"It's going to be very painful for us on 3rd May 2017" - Irish Times, 29 Apr 2017 >> Article is especially harsh on 'vile anti-McCann trolls'

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  It was like being in front of a mob – and you realised there is no wisdom in the mob. Ever. And it’s been terrible since.
  It was this behaviour, Greenslade contends, that “supported the level of vilification that hit the McCanns from the public, that gave licence to people to air their vile theories”.
  A few months after Madeleine’s disappearance and before social media had taken a foothold, Greenslade attended a seminar at the London School of Economics, chaired by the BBC’s Steve Hewlett. He was astonished at the “vile” nature of the questions and the way they were put by some audience members.
  “It was as if human trolls had turned up, suggesting the parents were guilty either of murdering the child or of abandoning the child. It was like being in front of a mob – and you realised there is no wisdom in the mob. Ever. And it’s been terrible since.
  “[Journalists’] job is to keep these things in the front of the public eye, absolutely. But it’s the way it’s done in this case that is beyond the pale”.
  Since Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, there have been 8,685 reported sightings of her across 101 countries, including Belgium, New Zealand, Brazil, Bosnia, Sweden, Holland, India and Malta and many more.
  Theories propounded by contributors to a documentary aired by Australia’s Channel 7 this week suggest that Madeleine was kidnapped by a human-trafficking gang “working to order”, that she was stolen by a paedophile gang and could still be alive, that she had been roaming around looking for her parents on the street and was run over by a drunk driver who hid her body in one of 600 wells.
  Much of the programme reflects the theory-heavy nature of coverage of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.
  Prof Dave Barclay, a senior lecturer in forensic science at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, also appeared on the documentary. “I’m sure the reason this case has run as long as it has and still arouses fantastic interest even now is because every single one of the explanations, the possible explanations, is implausible, and yet we know one of them must be correct,” he said.
  “It might be solved if Madeleine’s body is found and there is evidence either on the body or in the location where the body is found that would point to somebody but otherwise, I don’t think it will ever be solved.
  “There is just no physical evidence whatsoever that we can use at this time, even to eliminate some of the theories.”
  The early stages of the search for Madeleine McCann ensured there would be no physical evidence.
  PHTO >>> OMadeleine McCann (3) on the front page of the Sun on May 5th, May 2007: she went missing at the Ocean Club apartment hotel in Praia de Luz, in Lagos, Portugal. 
  Early suspects
  It took hours for border guards to be alerted and for roadblocks to be put in place, and several days for a global missing person alert to be issued by Interpol.
  As well as that, vital evidence was probably destroyed that night by the failure to close off the crime scene, allowing some 20 people to roam through the rooms and the yard.
  The police, accustomed to absolute secrecy, were outraged at the couple’s use of the media to raise awareness.
  Kate and Gerry McCann became early suspects. The police theory was that they accidentally killed Madeline sometime after the last independent sighting of her at 6pm, possibly by a sedative overdose. According to this theory, they concealed the body, faked the abduction and, nearly a month later, transported her body in a hire car to dispose of it.
  googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-InContent-3'); }); This avenue of investigation had the effect of taking the heat off the police but also meant vital early evidence was ignored.
  A hint of the prejudice and hypocrisy inflicted on Kate and Gerry McCann from both police and media is contained in the Daily Express editor’s part-explanation of his actions, that “Maddy’s parents sought publicity in an unprecedented way”.
  The police, accustomed to absolute secrecy, were outraged at the couple’s use of the media to raise awareness.
  Kate McCann’s stoicism, her grimly maintained jogging routine, and refusal to claw the earth in remorse for her admitted parenting mistakes were deemed proof that she was not a natural mother.
  PHOTO >>> Gerry and Kate McCann: a distinguishing feature of the so-called anti-McCanns is their organisation and in-group bonding. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA
  ‘Cold and manipulative’
  Leaks from within the investigation claimed that her controlled public appearance, even her carefully applied make-up, indicated a “cold and manipulative” personality. Portuguese police suspected her from the very beginning because they could not believe parents would leave their children unattended.
  Gerry McCann explained that he and his wife had been advised that self-control might have most impact on a putative kidnapper tuning into their many television appeals. She continued to give tearless, self-flagellating interviews, admitting their mistakes and revealing that their three, much-wanted babies were the result of IVF treatment.
  In July, the pressure was piled on when two British sniffer dogs – Eddy and Keela – were brought in.
  Their choice was stark: give up the search and with it the foul rumours, suspicion, malice and abuse; or continue to ride the media tiger in the hope it would flush out information about Madeleine.
  In July, the pressure was piled on when two British sniffer dogs – Eddy and Keela – were brought in. One was trained to sniff out traces of human blood, the other to scent corpses. The dogs raised alerts in the McCanns’ apartment and their hire car.
  Though Portuguese police told journalists the DNA tests were a “100 per cent match” for Madeleine, they were in fact, inconclusive. In September 2007, the McCanns were named arguidos. It was almost a year before they were declared no longer suspect by the Portuguese attorney general, and the investigation was archived due to a lack of evidence. It was reopened in 2013, led by a team of officers in Porto.
  At that stage, any sensible pair of killers would have breathed a sigh of relief and let the story die. Instead the McCanns pursued a loud, relentless, multimillion-euro global campaign to keep the investigation alive. They set up the Leaving No Stone Unturned campaign, distinguished by its quasi-corporate professionalism, with media professionals, full-time private investigators, travel packs for people going on holidays, 24-hour multilingual call centre and ubiquitous posters.
  Their efforts ensured that Madeleine’s case remained live to the point that in 2011, the then British home secretary, Theresa May, announced a review of the evidence by Scotland Yard. After revelations that possible key sightings and artists’ impressions of suspects had been kept from the public for years, that became a full, £10 million criminal inquiry in 2013, to concentrate, said the police pointedly, on a “criminal act by a stranger”.
  PHOTO >>> Kate and Gerry McCann: “It became a contest, putting the couple almost on trial, asking various questions which would be legitimate for a policeman to ask in the privacy of an interview room, but tough to be asked continually, in public, with every bizarre theory explored.” Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/AFP/Getty Images
  Chief among those unpublicised sightings was one by an Irish couple, who saw a man 500 yards from the McCann apartment at about 10pm, awkwardly carrying a child matching Madeleine’s description towards the beach. E-fits of him were released in 2013 to coincide with a BBC Crimewatch reconstruction, and he remains a suspect.
  googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-InContent-4'); }); Just as usefully, police were able to eliminate a well-publicised prime suspect, a man seen by one of the “Tapas Seven” close to 10pm, carrying a small child in pink pyjamas. Only in 2013 was he revealed to be a British holidaymaker taking his daughter back from the Ocean Club’s evening creche.
  Abduction or burglary
  Among those being tracked by police at that stage were bogus charity collectors seen knocking on doors in the area and who may have been doing reconnaissance for either an abduction or a burglary, plus a number of fair-haired men, seen loitering suspiciously close to the McCann’s apartment all that day.
  Separately, four suspects were questioned on suspicion of being part of a burglary gang that possibly panicked after accidentally killing Madeleine – a prime theory – but they were released.
  Mobile phone tracking showed that Euclides Monteiro, a convicted burglar with a drug habit, who had been sacked from the Ocean Club the year before, was also in the area that night. Though he died in a tractor accident in 2009, Portuguese police reopened the investigation later when he was identified as a suspect.
  Where we are today is with a much smaller team focused on a small number of remaining critical lines of inquiry that we think are significant."
  And apparently, leads remain. London Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said this week that police had no definitive evidence as to whether Madeleine was alive or dead.
  “Where we are today is with a much smaller team focused on a small number of remaining critical lines of inquiry that we think are significant. If we didn’t think they were significant, we wouldn’t be carrying on.”
  Crime in the Algarve
  One of the most startling aspects of the case is the crime context in the Algarve. Between 2004 and 2010, there had been 12 crimes where an intruder broke into the properties of UK families, within a 60km radius of the McCanns’ resort, including two in Praia da Luz itself.
  In six of those, the intruder either got into bed with or sexually assaulted a young female child. At one point, British police were researching the backgrounds of 530 known sex offenders, including 59 regarded as high interest.
  There had also been a fourfold increase in the number of robberies in the area. Only weeks before the McCanns’ arrival, there had been two unsolved burglaries in the Ocean Club holiday apartment block. A childminder at the creche has reportedly claimed that the resort was considered so unsafe that nannies were given rape alarms and told not to go outside alone.
  the fact there were random paedophiles going around taking children out of holiday apartments would have probably been quite a disincentive to families turning up for their holidays.
  Prof [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] did not mince his words about the absence of this important context from the reporting frenzy back in 2007: “The Portuguese police and the Portuguese tourist board would have been quite keen not to feature the number of burglaries that were going on in Praia da Luz and other towns on the Algarve.
  “And the fact there were random paedophiles going around taking children out of holiday apartments would have probably been quite a disincentive to families turning up for their holidays. So they wouldn’t want to feature that.
  “I think that’s possibly an explanation why the Met, recently, were able to find more examples of indecent assaults on children than we’d been told about previously.”
  Meanwhile, the McCanns are bracing themselves for the anniversary on May 3rd. “It’s likely to be stressful and painful and more so, given 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 programmes,” said Kate McCann this week.
  googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-InContent-5'); }); “I truly hope that those reporting on the ‘story’ over the next couple of weeks will have a conscience.”
  They referred to the 10-year anniversary as “a horrible marker of time, stolen time”.[/size]
  
  

Tony Bennett wrote:'Anti-McCanns' come in for severe criticism as 'vile trolls' in this article, which also relies on that appalling piece of research by Dr John Synott and his colleagues at the University of Huddersfield. Extracts below:

==========================

Lord Sleuth wrote:When you say Drefus affair, do you mean the Mccans are innocent?
Because I have recenty had a thought  they mIght be. In sort of a way.

TMH wrote:

Lord Sleuth wrote:When you say Drefus affair, do you mean the Mccans are innocent?
Because I have recenty had a thought  they mIght be. In sort of a way.

What "sort of a way" do you mean?

Lord Sleuth wrote:When you say Drefus affair, do you mean the Mccans are innocent?
Because I have recenty had a thought  they mIght be. In sort of a way.

Mirage wrote:

Lord Sleuth wrote:When you say Drefus affair, do you mean the Mccans are innocent?
Because I have recenty had a thought  they mIght be. In sort of a way.

Let me make myself perfectly clear on this. I have mentioned the echoes of the Dreyfus affair on other threads but essentially it is the cover up only that I am referring to. The modus operandi if you will.

Esterházy's backside was covered by the French establishment and press while Dreyfus was scapegoated and sent ro Devil's Island.

It all unravelled when one influential writer, Émile Zola,  famously wrote an open letter to the president of France, entitled "J'accuse" in which he laid bare the lies and machinations of the  French establishment.

I see echoes of the anti semitic treatment of Dreyfus in the xenophobic attacks against Goncalo Amaral. The shaming of him as a police officer. The removal of him from the investigation. Just as Dreyfus was shamed and his military stripes publicly ripped from his shoulder.

Unfortunately, we don't  have a writer of the calibre of Zola today. The modern day equivalents  (celebs and commentators, university professors et al)  are part of the problem. Which is why I say it is worse than the Dreyfus affair. And at ten years and counting, the McCann affair is about to pass the duration of the Dreyfus affair.

As Zola so accurately predicted in J'accuse:

"If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way."

And, of course, the truth came spewing out in the end with all the names of those who colluded in the cover up made public. The calumny employed by the establishment was at the time, and remains today, the shame of France.  

Ten years for the truth to come out. Ten years.

Philip Anders wrote:Quote:"Though Portuguese police told journalists the DNA tests were a “100 per cent match” for Madeleine, they were in fact, inconclusive. In September 2007, the McCanns were named arguidos. It was almost a year before they were declared no longer suspect by the Portuguese attorney general, and the investigation was archived due to a lack of evidence. It was reopened in 2013, led by a team of officers in Porto.
At that stage, any sensible pair of killers would have breathed a sigh of relief and let the story die. Instead the McCanns pursued a loud, relentless, multimillion-euro global campaign to keep the investigation alive".

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Much of the article is written by academic dimwits who, having obtained a degree in something or other, assume that they're far more clever than they actually are.

Firstly that McCanns have not been cleared as suspects & secondly after declaring to the world & the police that Madeleine had been abducted, how do these academic dimwits expect the McCanns to be able to suddenly say "you can all stop looking now" as the first question they'd be asked is "why do we need to stop looking".

As I've posted previously the term troll is often used as an attempt to stifle genuine debate just as the term facist or racist is thrown at anyone who wants to see immigration controls.

If wanting to know the truth & secure justice for Madeleine makes me a troll then I can happily live with it.

P.S. Oy, McCanns, why did you lie about the shutters?