2023-05-03 13:06:10
“It’s hard to find the words to describe how we feel”recognize Kate and Gerry McCann at the beginning of the letter published -in the official Find Madeleine profile- on the occasion of the sixteenth anniversary of the “kidnapping” (so they call it) of their daughter. the little one disappeared on May 3, 2007, when he was about to turn four years old. She was stolen from her bed, while she slept with her 18-month-old twin brothers – Sean and Amelie – in their rented holiday apartment in the Portuguese Algarve.
These years have been authentic torture for the couple, who were even in the crosshairs of the Portuguese police. The one who was head of the Portuguese Judicial Police when the British minor disappeared, Gonzalo Amaral, did not trust the McCanns and undertook a real crusade against them to prove his supposed guilt. In September 2007, they were informed Kate and Garry who are defendants —formal suspects, in Portugal.
However, the Portuguese police presented their final report in July 2008 and acknowledged that they had no evidence to incriminate the girl’s parents. Consequently, the investigation against the marriage is archived and their status as suspects is lifted. Still, the damage had already been done. For over a year, they had to grieve the loss of their daughter while bearing the weight of the accusing finger on them. Very serious things were said and published.
The Portuguese society of the time did not forgive them for having a dinner with friends when they took the little girl. Nothing they said could save them, now they had been sentenced (and convicted). The Portuguese police had been leaking information, much of it false or biased, about her alleged involvement in the disappearance and/or death of the minor. It was speculated with the hypothesis that they had administered some medication so that she would stay asleep and they would have gotten out of hand. All without proof.
a message of hope
Gone are the days when newspapers and television stations around the world (many of them have apologized for them) published barbaric things about them, presenting them as monsters. But the investigation has not borne fruit either. So far there is only one defendant, the German sexual predator -pedophile, not exclusively- Christian Bruecknerwho is currently serving a sentence for raping a 72-year-old woman in 2005 precisely in Praia da Luz.
The man, who has a countless history of sexual assault, was not charged last year for Madeleine’s disappearance. And it seems that the case was stalled. Now, 16 years after their little girl was taken from them, the McCanns just want the investigations to continue and there is “some progress”. “Hope” is the word that accompanies the photograph of Madeleine in the post of Maddie’s parents this Wednesday.
A publication that they complete with a poem by Clare Pollard entitled ‘The contradiction’ and that speaks of the feeling that they have that the little girl is “so close and so far” at the same time. “I can’t hug you, but I do”, reads the text, “in my head”. The McCanns have wanted to record that they miss her and continue to hope to find her alive. “Where you are now,” she points out, “hold me too”.
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