I was violated by tabloids, says Madeleine’s mother

Gerry and Kate McCann told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics that inaccurate reporting should be “held to account”, with repeat offenders losing their “privilege to practise as a journalist”.

The couple cited several incidents involving newspapers, including an unnamed Scottish Sunday title, which had obtained a photograph of them with Madeleine from Mr McCann’s mother, Eileen. On that occasion they persuaded the newspaper not to publish.

Mrs McCann said: “They were fighting it, actually saying ‘We’ve got the picture’. It was like, ‘It’s our daughter’. Incredible.”

She told the inquiry that she felt like “climbing into a hole and not coming out” when the News of the World printed her personal diary – something she had not even shared with her husband.

Mrs McCann, 43, described feeling “violated” by the paper’s publication of the leaked journal, which she began after Madeleine disappeared during a family holiday in Portugal in 2007, and which she felt was her only way of communicating with her missing daughter.

She returned from church on Sunday, 14 September, 2008 and received a text message from a friend that read: “Saw your diary in the newspapers, heartbreaking. I hope you’re all right.”

Mrs McCann said the text came “totally out of the blue” and left her with a “horribly, panicky feeling”.

The News of the World had apparently obtained a translation of her diary from the Portuguese police and published it without her permission, the inquiry was told.

Mrs McCann said: “I felt totally violated. I had written these words at the most desperate time of my life, and it was my only way of communicating with Madeleine.

“There was absolutely no respect shown for me as a grieving mother, or a human being, or to my daughter. It made me feel very vulnerable and small, and I just couldn’t believe it.

“It didn’t stop there. It’s not just a one-day thing.

“The whole week was incredibly traumatic and every time I thought about it, I just couldn’t believe the injustice.

“I just recently read through my diary entries at that point in that week, and I talk about climbing into a hole and not coming out, because I just felt so worthless that we had been treated like that.”

Mr McCann, 43, said his wife felt “mentally raped” by the News of the World, which published the story under the headline: “Kate’s diary: in her own words.”

He said it gave the impression that his wife had authorised the publication of the diary.

“This added to our distress, as it gave the impression that we were willing to capitalise financially on inherently private information, which could not have been further from the truth,” he said.

Ian Edmondson, the News of the World’s then deputy editor, had told the couple’s spokesman Clarence Mitchell that the paper was going to run a positive article that week, but did not mention that it had a copy of the diary.

The McCanns, from Leicestershire, also described how News of the World editor Colin Myler “beat them into submission” after they gave an interview to Hello! magazine on the first anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance.

Mr McCann said: “He was berating us for not doing an interview with the News of the World and told us how supportive the newspaper had been. He basically beat us into submission, verbally, and we agreed to do an interview the day after.”

The couple said that on other occasions they had to stop newspapers from publishing untrue stories, for example a false claim that they had undergone IVF treatment to have another baby to “replace Madeleine”.

The couple said the media had helped them launch appeals which brought in “huge amounts of information” about the possible whereabouts of their daughter in the days and weeks after she vanished from her family’s holiday flat in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve, in May 2007. However, things changed after they were given “arguido” status by Portuguese police, which meant they were “persons of interest” and thus entitled to a lawyer – but was taken by some parts of the media to mean they were suspects.

After the couple returned to Britain in September 2007, photographers camped outside their house, hid behind hedges and, on occasions, banged on their windows, the inquiry heard.

The coverage then took a “sinister” turn, they said.

One Daily Mirror headline simply read: “She’s dead.”

It was “one of the most distressing headlines that was presented as factual, and it was just taken from a supposition”, Mr McCann said.

Another, in the Daily Star, was held up in court. It read: “Maddy ‘sold’ by hard-up McCanns.”

Asked what he thought of it, Mr McCann said it was “nothing short of disgusting”.

He said the same paper had accused the family of storing the child’s body in a freezer. The McCanns eventually took legal action against Express Newspapers, and in March 2008 received £550,000 in damages, paid to their fund to find Madeleine, and front-page apologies in the Star and Express titles.

Mr McCann said they believed information about the inquiry was leaked by the police to the Portuguese media, which was running stories based on “snippets of information”, and these were then picked up by the British press, who were unable to tell if they were accurate or not.

He called for greater press regulation to support those who stood up against the media.

Mrs McCann said she and her husband felt powerless to do anything about the coverage,

“These were desperate times,” she said. “When it’s your voice against a powerful media, it just doesn’t hold weight.”

Mr McCann added: “I have seen no individual journalist or editor brought to account over the stories. I think if there are repeat offenders they should lose their privilege to practise as a journalist.

“I would like to emphasise that I strongly believe in freedom of speech, but when you have people who are repeatedly carrying out inaccuracies and have been shown to do so, then they should be held to account.”