A Tale of Child Exploitation and Online Protection

From the moment Madeleine McCann was reported missing at around 22:00H on Thursday 3rd May 2007, the parents promoted the abduction by stranger theory, with considerable emphasis on paedophilia. The Portuguese police investigators quickly realised the flaws in the abduction theory with the absence of any evidence to substantiate the notion. Even as time progressed over weeks and months, there was still no evidence to support abduction.

In a matter of hours after Madeleine McCann was reported missing, representatives from the CEOP arrived in Portugal to 'assist', I use the word tentatively, the Portuguese investigation. In her book madeleine, Kate McCann had this to say of the CEOP Chief Executive..

Of course, every police force in the UK, and many beyond, have assisted in the search for Madeleine and for this we are extremely thankful. We are particularly grateful to Jim Gamble and the team at CEOP for the initiatives they have developed with us to help keep Madeleine’s abduction in the forefront of the public consciousness.

Prominent CMOMM member Tony Bennett presented his observations on the subject way back in October 2010..

Jim Gamble, the Chief Executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), used the Madeleine McCann disappearance to highlight the danger of paedophiles

Despite the high degree of uncertainty about what really happened to Madeleine, highlighted by their own spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, saying in March 2010 that her disappearance was ‘a complete mystery’, Jim Gamble, head of CEOP, relentlessly associated Madeleine with CEOP. This was despite the obvious fact that the McCanns on their own admission had left three young children, all aged under four, in a vulnerable situation - for six nights in a row - and clearly failed to protect them. Many questioned why an organisation with the words ‘Child Protection’ in its title should feature the McCanns so heavily, given their failure of child protection.

Gamble, from 2007 onwards, heavily featured Madeleine on the CEOP website and in various CEOP publications. Around the time of the second anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance (17 months previous to the date of this article , he appeared together with the McCanns in a so-called one-minute ‘viral video’, strongly emphasising that Madeleine was still alive and needed to be found.

Later he also appeared on morning news shows side by side with the McCanns.

Still more significantly, he invited Dr Gerald McCann in January 2010 to be the keynote speaker at a conference on the abduction of children by paedophiles. Why Dr McCann was considered by Gamble to be qualified to contribute to that conference, never mind being the ‘keynote speaker’, given the raft of uncertainties about the circumstances in which Madeleine disappeared, has never been explained either by the McCanns or by Jim Gamble.

Furthermore, it was reported - and confirmed by a Home Office Freedom of Information Act request - that in October 2009, the McCanns had a private interview with the McCanns. Following that, several press reports (not denied) indicated that the Home Secretary asked Jim Gamble to recommend a new British police force to carry out a review and possibly a re-investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.

Some reports suggested that he had recommended West Yorkshire Police to carry out such a review. But the Home Office was unwilling to confirm or deny this. It was baffling why the Home Secretary, knowing Jim Gamble’s extreme closeness to the McCanns, should choose him to recommend who should carry out any review into Madeleine’s disappearance.

8. In the days before this article was written, Jim Gamble told the Home Secretary, Theresa May, that he was resigning from his post as CEOP Chief Executive, a resignation she swiftly accepted. The McCanns put out statements strongly supporting him, thanking him for his work on their behalf, and querying the Coalition government’s decision to incorporate CEOP within the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). They described his departure in graphic terms as ‘a huge loss to child protection’. These comments pointed inexorably, once again, to the conclusion that there was a very close ‘tie’ between the McCanns and Jim Gamble.

The McCann Team in conjunction with Jim Gamble of CEOP published a video about Madeleine and circulated it round the internet which many believed showed her inappropriately posed in heavy make-up

In 2010, Jim Gamble once again co-operated with the McCanns to make a another video about Madeleine. The video in question featured three images of Madeleine. One very striking one shows her in an unusual pose, shot by the photographer from well below her face, wearing make-up, including much blue eyeshadow, lipstick and jewellery, and looking unhappy.

The McCanns publicly claimed that ‘the photo shows her when she was three after a raid on the dressing box’. However, it is very unlikely that Madeleine could have put the necklace on herself, nor applied eyeshadow in the manner shown in the photograph, nor applied the pink bow to her hair.

The evidence from the photograph suggests that an adult made her up and of course an adult was on hand to take that particular image of her. The McCanns did not say who took the photograph. Even if Madeleine had ‘raided the dressing box’, as claimed, it is one thing to take a photo of something like that for your family photo album, but altogether another matter to release it for millions to see.

The McCanns explicitly approved the very public release of this video and the images on it. As one newspaper reported: “Parents of Madeleine McCann, who went missing three years ago, have released a new video and photo of their missing daughter to mark the third anniversary of the girl's disappearance”. The photo the McCanns specifically chose to highlight in the video was the one with Madeleine wearing heavy make-up, apparently applied by an adult and not by herself.

There was strong adverse reaction by many members of the public to this image being used in connection with a missing child. Not least was the opinion of Mr Mark Williams-Thomas, a former police detective and now leading criminologist and child protection expert, who has often in the past spoken with strong sympathy and understanding for the McCanns. His unambiguous reaction to this particular photograph, promoted on his ‘Twitter’ blog, was that it was ‘so inappropriate’ and ‘so damaging’. We agree with him.

The McCanns have from the day Madeleine was reported missing claimed explicitly and on many occasions that Madeleine must have been abducted by a paedophile, or paedophiles, often described by them as ‘predatory’, ‘evil’, or ‘ monsters’. Yet the photo of Madeleine featured by her parents shows a child looking much older than her actual three years, due to the make-up and jewellery, as all the news media quickly picked up the following day.

The McCanns said a number of times that they were advised by the police ‘not to show any emotion’ in front of the cameras. One newspaper reported, around the time the McCanns appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show: “The couple also admitted they had been advised not to show any emotion while in front of the media, because any potential abductor ‘may get a kick out of it’.” It was all the more surprising, therefore, that the McCanns should use this short video to project and promote an image of Madeleine which might well appeal to certain paedophiles, some of whom are unfortunately attracted to young children.

One person commented on ‘Twitter’ about the direct promotion of this video by CEOP Chief Executive Jim Gamble, writing: “If CEOP endorse this type of public relations for a supposed missing child, then their role in child protection has to be questioned!”

Gamble should have been questioned about his t.v. advert for child brothels, which was disguised as an investigation.