Every day, people are reported missing across the United Kingdom. Of those missing, most of them are found within 48 hours but for an unfortunate few, their whereabouts remains unknown for far longer.
As with any search, a pivotal part of its success comes down to exposure – more awareness means more people are looking. More people looking means the chances of finding a particular missing person is higher.
Among the thousands of missing persons cases reported across the UK over the years, if you were to ask random members of the public to name one from the top of their head, many people would likely share a response – Madeleine McCann.
The story of three-year-old Madeleine McCann going missing from her bed in a hotel room in Portugal while her parents ate in a nearby restaurant was one of the news stories that dominated 2007. It’s a story which is still being talked about over 15 years later – but why? Why was this missing person case international news and why did it remain in the news cycle for so long?
Guardian journalist, Esther Addley, was among the many journalists on the ground in Portugal within days of McCann going missing. Addley spoke with Missing in London and broke down, from her perspective, what made the vanishing of Maddie McCann such a viral sensation.
Where were you when you first heard of the Madeleine McCann case?
“I was in a murder trial in Edinburgh. The story came over the news wire in the press room and all of us journalists looked at each other and said ‘that’s going to be massive’.
“The reason for that, first of all, is it’s every parent’s worst nightmare. It’s a circumstance you can imagine and put yourself into very easily. You’re child, asleep in their bed, suddenly snatched from their bed. It’s a designer nightmare for any parent; on holiday as well, so there was a sort of exotic angle to the piece and it raised this idea of ‘are our children safe in Europe?’
“And let’s be frank, it was the fact the family was middle class, she was a beautiful child and she was a white child – we can’t be naive; these things make a difference.”
So, the exotic location, the everyday scenario and the demographics of the victim played an important part in this story becoming as big as it was. But after the initial facts of the case broke, few more facts were ever discovered – how did this story dominate the news cycle for so long?
“It was a really different media climate then, first of all it was before the Levenson inquiry, the British media had been a pretty lawless place for quite some time and really, the Madeleine McCann case was one of the last ‘hurrahs’ of the old Fleet Street – at least in my view.
“The parents were very photogenic and very articulate. At least initially, they were perfect tabloid victims. An archetypal, middle-class family with a beautiful child who had been snatched from her bed – catnip for the tabloid market on every level and the British public loved the story.
“Within days the family had visited the Pope and received support from celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, to footballers like David Beckham. Some journalists stayed in Portugal for months and they were writing everyday about a story that really had no new facts. That’s one of the reasons it kind of spun out of control in the way that it did because there was so much pressure from editors to get a new story every day.”
If someone was to find a loved one of theirs had gone missing and wanted to reach as broad an audience as possible with their pleas to find them, what could they learn from how Maddie’s parents approached her case?
“The exact alchemy of what made the story so huge is something I can’t quite put my finger on. On the one hand the family were incredibly articulate, motivated, pragmatic people with friends who were well connected and they made a decision early on, for better or worse, that they were going to try and publicise this as hard as they could.
“Thinking of it all, the story simply resonated with so many people in a way others can’t. They were Catholics, so it had a connection across continental Europe where there are more catholic countries. They were Scottish, so it had a resonance there, but she was from Liverpool and an Everton fan also. Ultimately, there were all kinds of reasons why it resonated all over Britain and that’s the main reason why I think the story became super-charged.”
In 1992, a 21-month-old English child named Ben Needham went missing on the Greek Island of Kos while on holiday with his family. Although the story was covered at the time, it certainly never reached the level of virality as Madeleine McCann despite similarities between the two cases. Both remain unsolved. Any thoughts on this?
“I’m not sure there is a comparison to be made with any other missing person’s case. There was a lot of publicity about Ben Needham at the time but not to the same extent as Maddie and none of us really know why, beyond the fact the McCann story simply got more traction.
“One thing about the McCann story which is significant when reflecting on it, as to why it gained legs, is despite the parents being perfect victims, they didn’t really confirm to what the media expected. They weren’t passive and they didn’t cry in front of the media – they wanted to take control of the story and I think that unsettled everybody, including the Portuguese police and the Portuguese people; they didn’t understand why you would leave your child alone and go for a meal, it’s just not part of Portuguese culture.
“They just didn’t really seem like the kind of victims that the British media wanted them to be. It got to a point where the Portuguese police, who were being heavily criticised by British media, said, ‘well let’s look at the parents’ – which acted as rocket fuel for the McCann news-cycle.
“Ultimately, the McCann’s is really a story unlike any other because it had several waves of energy without ever having any new facts established. There is nothing more that we know apart from the fact that she went missing; there is no definitive evidence to say anything else and there might never be.
“It’s just a desperately sad story.”