I just don't understand why so many British people failed to make absolutly sure that the crimes they allrge were committed against their children were recorded by the Portuguese police. According to Kate McCann the British Consul only knew about the crimes because the tour operators told him. That suggests that none of the victims approached the British Consulate at the time either. It seems to me that not even one pf them made any fuss at all at the time.
Once again you have got it entirely wrong. Kate wrote in her book ...
SnipOne of the most concerning and upsetting pieces of information to emerge quite early was the record of sexual crimes against children in the Algarve.
This discovery made me feel physically sick. I read of five cases of British children on holiday being sexually abused in their beds while their parents slept in another room.
In three further incidents, children encountered an intruder in their bedrooms, who was presumably disturbed before he had the chance to carry out an assault.
I guessed these were the reports that Bill Henderson, the British consul at the time of Madeleine’s abduction, had told me about.
These incidents had occurred within an hour’s drive of Praia da Luz over the three years prior to Madeleine’s disappearance.
The PJ had never mentioned any of them to us. In fact, I gathered from the files, some of them hadn’t even been recorded by the authorities at the time they were reported (evidently, they were not considered to be actual crimes).
So they might never have come to light if the parents of these children hadn’t been brave enough to come forward to the British police after Madeleine was taken and relive their nightmares.
They did so in the belief that there could be a link between what had happened to their children and what had happened to her.
It broke my heart to read the terrible accounts of these devastated parents and the experiences of their poor children.
Unbelievably (or maybe not, by this time), there was a familiar thread running through them all. The parents had called the police; they hadn’t felt that the crime was taken seriously, by the police or by their tour operators; statements were often not taken; DNA and fingerprint evidence was frequently not sought.
In most instances there was no sign of a break-in. I cried for hours after reading a letter of complaint from one mother to the GNR regarding the sexual abuse of her daughter and the lack of proper attention paid to it by the authorities.
The final line in particular has haunted me ever since:
It is difficult to see with this lack of investigation or interest how a profile of this man can be built up. It did not appear to us that there was any great incentive or determination to find the offender and bring him to justice . . . Furthermore, it could all have been so much worse . . . indeed this man could go on to do much worse to another child if he’s not stopped now.
Kate McCannThe Portuguese police did know at the time of these attacks ... they just didn't bother to take any action. But the knowledge of what had happened to these children should have dictated that the investigation into Madeline's disappearance should have taken an entirely different tack from the one followed by Amaral.