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Madeleine McCann search gets nasty

HOMEPAGE NEWS REPORTS INDEX 100 DAYS MISSING NEWS AUGUST 2007
Original Source: TELEGRAPH: 12 AUGUST 2007
By Olga Craig, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:35am BST 12/08/2007
 
The Portuguese press and the people of Praia da Luz have turned against Kate and Gerry McCann, and the couple are becoming increasingly critical of the local police. The hunt for a missing child has turned into a bitter war. Olga Craig reports from the front line

The persistent rapping on the door of the Portuguese villa that is now home for Kate and Gerry McCann in Praia da Luz was becoming more urgent and much, much louder.

Inside, Kate, who was nervously preparing to be interviewed by a British reporter and television crew, was growing more and more upset.

Outside, she knew from bitter experience, was a squabbling scrum of Portuguese press, angrily demanding to be let in.

For the distraught and increasingly frail mother, who today faces the 101st day since her four-year-old daughter, Madeleine, disappeared, it must surely have been one of the lowest moments in what had already been an unbearable week.

In the days before, the Portuguese newspapers had printed a series of scurrilous stories about the couple. With each day, the articles became more and more lurid: all a mangled fabrication of untruths and innuendoes.

That morning they had hinted heavily that the Portuguese police investigating Madeleine's abduction on May 3 had, for some time, stopped treating the case as one of likely kidnap.

Traces of blood and hairs - only discovered that week when British police were finally allowed to carry out forensic examinations in the apartment, three months after first offering to do so - now led them to believe that the little girl may have been the victim of an accident, or that she had been murdered in the apartment.

Now the local press were demanding that Kate explain why she and husband, both doctors, had left Madeleine and her two-year-old twin brother and sister, Sean and Amelie, alone while they dined at a tapas bar, five minutes' walk away, on the night she vanished.

When Justine McGuinness, who co-ordinates the couple's publicity, went out to try to calm the situation, she was met with hostile questions. Infuriated by her answers, Paolo Marcilemo, the editor of Correio da Manha, which has printed the most provocative stories, said later: "We don't like to be patronised. She basically told us if we were very good little boys and girls we might get an interview at some stage."

One of his colleagues was more blunt. "They want all the sympathy, but they tell us local reporters nothing. They left their kids alone. Why won't they explain exactly what happened that night?

Who did the checks and exactly when did they do them? Everyone knows they think our police are inept, even if they don't say so in public. And the McCanns never speak to us. We have nothing to lose by hassling them. "

There is no denying that the McCanns' relationship with the Portuguese press and police has become increasingly strained. Last week's confrontation was just one more example of how the couple, who were swamped with sympathy by the townspeople of Praia da Luz in the early months of the hunt for their daughter, are now under attack from that same community.

Only the day before, Martyn Smith, a local barrister, condemned the couple in a letter to the Algarve's English language newspaper, the Portugal News.

"The DPP should consider if there is a case to answer," he thundered, alluding to the fact that the couple had left their children alone.

He questioned, too, the McCanns' decision to remain in Portugal three months after Madeleine's disappearance. "Why do they go to other European countries but not to the UK?" he asked. "It may be fear of prosecution."

The all-too-sad truth is that the wealth of goodwill that once buoyed the McCanns is turning against them. It is an open secret in Praia da Luz that, while in public they never criticise the Portuguese police investigation, in private the couple have their doubts about the manner in which Guilhermino Encarnação is heading the inquiry.

His blunders have been well documented and the McCanns prefer to deal with Luis Neves, the third detective involved in the case. Even Encarnação's own officers joke that he "prefers long lunches to working".

The harsh fact is that the public's compassion is fickle. "People here are finding it all a little tiresome,'' says Sheena Rawcliffe, the managing director of The Resident, the town's English language weekly magazine.

"Of course our hearts go out to them. But people are asking the blunt question: why did they leave the children alone? Why remain here? The McCanns need closure, but so, too, do the people of Luz. A backlash has begun and I believe it could get ugly before long."

Local business people continue to pay lip service to recognising the trauma suffered by the McCanns, but they point out that the sustained media eye on the resort is harming them. Hotels, restaurants and bars say takings are down and blame it on the negative image the town has.

"The feeling is that they have outstayed their welcome,'' one said. "Everyone here has contributed to the find Madeleine fund but it bothers us that it is not a charity. And that is because it is solely aimed at one child. Only when her case is resolved would the money go towards other missing children."

The McCanns, of course, see things differently. "I am not sure I will ever be able to return to our Rothley home," Kate admits. "I feel to leave Luz would be to abandon Madeleine. I can never, ever do that. "

She insists she will not be bullied into leaving. But she must also be aware that the expatriate community has also become increasingly angry about the vilification of Robert Murat, the only suspect in the case.

They don't blame the McCanns for the police's persistent interest in him - they again searched his house and cars and dug up his garden last week - but most believe he is innocent.

Yesterday, as the McCanns made that now so familiar walk to the Lady of the Light church in Praia da Luz (which has become a macabre tourist attraction) for a service to mark "one hundred days of hope", the nearby beaches were packed with holiday-makers. Few even knew of the service.

"How can I put this kindly?" asked Sidney Houston, who is holidaying in the resort with his wife, Alison, and four young children. "Don't get me wrong, if one of my brood vanished I would never get over it. But we save for our holidays. I didn't come here to be surrounded by doom and gloom.

"That isn't the McCanns' fault. God knows the burden they are under. But I can't make it my family's burden, too.

Maybe the harsh truth is that we don't want to be constantly reminded of the horrors of the modern world. We don't want to be reminded there are paedophiles out there. You just try to keep your family safe. What you don't do is leave them alone.

"The McCanns are attracting criticism because they refuse to divulge the exact details and timings of what happened on the night Madeleine disappeared.

They are doing so because, under Portuguese law, such information would be prejudicial to the inquiry.

But hasn't the time now come for them to flout the law and clarify these details - in the hope that it somehow might help the investigation.

Who is going to prosecute them for breaking a privacy law when their child's welfare is at stake?"

While Mr Houston's view may be harsh it is, in Praia da Luz, commonly held. The McCanns, understandably and to their credit, continue to cling to the hope that one day soon they will return to Rothley with all three of their children.

That one night soon they will put Madeleine to bed in her own bedroom, painted in her own choice of shocking pink.

Their refusal to believe that she may be dead is borne of a deep religious conviction and their belief that mankind is humane.

It may be the people of Praia da Luz who sadly might convince them otherwise.

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