What Makes Madeleine McCann So Special?

Written in 2020 for a university project.

Credit: United Press International.

“Each parent took turns checking on their respective children throughout the night, and it was around 10 pm that Kate McCann discovered Madeleine was missing”.

She has been the blonde-haired, blue-eyed poster child for missing children for over a decade – we’ve all heard her story. Ever since she disappeared from her bed in the Ocean Club of Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007, the world has been endlessly fascinated by Madeleine McCann.

The question is: why are we all still so obsessed with this British girl? Her name makes heads turn, and her picture is in the papers year after year without fail. 2020 marks 13 long years after her disappearance, but the case remains open and continues to gain funding. In 2018, investigating police confirmed that they had received £11 million in funding for the Madeleine case.

Perhaps controversially, many speculators turn to the “missing white woman syndrome” to explain the traction of Madeleine’s case: extensive media coverage received by young, white, attractive females who go missing. It is quite possible that the media took notice of Madeleine’s appearance and used it to sell their content and spread the news. Anthony Summers, author of the book Looking for Madeleine, notes that this is a matter to be considered.

“Sadly, if Madeleine had been foreign-born, or a person of colour, lost in Africa rather than from a well-known tourist resort, her case might not have attracted so much notice," he admitted.

There is also the fact that the McCann parents, Kate and Gerry, knew to get the media on the case straight away. However, according to Summers, they always just acted on the best expert advice that they were given. He says that the McCanns managed to get to the press early on, “possibly because of the advantages of education or life experience”.

It was also very much the work of the McCanns and their friends that helped them out early on. “Their friends literally rang up news organizations that first night looking to tell Madeleine’s story,” Summers said. “Gerry McCann’s sister, a teacher, got a student working on a website right away.”

Additionally, according to Crime Investigation, Gerry McCann told Vanity Fair that they have marketed Madeleine in order to keep her name relevant in hopes that something will come out of it.

Alongside the abundance of outlandish theories, there are other possible explanations as to why Madeleine’s case gained more widespread traction compared to other missing child cases.

It is important to remember that Madeleine disappeared in the early summer. This, according to Summers, landed her disappearance in the middle of “what journalists call the 'silly season”, when most political institutions are shut, no key decisions [are] being made, and the press is scrambling to fill pages or air time with 'soft' stories”. A child disappearance case that occurred in a popular tourist area was the best content that the press could have asked for.

The lack of answers also seemed to draw people in. New, conflicting details were being released all the time, but the lack of grounded answers to the plethora of questions only seemed to entice the public more.

Kate and Gerry McCann have spoken out about these thoughts, too. On their website, findmadeleine.com, they state that they have “been criticised at times for publicising Madeleine’s disappearance,” saying that they “did what [they] felt was best at the time”.

They have also written about the huge impact of their daughter’s case. They state again on their website that they believe that “the publicity surrounding Madeleine’s abduction was not inappropriate – every child in such a situation should receive the same amount of attention, but it shouldn’t be down to the family to instigate it”.

This statement raises another important question: What stops other missing child cases from gaining as much popularity as Madeleine’s?

To answer this, we need to consider why the case remains so popular to this day. A blog by HuffPost suggests that one reason the case is so popular is that it is a distant story that doesn’t demand any real response from us. We’re safe from it, or we believe we are, but we’re fascinated by it. It has essentially become a spectator sport as new information is being released all the time without any real answers being given. In reality, it might be much simpler: at this point, we all just want to know what happened.

Is Madeleine’s case still remarkably popular because of her appearance? It’s hard to say. However, the fact that people of colour are treated differently by the media is a painfully true one. Northwestern University Law and Science student Zach Sommers undertook a study to supposedly prove that women of colour receive different treatment from the media.

According to his findings, there were distinct disparities in race and gender in both how often the media covered missing women of colour and how intense that coverage was. The numbers showed that, on an overwhelming scale, white women and girls had the most frequent and most intense coverage.

An estimated 112,853 children are reported missing in the UK every year. In the US, an estimated 460,000 children go missing every year. So many of these cases that are relatively unheard of are cases of black or minority children.

Sofia Juarez went missing on February 4th, 2003, in Kennewick, WA. Her disappearance triggered Washington’s first-ever amber alert, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has posted an age-progressed photo of what Sofia may look like today. She is a White/Hispanic girl who went missing in America – her case never got the traction it deserved.

Acacia Nicole Duvall went missing on March 28th, 2007 – the same year as Madeleine. She disappeared from Whittier, California, at the age of 3. Despite the fact that she went missing in California, it is possible that because she is biracial, the media did not want to cover her case.

Naomi Vivar Zambrano went missing on July 21st, 2007 – just over two months after Madeleine went missing. She was from Ecuador and disappeared at just two years old. Her case gained very little attention.

In 2019, 30,681 children (missing persons under the age of 18) were on the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. Not one of those children gained anywhere near as much attention as Madeleine.

Kate McCann’s point rings true: it should not be down to the family to do all the instigation to get a missing child case out there. Ultimately, the fate of the case can depend on how the media spreads the word and how much work they put into making sure the case gets as much exposure as possible. If the press believes the story will not sell, the case might be horribly forgotten.

With this in mind, it is evident that press exposure will not always bring a missing child back. The case of Madeleine McCann is arguably the biggest of its kind in history, yet she still remains missing. Earlier this year, ex-detective Mark Williams said that the case may never be solved due to missing CCTV, which prevents authorities from knowing anything concrete about the suspects at the scene. It has been 13 years, after all, but the McCanns refuse to let the case run cold.

According to Anthony Summers, Scotland Yard “still believes the leads they are following justify the spending of even more time and money.” He says that the case has gotten them a lead that points to abduction, which they have been working on for a few years.

“There is a suspect,” he said.

Madeleine’s case has been recently brought back into the public eye with the release of the 2019 Netflix documentary series The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Reciting the story from its ghastly beginnings, it takes viewers from the days before her disappearance to where the case is now.

Even now, theoretically, all eyes are on Madeleine. There are the few who are tired of her story and want the case to come to an end, but many of us will still tune into any news about her. Something made her case special, whether it was her parents’ understanding of and connections to the media, her pretty appearance, or her tantalising story that did a perfect job of filling a media dry spell.

One day her case may be solved, and both the McCanns and the world will have the answers it has been searching for for years. In the meantime, her undying popularity only means one thing: whilst the world is still focused on the young McCann, thousands of other missing child cases still remain in the dark.