'While we were away, there was a hearing in the High Court relating to an application we had made on Madeleine’s behalf for access to all the information held by Leicestershire police relating to her case. As nobody else was now searching for her, we wanted our own investigators to have the chance to check this material for any relevant leads. Naively, I’d thought a court order would be seen by the police, who were always telling us their hands were tied, as a way of helping us without upsetting their Portuguese counterparts. If they were required by law to pass us this information, surely the PJ would need to accept that? I couldn’t have been more wrong. The UK authorities fought our application tooth and nail. I was shocked by the force of their opposition and the lengths to which they seemed prepared to go to deny us this access in these circumstances.
The British police had their reasons, of course, among them the investigative primacy they were obliged to concede to the Portuguese and the concern that being in possession of information otherwise known only to the police and the perpetrator might compromise Gerry and me, since at this point we were still arguidos. All of this the assistant chief constable for Leicestershire made clear in a statement written for the court. He had come out to Portugal shortly after Madeleine’s abduction and had seen us at our most grief-stricken, and yet he felt able to comment of Gerry and me in this statement: ‘While one or both of them may be innocent, there is no clear evidence that eliminates them from involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.’ We were completely staggered. No evidence to eliminate us? Whether or not it was his intention, that line stuck in our heads as ‘guilty until proven innocent’.
Given the extreme opposition we faced, we realised this was a battle we weren’t going to win. Reluctantly, we made a tactical decision to accept a smaller amount of information. Having to withdraw was quite galling, especially as the eighty-one items disclosed to us included trivial details that our family had passed on to the police in the first place.
Madeleine
