eating out at a restaurant close to their holiday flat and took turns to check in on their kids who were sleeping. “Madeleine’s gone! Someone’s taken her!” Kate’s screams rang out in the restaurant on returning from checking up on the kids at about 10 pm. She’d found a bedroom window wide open and only her daughter’s favourite toys and pink blanket left on her bed.
The McCanns and their pals were criticised for not getting a babysitter to look after the kids. They were called the “Tapas Seven” because they’d go out for tapas at the resort’s restaurant every night.
Up till today the couple steer clear of social media where they’ve been viciously trolled. “I think people just need to think twice before they write, and the effects it has,” Gerry says. “It’s totally inhibited what we do.”
He and Kate are especially concerned about what their 12-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie, may come across online. “We’ve been as open with them as we can [be]. We’ve told them people are writing things [online] that are simply just untrue.”
In the past decade there have been countless theories and dead-end leads, yet the McCanns still believe Maddie is somewhere out there.
“Some of the scenarios with other people who have been abducted and kept are just so unbelievable that you think, ‘How could that have happened?’ ” Gerry says. “And that’s probably what’s going to happen with Madeleine’s case as well, that people will go, ‘That’s incredible; how did that happen?’ ”
Kate and Gerry write of their heartache over losing the past decade on their website devoted to Madeleine.
“It’s time we should have had with Madeleine,” Kate says. “We should have been a family of five for all that time. And yeah, it just feels stolen.”