Where would they have made that clear?
Kate did mention some confusion in her book (including when giving informal statements to whoever who'd come over from the UK)- I don't have the book to hand, so I can't check on that.
Of course, Kate could have invented that and those early days could have actually been a well-oiled machine with no room for misunderstandings at any time.
From my perspective, it's not a case of supporting them or not. I'm just trying to be realistic - and the idea of a well-oiled machine, taking into account the fact that the PJ had little experience of such a case, the stress of the media attention, the probably lack of resources, the language barrier, the urgency of trying to gather information ASAP to try to find a missing child... just doesn't seem realistic to me.
There was a topic ages ago on potential translation issues, but there's now a new one and it's quite a busy thread. Is that a problem?
The group were very interested in making sure that the PJ had every bit of information there was and tht it was correct. As Kate says;
We were concerned that parts of the statements we had made to the Portuguese police, especially on that first day, might have been lost in translation. We also felt that these accounts were not sufficiently thorough and wanted
to have every detail we could remember registered properly. [madeleine]
To that end they got together and produced a document giving a summary of everything that happened which they gave to the PJ on 10th May. Not content with that, the McCanns and three others also gave statements to Control Risks Group on 13th.
The problem is that they still appear to have been unable to get it right, despite the importance they placed on it. All nine are named in the typed timeline and we're told they all agreed with it. Even so, Gerry McCann contradicted it on 10th May, as did Dianne Webster on 11th.
Those two examples are nothing to do with "the fact that the PJ had little experience of such a case, the stress of the media attention, the probably lack of resources, the language barrier, the urgency of trying to gather information ASAP to try to find a missing child".
