 |
|
Madeleine
McCann disappeared from a
holiday apartment in Praia
da Luz, Portugal, in May
2007 |
I have never been allowed to say this
before.
I’ve been given all sorts of reasons
— people who are normally brutally
honest with me fobbing me off, arguing I
am not bringing anything new to the
debate
It’s been a white-out, like the silence of snow.
But seeing the faces of Gerry and Kate McCann yet again this week,
promoting the Child Rescue Alert
Campaign to track down missing kids, I
think it's finally time to speak out.
Kate McCann says she lives in a never-ending limbo.
But I believe the truth is that Madeleine McCann is never coming
home.
She is long gone. It is time to stop looking and stop imagining
there is some happy ending to this sorry
tale. Enough.
There is no amount of money the will right the wrongs of the past,
no libel action that will cancel out the
damage the McCanns inflicted on
themselves.
Kate and Gerry McCann didn't deserve £11million of our cash to look
for Maddie or try to resolve their
consciences or salvage reputations.
Others have greater need.
If you really must blame someone, then Kate and Gerry are right
there in front of you. And yet,
protected by some invisible force-shield
I don’t understand.
Show me a family from a council estate who left their child alone to
go out eating and drinking who have been
lauded with such support and the
protection of the state.
Last year, a father of a two year old was arrested and prosecuted
after leaving his daughter in a car for
two minutes whilst he ran in to a
chemist to buy Calpol.
Even our British broadcaster was in on the act.
A Crimewatch Special
in 2013 featuring new photo-fits of
Maddie’s abductor failed to acknowledge
that the McCanns had been sitting on
these pictures for nearly five years.
Pictures compiled by their own investigation team whose report they
later hid from view when it pointed the
finger of blame in a direction Gerry
didn't enjoy.
They left their child in an unlocked ground-floor apartment next to
two busy roads. Too self-assured to hire
a babysitter and too self-centred to
care.
 |
 |
|
Kate and
Gerry McCann (pictured
above) didn't deserve
£11million of our cash to
look for Maddie or try to
resolve their consciences or
salvage reputations. Others
have greater need, writes
Katie Hopkins |
The McCanns put their own children in
harm’s way. Those kids were in danger.
Because of their parents. And as a mum I
can’t look at Gerry McCann — a man his
wife says can ‘switch off’ from grief —
without the hairs on my arms standing on
end.
Kate was no better. There were
48 police questions Kate McCann
refused to answer after Maddie was gone.
Surely if you wanted to find your child
you would give anything, tell police
everything you knew, offer anything you
had?
We are not the police. We cannot pretend to know what really went
on.
What happened that night will remain a mystery and someone will take
the truth to their grave
But we can understand as parents how we would feel if it happened to
us.
Any mother who has lost her child even for a heartbeat understands
how horrifying it is.
The prickle under the armpit, the sudden silence in a noisy shopping
centre, the blind panic.
Running through treacle while time stands still.
Waiting for a little face to show itself, telling her off when she
reappears because you love her so much
you can’t bear for her to be lost even
for a second.
And in that second you imagined the very worst.
When your first baby is born you join a special group of people – a
group whose lives have been transformed.
That first morning in hospital you understand the enormity of your
new responsibility to keep another
little part of you alive. You have
accepted The Fear.
Suddenly the life you knew before is transformed, filled with all
the bad things that could happen to your
baby. Jabs which go wrong. Death in a
cot for no reason. Spots on the chest
which don’t go away under glass.
You live every second with The Fear that your baby will be taken
from you, or die before you and upset
the natural order of life turning
everything you trusted into a lie.
I still live in dread of my children’s lives being shortened, that
someone might take them from me, strip
away the thing I would happily hand over
my own life to sustain.
I tell them to shout fire if someone grabs them. And I will never
need them to get in a strangers car, no
matter what they say.
Others give their children phones, hoping these will keep them safe,
imagining them to be protection from
predators roaming our streets looking
for baby prey.
Mine sleep with the soft toy bunnies they have had since the day
they were born. Not so cuddly now,
mostly rags at best.
|
|
 |
|
Katie Hopkins
says her children sleep with
the soft toy bunnies they
have had since the day they
were born |
But rags which I will keep if I live to watch my children grow old.
They are keepsakes of another time, when
my kids were chubby and twitchy in their
cots, when they needed me more
fundamentally.
For warmth and food, cuddles for tears and encouragement to be
brave.
And when they leave me for families of their own, for every day I
wished I didn’t have to do the school
run, there will be a thousand more when
I am grateful that I did, knowing I kept
them safe.
But now the faces I associate with neglect are being used to promote
the Child Rescue Alert campaign.
And I am sorry, but I am not buying it.
Because nothing in this story reads well to the mum in me. Or the
dad if that's you.
Leaving your babies alone, too far away to see. Knowing your
daughter is gone and still able to play
tennis. Taking her little bed-time toy,
Cuddle Cat, with the last smell of their
daughter, and putting it in the wash
just five days after she vanished into
the night.
I speak to people who have lost parents and cannot bear to wipe
messages from their answer machine
because it’s something to hold on to.
They keep them just to feel close.
Some even call their mothers’ phone, just to hear it ring and
imagine she might there to say ‘sleep
tight’ one last time.
I would put Cuddle Cat under my pillow every night to be close to
the baby I lost. Not wash its memories
away.
The night before she became a memory, Maddie asked her mother, ‘Why
did you not come when Sean and I cried
last night?
I’d ask her the same question now. How did you leave the daughter
you longed to have?
Maddie wasn’t lost because someone took her. She was lost because
she was left to be found. |
