Tuesday 20 September 2022
McCann and Healy v. Portugal (no. 57195/17)
The applicants, Gerald Patrick McCann and Kate Marie Healy, are British nationals, born in 1968.
They live in Leicestershire, in the United Kingdom.
The case concerns statements made by Mr Gonçalo Amaral – a former detective inspector – in a
book, a documentary adapted from that book and a newspaper interview about the applicants’
alleged involvement in the disappearance of their daughter, Madeleine McCann, who went missing
on 3 May 2007 in southern Portugal.
Relying on Articles 6 §§ 1 and 2 (right to a fair hearing), 8 (right to respect for private and family life)
and 10 (freedom of expression) of the Convention, the applicants allege that those statements
damaged their reputation, their good name and their right to be presumed innocent, and complain
that they were unable to obtain redress before the domestic civil courts. They also argue that the
reasoning in decisions issued by the Supreme Court on 31 January and 21 March 2017, at the close
of an action for damages brought by them, breached their right to be presumed innocent.