Kate McCann told a court today that her young son asked her about allegations by a former Portuguese police chief that she was involved in her daughter Madeleine’s disappearance.
Mrs McCann was delivering a personal statement at Lisbon’s Palace of Justice in the libel case brought by her and husband Gerry against Goncalo Amaral over claims he made in a book about their role in the disappearance of their daughter from the family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve in 2007.
She told the court her son Sean heard about Amaral’s allegations on the radio while travelling on the school bus.
“Sean asked me in October ‘Mr Amaral said you hid Madeleine’. I just said that he said a lot of silly things,” she said.
The McCanns are suing for libel over claims made in Mr Amaral’s 2008 book, including suggestions that they hid Madeleine’s body after she died in an accident and faked an abduction.
They say the allegations damaged the hunt for their daughter and exacerbated their anguish.
Sean and his twin sister Amelie were aged two when Madeleine, who was nearly four, went missing.
Speaking after the hearing today, Mr McCann said that Mr Amaral’s claims had caused a “tremendous amount of damage” but he hoped that people would now see that all he and his wife wanted was a conclusion to the case.
He hoped continuing investigations would catch whoever snatched his daughter, adding: “Whoever took Madeleine is still out there and whoever the person is they must have been laughing these past six years at what was told in the book, that there was no predator out there. There was and he or she may strike again.”
He said he and his wife “could not undo” the damage he said Amaral’s book has caused, and expressed his upset that some residents of Praia da Luz had written on the walls of the town that he and his wife where the murderers.
Madeleine disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve on May 3, 2007, as her parents dined at a nearby restaurant with friends.
If successful, the family stand to gain around £1million in damages. A judgment is not expected in the trial until later this year.
The couple’s latest visit to Portugal comes after Scotland Yard detectives last week returned to the country to help interview suspects in the case.
