Why we’re still obsessed with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann

IT’S been ten years, and we’re still talking about Madeleine McCann. Thousands of other kids are missing around the world. Why do we care so much about her?

Kate McCann has taken many avenues to finding her daughter, including speaking at a press conference for the launch of the book 'Madeleine' in London in 2011.

THREE-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on the 3rd May, 2007.

A decade later, Madeleine is still missing. A decade later, we are no closer to knowing the truth about what happened that night. A decade later, millions of people around the world are still captivated by the story.

Recently, the McCanns released a statement via their website saying, among other things: “We are bracing ourselves for … the rehashing of old ‘stories’, misinformation, half-truths and downright lies which will be doing the rounds in the newspapers, social media and ‘special edition’ TV programs.”

They were right, of course. Media outlets around the world have claimed to have ‘groundbreaking new evidence’ or ‘a new lead’ on the case (the show Sunday Night claimed just that in an exclusive last month) and some have released special anniversary newspaper lift-outs covering every detail.

A new Panorama documentary presented by BBC reporter Richard Bilton aired this week but not even they could overcome the fact that Madeleine McCann is still missing and we still don’t know why.

Kate and Gerry McCann have been active in the media since the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine in 2007. Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

It’s worth noting that Madeleine McCann is one of millions of children missing across the planet right now. In England, where Madeleine was born, a child is reported missing every 3 minutes. It is estimated that 306,000 reports of missing people are filed with the British people every year — of which 195,000 are children and young people under the age of 18.

In Australia, more than 38,000 people are reported missing each year and in America, 90,000 people are missing at any given time. And yet, something about Madeleine McCann’s case has captivated people for a decade, while many other cases are forgotten.

Is it because she’s a photogenic white girl? Is it because her parents were savvy with the media, or wealthy enough to afford their own investigator? Is it because celebrities and football players started wearing T-shirts with Madeleine’s missing poster printed on the front?

Or is it because there are so many unanswered questions, we simply cannot give up until we have some sort of resolution?

There are several popular theories about what happened the night Madeleine disappeared, none of which have been confirmed by police detectives on the case. The first, which had some early traction because the McCanns were official suspects in the case, but has now been discredited, is that Kate and Gerry McCann accidentally killed their child and then hid her body somewhere even locals could not find.

The second is that burglars broke into the holiday apartment that night and (inexplicably) took Madeleine instead.

The third is that Madeleine was spotted with her family and followed by members of an international paedophile ring, who stole her and sold her into sex slavery.

The fourth is that the toddler simply worked out how to open the door of the apartment, slipped out into the night to find her parents and fell or hurt herself. There’s an especially grim detail usually added to that narrative, and that is that she fell into a hole that was excavated down the road from where the McCanns stayed and her little body was covered over in cement the next day, without any construction workers seeing her there.

And finally, there’s the most outlandish theory of all, and it belongs to Portuguese ex-police officer who was fired from the case in 2008. Goncala Amaral, who is currently fighting the McCanns in court over accusations he made in a book he wrote about the case, makes the unsubstantiated claim that the McCanns murdered Madeleine then hid her body in an unattended coffin, alongside a corpse, which was then cremated the next day.

Former detective Goncalo Amaral wrote a book about the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Picture: Joao Henriques / AP

The thing is, all these theories belong on a crime show on television. We have become conditioned by episodic crime shows among other things, to expect the resolution of a case like this.

TV cops always solve a case and we are rarely, in fiction, left without an ending.

Our continuing obsession with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann may have something to do with racial bias, privilege, a successful awareness campaign and the omnipresence of that one photograph of Madeleine, looking into the camera with enormous pale green eyes. But it is also very much down to our insistence on a conclusion. We cannot let Madeleine’s case go because it hasn’t been satisfactorily resolved.

I suspect we will not let it go until it does.

Since 2007, there have been 8685 ‘sightings’ of Madeleine McCann in 101 countries. Several of those have been in Australia.

Madeleine’s image has been so enthusiastically brandished about in the press, it has become imprinted in people’s minds and caused them to imagine seeing her — again and again and all over the world.

Children who have been missing longer than Madeleine have turned up or been found, which is a fact Kate and Gerry McCann must cling to in their grief. It is possible that Madeleine McCann is still alive. It is possible she is dead. It is possible we will never know. How much longer will our obsession last?