Kate McCann: My struggle to control 'very difficult' Madeleine a reminder

Kate McCann: My struggle to control 'very difficult' Madeleine

Last updated at 19:06 17 September 2007

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Kate McCann has revealed that she struggled to control Madeleine McCann after the birth of her and Gerry's twins, it was revealed today.

Missing Madeleine would run around 'screaming...shouting for my attention', the mother-of-three said.

In an interview given to a Portuguese magazine before she was named as a suspect in the case of the four-year-old's disappearance, Kate also said the first six months of Madeleine's life were "very difficult" and that the girl had suffered from colic.

Gerry and Kate McCann in sombre mood today
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The revelations come as police said they were trawling through Kate's medical records amid suspicions in Portugal that she may have had a history of depression.

The detailed analysis of her medical notes could provide them with significant evidence against the GP, who is a suspect in the case of Madeleine's disappearance.

Speaking about Madeleine's upbringing, Kate, a 39-year-old GP, told Portugal's Flash! magazine: "She cried practically for 18 hours a day. I had to permanently carry her around."

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Kate McCann with twins Sean and Amelie

This period explained "the strong bond between mother and daughter", she said.

Although the arrival of the twins Sean and Amelie shook up Madeleine's life, she accepted them very well, said Kate.

"She managed to deal perfectly with this new reality, although she herself at the time was still a baby.

"The worst thing is that she started to demand lots of attention, especially when I was breast-feeding them.

madeleine

Madeleine McCann: Would run around screaming and demanding attention after her twin brother and sister were born

"She would run up and down screaming in the background, shouting for my attention."

Mrs McCann also insisted that she and her husband were "truly responsible parents" and had committed no crime.

Speaking of the night Madeleine disappeared, she said: "I was sure immediately that she didn't walk out of that room. I never doubted that she had been taken by someone.

"I went through a phase of guilt for not knowing what happened to her. I blamed myself for thinking that the place was safe.

"But the certainty that we are truly responsible parents has helped me carry on.

"I know that what happened is not due to the fact of us leaving the children asleep. I know it happened under other circumstances."

Asked about whether she and her husband were responsible for their daughter's disappearance, she said: "It cannot be considered a crime. Someone committed one, but not us."

Portuguese newspapers continued to report today that Mrs McCann will be re-interviewed in the UK this week by British police on behalf of the Algarve authorities.

But a spokeswoman for the McCanns said the couple had to date received no request for new interrogation.

The judge in the case, Pedro Daniel dos Anjos Frias, rejected prosecutors' request to have the McCanns brought back to Portugal for further questioning, the Correio da Manha said.

He insisted that the fresh interviews should be carried out by British police in the UK, according to the paper.

The re-interviewing will only take place when further DNA testing in Birmingham is completed, either tomorrow or Wednesday.

A letter of appeal will be sent to Britain, setting out all the questions Portuguese detectives want to ask the couple, along with the evidence supporting their hypothesis, the Correio da Manha reported.

A source told the paper there was only a "very low" probability that Portuguese officers would be allowed to sit in on the interviews.

A McCann family spokeswoman said today: "We have been in touch with the lawyers to try and get a steer on what is in the Portuguese papers.

"They assure us we have had no request to date for any further questioning, either from the Portuguese police or in the UK."

She could not say whether the McCanns' legal team was expecting the couple to be re-interviewed.

Since Kate and Gerry McCann were named as official suspects last week, there have been suggestions in Portugal that Madeleine was given drugs on the night of her disappearance.

The accusations have been strenuously denied by the couple but have not been ruled out by police. Although the order to seize medical files came from the Portuguese authorities, the background searches are being carried out by Leicestershire police.

A copy of Mrs McCann's diary has also been seized by police, ( wait so they blamed pollice and it was notw??) who are now waiting for permission from the judge to seize and dismantle the McCanns' hire car so they can search for "traces of skin".

It has been reported that DNA evidence with a match to Madeleine was found in the Renault Scenic 25 days after their daughter vanished.

Yesterday it emerged the McCanns are trying to knock down potential evidence retrieved after two British sniffer dogs, capable of detecting blood and human remains, were used in the investigation in August.

One of the dogs picked up a "scent of deathî on items ranging from Mrs McCann's clothes to Madeleine's favourite soft toy Cuddle Cat.

Leaked reports from the investigation have suggested that Madeleine's parents could have accidentally killed her and then disposed of her body using the car. Although they do not know the full details of the Portuguese prosecutors' case against them, the McCanns are concerned that it may rest on the dog's reaction.

The couple's legal team has now consulted the lawyers of an American man accused of murdering his estranged wife in a case where "cadaver dog" evidence was central. They want to highlight the judge's dismissal of such evidence in the high-profile Eugene Zapata murder trial in Madison, Wisconsin.

Mr Zapata's estranged wife, flight instructor Jeanette Zapata, was 37 when she vanished in October 1976 after seeing her three children off to school.

Her body has never been found. Detectives suspected Mr Zapata of involvement in her disappearance but did not charge him because of a lack of evidence.

Police decided to conduct new searches using cadaver dogs and Mr Zapata, 68, was charged with firstdegree murder last year after the dogs indicated that they had scented human remains in an underfloor crawl space at the former family home and other properties linked to him.

But the judge ruled that the dogs' ability to detect remains was too unreliable, noting that no remains had actually been found.

UNRELIABLE....but RIGHT in the end.

There was also the Haut de la Garenne children's home abuse scandal in which canine evidence was trashed by authorities although again, this was found to be sound evidence dissed by missleading reporting and propaganda.
It makes you wonder why they would do this and the fact that:-

1. The final two offenders have just been found guilty and sentenced (2011).
2. Five offenders have already been convicted and and serving sentences of up to 15 years in jail.
3. Thirty others could and would have been charged and probably sentenced if they hadn't died.

Proves the accuracy of Canine evidence can't be as bad as some would want you to believe.

What do you think, Gerry?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/06/jersey-childrens-home-scandal-ends

Oh, yes - "that girl could throw a tantrum if she wanted to". By the loving granny.

"She'll be giving them her tuppenceworth". By the loving mother.

Poor wee thing.

I have been unable to find the reference to the comment I recall reading, that Kate was a 'daddy's girl' and her mother showed jealousy about that...Madeleine may have been the recipient of the same.

Iris wrote:Oh, yes - "that girl could throw a tantrum if she wanted to". By the loving granny.

"She'll be giving them her tuppenceworth". By the loving mother.

Poor wee thing.

'that girl was a screamer' is another contribution from the family (I think G's mother) - they would know because she was sent to spent Christmas with her grandmother when she was two years old.

It's not just Maddie, in the June diary particularly, we are treated to quite a few entries re twins not going to sleep, screaming in the car, having tantrums and so on. Whenever I've seen these parents carrying the children they might as well be carrying shopping bags. I doubt that any of the children were ever hugged to bits - and how can you avoid doing that when you love your children?
Looking after 'the family' seems always to have been a dreadful chore, judging from the diary.

tigger wrote:

Iris wrote:Oh, yes - "that girl could throw a tantrum if she wanted to". By the loving granny.

"She'll be giving them her tuppenceworth". By the loving mother.

Poor wee thing.

'that girl was a screamer' is another contribution from the family (I think G's mother) - they would know because she was sent to spent Christmas with her grandmother when she was two years old.

It's not just Maddie, in the June diary particularly, we are treated to quite a few entries re twins not going to sleep, screaming in the car, having tantrums and so on. Whenever I've seen these parents carrying the children they might as well be carrying shopping bags. I doubt that any of the children were ever hugged to bits - and how can you avoid doing that when you love your children?
Looking after 'the family' seems always to have been a dreadful chore, judging from the diary.

tigger i think kate had way too higher expectations for the children she looked at maddie as a best friend!!!!!!! akaa minni me kate lets face it most kids you know dont like dr who etc when i was a toddler anda small child i was scared of dr who star wars etc!!!

Justiceforallkids wrote:

tigger wrote:

Iris wrote:Oh, yes - "that girl could throw a tantrum if she wanted to". By the loving granny.

"She'll be giving them her tuppenceworth". By the loving mother.

Poor wee thing.

'that girl was a screamer' is another contribution from the family (I think G's mother) - they would know because she was sent to spent Christmas with her grandmother when she was two years old.

It's not just Maddie, in the June diary particularly, we are treated to quite a few entries re twins not going to sleep, screaming in the car, having tantrums and so on. Whenever I've seen these parents carrying the children they might as well be carrying shopping bags. I doubt that any of the children were ever hugged to bits - and how can you avoid doing that when you love your children?
Looking after 'the family' seems always to have been a dreadful chore, judging from the diary.

tigger i think kate had way too higher expectations for the children she looked at maddie as a best friend!!!!!!! akaa minni me kate lets face it most kids you know dont like dr who etc when i was a toddler anda small child i was scared of dr who star wars etc!!!

You're right, neither Kate nor Gerry had any idea of children's normal behaviour. I was just thinking they must have had an impossibly idyllic picture of life with little children.
Both of them were favoured children, Gerry the youngest by 9 years and Kate an only child. They've never had to cope with siblings.
She was my best friend is an idiotic remark, straight out of some or other book. By the time she'd be mid teens, if you had a very good relationship with your daughter, you might just about call yourself friends.
Psychologically, it's interesting that most of their remarks are more like those of an older child having to compete with younger siblings.
As if it's not really their job to look after the children.

Poor, poor, Madeleine, she was doing nothing more than behaving as any toddler of her age would behave when mummy is holding a new baby, or in Madeleine's case 2 new babies.

Kate McCann has never stopped carping on about Madeleine's behaviour. If she wasn't complaining about Madeleine's colic, which she suffered from as a tiny baby, she was complaining about Madeleine, trying to get on her knee, when she was feeding the twins. She also complained that Madeleine would follow her around the house screaming and throwing tantrums.

Kate's mother and mother-in-law were no better. Kate's mother said Madeleine was a very difficult child and she would have to go down to Rothley to help her daughter. Gerry's mother said "that child" could throw a tantrum. It was the McCanns choice to have IVF treatment, soon after Madeleine's 1st birthday. They should have known that she would have been too young to understand that she would have to compete with another baby, for her mother's love.

It seems to me that Madeleine was not a wanted child. I don't know how these people have the nerve to paint Madeleine as a difficult child, when Madeleine will have suffered the most traumatic experience that no child should suffer. Whether it is at the hands of a paedophile or whether she was given to another couple by the McCanns, she will have suffered mentally if not physically.