Kate McCann tells hacking inquiry: Press harmed our search for Madeleine

12 April 2012

The mother of Madeleine McCann today said the press coverage of her daughter's disappearance was so negative that it damaged the search for the three-year-old.

Kate McCann told the Leveson inquiry into press standards: "When a story is so negative about her that is not helpful.

"These were desperate times. We needed all the help we could get. We desperately wanted to shout out, 'It's not true it's not true'. We were desperate.

"We were trying to find our daughter and you were stopping our chances of finding her."
Mrs McCann and her husband Gerry, both 43, recalled how they were subjected to what Mr McCann called an "incredible amount of speculation and misinformation that led to confusion" after Maddy disappeared in May 2007 during a family holiday in Portugal.

He said he believed that many of the stories were "made up" because he did not think their phones were hacked. "I do not think any of it was helpful," he said. "We were being tried by the media and we could not defend ourselves.

"What we clearly saw were snippets of information and the British media couldn't tell whether it was true or not. It was often reported and exaggerated and blown up into tens and hundreds of front-page headlines. It was exaggerated and often downright untruthful and often, on occasions, was made up."

Mr McCann called for a "system to be put in place to protect ordinary people from the damage the media can cause from the activity that falls well below the standards that I would deem acceptable".

He said the couple returned to their holiday apartment after Maddy's disappearance to find "tens if not hundreds of journalists" camped outside.

Initially the press coverage was helpful and the couple got the impression the reporters and their editors empathised with their plight.

"We quickly realised there was a tremendous amount of speculation in the coverage in newspapers," Mr McCann said. "We had 24-hour news channels. We found that to be unhelpful.

"I cannot tell you for certain it was the Portuguese police who were leaking ... but that would be a perfectly reasonable assumption to make."

The couple, from Rothley, Leicestershire, were both briefly named as suspects by Portuguese police four months after Maddy's disappearance.

Their barrister said last week they suffered at the hands of a "hostile" press pack writing "nonsense" stories under pressure from editors in what amounted to "some of the darkest days" for the tabloid media.

David Sherborne said one of the worst incidents was in September 2008 when the News of the World published a private diary Mrs McCann had written to Maddy recording her "innermost thoughts".

The now-defunct Sunday paper made it appear that the diary - believed to have been leaked from Portuguese police - had been provided by Mrs McCann. Mr Sherborne said the "staggering intrusion" left her, in the words of her husband, feeling like she had been "mentally raped".

In March 2008 the Daily Express paid the Find Madeleine campaign £550,000 and printed a front-page apology for suggesting the McCanns were responsible for Maddy's death.

In July 2008 British expat Robert Murat accepted £600,000 in damages over allegations in 11 British newspapers that he was involved in Maddy's disappearance.

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