Madeleine McCann: Cressida Dick discusses case in 2021

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Madeleine disappeared when she was three years old, while her family were on holiday in Portugal in 2007. Prosecutors in Braunschweig said in June 2020 they believed that their prime suspect, convicted rapist and child sexual abuser Christian B, to have killed Madeleine.

Christian B has always denied all allegations in relation to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Meanwhile, the Met Police have previously said that Operation Grange, their active investigation into the disappearance, remains a missing person inquiry as there is no “definitive evidence whether Madeleine is alive or dead”.

These conflicting approaches do little to help Kate and Gerry come to closure on the matter, Charlie Hedges, a missing person specialist at Amber Alert Europe, said.

He told Express.co.uk: “It just raises more and more questions, raises hopes in their minds that things are going to be resolved – and only to be dashed once again.

“I’m sure that’s happened to them many, many times over the years.”

Mr Hedges said that though there were still active investigations looking for answers, nearly fifteen years since she went missing, the McCanns are “realistic enough to know that the chances of being able to successfully conclude this gets smaller as time goes forward.”

He added that he hoped that “for their sake it can be resolved, because they’re suffering this horrendous grief of not being able to have any closure on what happened to Madeleine – this ambiguous loss.

“If someone’s dead, you actually know what’s happened and can get on with your life in these circumstances.

“[At the moment] it’s open ended and you can’t close it down and move on. You just don’t know.”

Aagje Ieven, secretary general of Missing Children Europe, stressed “how important that is, for parents to be able to close such cases”.

She explained the issue of “complex grief” among parents of missing children, a state in which “you need to find some way to live with the fact that your child is not there anymore, but not being able to put it in context.”

Ms Ieven said that this was “something that’s really challenging for families”.

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She added: “It’s not ideal if two police forces are not in agreement. And I think that won’t make things easier for the parents.”

She noted a recent case in which Belgian and Dutch police had disagreed on whether a case was a murder or an abduction, and said: “That sometimes has to do with very specific procedural legislation in the country.

“Some countries will say, ‘we’ll immediately assume the worst, and then phase it back from there’, and other countries will say, ‘we’ll take the lightest, the one thing that we are sure we can prove’.

“So that’s something where it could be that [the difference of opinion on Madeleine] has to do with different legislation, not necessarily different beliefs of what has happened in the case.

“I don’t know enough of the specifics to be able to say if that’s the case here or not, but it’s not uncommon to treat something differently based on what is common in the way that they do investigations and what’s legally possible.”

Ms Ieven added: “Most parents who [have] experienced this will all say that they would rather know what has happened, than not to know.”

Mr Hedges made reference to recent cases in America “where children had been held captive by people for many, many years, and then suddenly walked out on the street.

“So you can’t say it’s never going to happen. It’s a small possibility. But that possibility is still there.”

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