Madeleine McCaan: Amaral wins, Maddie Missing and Kate doesn’t sing on BGT
Madeleine McCann: a look at reporting on the missing child. Today Madeleine McCann is on the front pages of the Mirror and Express.
As ever we are looking at the missing child’s parents in the papers, Kate and Gerry McCann. They’ve lost their libel case against former detective Goncarlo Amaral, who in a book and documentary implicated them in their daughter’s disappearance. In 2015, a Lisbon court sided with the McCanns, ordering Amaral to pay €500,000 (£429,000) in compensation to the parents.
Last year that ruling was overturned. The McCanns took the case to Portugal’s supreme court. And lost.
The McCanns have issued a statement:
“What we have been told by our lawyers is obviously extremely disappointing. It is eight years since we brought the action and in that time the landscape has dramatically changed, namely there is now a joint Metropolitan police-Policia Judiciaria investigation which is what we’ve always wanted.
“The police in both countries continue to work on the basis that there is no evidence that Madeleine has come to physical harm. We will, of course, be discussing the implications of the supreme court ruling with our lawyers in due course.”
The Express tells of the McCanns’ “new agony”.
The Mirror tells of the McCanns’ devastating defeat.
The Daily Record sums up in a headline:
Kate and Gerry McCann facing financial ruin after losing libel case against cop who said they faked daughter’s abduction.
Adding:
Kate and Gerry McCann could be left penniless… Kate and Gerry will also have to pay his legal fees – believed to be a six-figure sum – as well as their own lawyers’ bills.
What about the fighting fund to find the child? Martin Fricker writes:
The result could empty Madeleine’s Fund – a company set up days after Madeleine vanished – and leave the McCanns broke.
Madeleine’s Fund has about £700,000 in the coffers. But accounts filed last month say nearly £500,000 of that was invested last year in an unknown venture.
So around £200,000 remains?
More than £4.2million has been donated to the fund since three-year-old Madeleine vanished from the apartment in Praia da Luz.
The Sun has a slightly different figure:
If they are ordered to pay Mr Amaral’s legal costs, the money may have to come from the Find Madeleine fund – which has dwindled to around £480,000.
The Telegraph wonders what will happen next:
Madeleine McCann’s parents could be sued by police chief who falsely accused them of covering up death
‘Could’ is not news.
Over in the Mail there is news of a sort:
Madeleine McCann’s mother Kate and her choir made up of families of missing people hope to win Britain’s Got Talent after reducing judges to tears with a heartbreaking performance in secret auditions
Reducing the BGT judges to tears is a task akin to differentiating between your arse and your elbow. But the Mail’s story is weaker than Amanda Holden’s tear ducts .
Madeleine McCann’s mother Kate, 48, is an ambassador for the The Missing People’s Choir, which is expected to appear on the talent show in May, ten years after her daughter’s disappearance from Praia Da Luz in Portugal.
Although she has not been singing in the choir during the auditions, Mrs McCann may become more involved if they progress to the televised stages.
The Mail has used Kate McCann to flog a story that doesn’t feature her.
There is no word on the investigation into what happned to Madeleine McCann.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 1st, February 2017 | In: Broadsheets, Madeleine McCann, Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
