IAN HART: Will the McCanns' nightmare ever end?

Mother's Day arrives this Sunday, and for those of us who have sadly lost their mothers the day takes on a different significance.
Ian HartIan Hart
Ian Hart

But for at least one mother in the nation, it brings another day of unresolved uncertainty.

The evening of May 3, 2007, will live with Kate McCann for the rest of her life.

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The events in Praia de Luz, Portugal, that night have polarised opinion in this country and beyond.

Kate and her husband Gerry left their three children at 8.30pm, checking on them over the following 90 minutes, but at 10pm found eldest daughter Madeleine gone.

In the ten years since that fateful night the McCanns have endured almost a hate campaign from some quarters and the subjects of all kinds of theories.

This is an horrendous situation for all concerned. In my view, there is no way of dressing it up – to leave a child of that age unattended, be they 180 feet or a mile away, is wrong.

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The McCanns have endured, at times, almost a trial by media, which at times puts in me in mind of the dingo baby case in Australia over 30 years ago.

Linzi Chamberlain, having previously been convicted of her daughter’s murder, was later cleared.

I hope Kate and Gerry McCann will never face anything like that.

I imagine that on Mother’s Day, Kate McCann wakes, as she has on every day since May 4, 2007, with the tortured thoughts of what happened to her little girl.

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For all the rights and wrongs perhaps her vociferous critics should think about that sometimes?

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