The mystery of Madeleine McCann – Lydia Torrington
The 7th of May of this year will mark the 12th year that Madeleine McCann has been separated from her family. Despite the fact that this case began before most of us will remember, police are still looking for the young girl and it remains a household story. The new 8-part Netflix documentary on the story has bought it back into the spotlight and has once again sparked the debate into what happened to Madeleine – a question that police have spent more than £11million to try and answer.
Although the new documentary has been criticised of adding no new information and being of little purpose, from watching it I have learnt an incredible amount about her disappearance, the sloppy investigation by the Portugal police, the shocking lack of any leads or trace of Madeleine to this day and the huge impact that the media had on the case and on the McCann family. So, I would highly recommend watching it – especially for us young ones who weren’t old enough to pay attention when Maddie disappeared in 2007.
As a quick sum-up for anyone who is not familiar with the story – Madeleine McCann disappeared from her holiday apartment in a small town in Portugal, while her parents and their group of friends were dining less than 50 metres away and checking on their children every 20 minutes. The media attacked the McCann’s for leaving their children unattended when, in reality, it was not much different to having supper in the garden of your house and it was something that many parents did at the time.
From then on, every single move the McCann parents made that didn’t seem to fit with that of grieving parents in despair was exploited by the media and twisted into a story of bad parenting. They have been called murderers, accused of drugging their children with Calpol overdoses, of selling Madeleine to be a sex slave, of working with MI5 to cover up her death and of making up the whole disappearance in order to make money. The media played a huge part in the whole story and their role is talked about a lot in the documentary.
The Portuguese police, called the PJ, were in charge of the investigation until 2013 when it was handed over to the Met Police. In this time, there were next to no leads found in the investigation. The one famous lead that the PJ had to go on was the man carrying a child with pink pyjamas like Madeleine’s who was seen by one of the friends of the McCann’s at around 9:30. Lots of money, time and resources were put into this one man, but it wasn’t until British police took over years later that they found that this man had come forward days after the disappearance to say that he was picking his own daughter up from the hotel’s creche. Therefore, the PJ had the nation looking for an abductor who didn’t even exist. As well as that, it’s believed that the PJ tried as much as they could to plant the blame on the McCann parents, so as to retain the high tourism in the area. They didn’t look into leads of known sexual predators in the area and they exaggerated evidence they claimed to find showing that Madeleine was dead.
To this day, there remains no evidence on whether or not she is alive or dead and where she is. Therefore, all that exists are opinions and theories, of which I myself struggle to have as there is so little to go on. However, the media and the public love to gossip and come up with their own solutions in cases like this. For some reason, people become fascinated with events like this, and the lack of answers gives leeway to lots of speculation. But the sad fact is that while Madeleine McCann may still be alive somewhere, the Portuguese Police, and most of the world believe that she is dead and therefore are failing her by not looking for her. Jaycee Dugard was found 18 years after being abducted, as was Kamiyah Mobley who was abducted as a new-born baby and Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus were found over a decade after being kidnapped – just to name a few.
This shows that hope is not lost for Madeleine McCann and before you go forming your views on how she may have been murdered, I urge you to watch ‘The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann’ to see the testimony of the many people interviewed on it – from the suspects in the early stage to the Portuguese locals to friends and family of the McCanns.
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