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Today marks what would have been Madeleine McCann’s 18th birthday.

While Christian Brückner remains a suspect for German prosecutors for her abduction, her fate is still not yet known.

While many commentators have speculated that she met her death soon after her disappearance from Portugal’s Praia da Luz resort, several children have done missing, some for decades, and the reappeared.

Jaycee Dugard

Eleven-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard was snatched from a street in Meyers, California in June 1991.

A car pulled up next to her as she was on her way to school and, assign the driver was about to ask her for directions the shy, quiet girl walked over to the vehicle – only to be shocked unconscious with a stun gun.

Despite Jaycee’s stepfather, Carl Probyn, witnessing the abduction and trying to give chase to the kidnappers’ car in his pushbike, the criminals – Nancy Garrido and her husband, sex offender Phillip Garrido – managed to get away.

A huge search effort across the US yielded no results and Jaycee’s parents Carl and Terry Probyn worked tirelessly for a decade to keep her case in the public eye with candlelight vigils, fundraising events, and other events aimed at raising awareness for child safety.

For eighteen long years Jaycee was kept locked up and subjected to constant sexual and mental abuse. She gave birth to her first child aged just 14 and her second at 17.

Jaycee was kept in a ramshackle prison behind the Garridos’ house and – despite several missed opportunities, police were unable to track her down.

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  House full of enslaved children found in search for abducted two-year-old

Eventually Phillip Garrido, who was banned from associating with young girls as a condition of his parole for an earlier office, was spotted with Jaycee’s two daughters at an event for his self-styled “church.”

The investigation led – albeit slowly – to an FBI investigation that uncovered the young girl’s abduction and captivity.

Garrido is now serving a 431 year sentence for kidnapping, rape and false imprisonment and his wife Nancy was handed a 36-year term for the same crimes.

In July 2010, the State of California awarded Jaycee a $20 million settlement to compensate her for mistakes by the state’s Corrections Department that contributed to “Dugard's continued captivity, ongoing sexual assault and mental and/or physical abuse".

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Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight

Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were all abducted in separate incidents by Ariel Castro between 2002 and 2004.

While Michelle was 21 at the time of her disappearance, Amanda and Gina were just 17 and 14 respectively.

Castro kept his victims in locked bedrooms in his home in Cleveland, Ohio, where they were fed one meal a day. He raped them repeatedly, often beating them to cause miscarriages. In one case, however, Castro threatened to kill Michelle if the baby she was carrying did not survive.

The women were given only basic toilet arrangements and allowed to shower twice a week at most.

• 

  New photos show how Madeleine McCann suspect looked at time of her disappearance

Eventually, Amanda managed to break free of the locked area and signal to neighbours, who called the police.

Castro was arrested and charged and, after trial, sentenced to consecutive life terms in prison, plus 1,000 years, all without any possibility of parole. He was also fined $100,000

He was found hanging from a bed sheet in his cell in an Ohio prison, just one month into his life sentence.

Natascha Kampusch

Natascha Kampusch was kidnapped at the age of 10 and repeatedly raped by Wolfgang Priklopil in a dungeon under his house onside Vienna for over eight years. She later said the underground room where she was kept captive was “a place to despair”.

• 

  'Investigate Madeleine McCann suspect over our girl's disappearance', family urges

Claiming that that the doors and windows of the house were booby-trapped with high explosives, Priklopil told her that escape was impossible.

However, at 18 Natascha saw her chance while Priklopil was distracted by a phone call. She ran to a nearby house and asked the woman living there to call the police.

Priklopil threw himself under the wheels of a train rather than face justice.

Natascha later sent a message to the McCanns, telling them not to give up hope: “Please stay strong and never give up yourself, and I hope that Madeleine appears.”

• 

  Madeleine McCann suspect 'stared at me in sleazy way for minutes', claims Brit

Steven Stayner

California seven-year-old Steven Stayner was groomed and then kidnapped by two men – convicted child molester Kenneth Parnell and an accomplice with learning disabilities named Ervin Edward Murphy.

Steven was forced to live as Parnell’s “son” for seven years in a home some 200 miles from where he was abducted. As Steven began to enter puberty Parnell sought out another young boy and tried to force Steven to act as his accomplice – but the teenager deliberately messed up the kidnapping attempts.

After Parnell eventually caught a second victim, five-year-old Timothy White, Steven decided to return the lad to his parents and they escaped together.

In 1981, Parnell was tried and convicted of kidnapping White and Stayner in two separate trials. He was sentenced to just seven years, and was paroled after serving five.

Elisabeth Fritzl

In perhaps the most notorious case of its kind Elisabeth Fritzl was imprisoned and repeatedly raped by her own father in a 24-year ordeal. Fritzl reportedly raped Elisabeth more than 3,000 times, forcing her to give birth to seven of her father’s children.

Her horrific ordeal only ended in April 2008 after one of their daughters required hospital treatment. On 19 March 2009, Fritzl was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for at least 15 years. He has resigned himself to dying in Krems-Stein prison and fellow inmates say the 86-year-old monster “doesn't want to live anymore”.

Elisabeth and her children now live under new identities. None of them have been photographed or given any interviews since being rescued.

• Madeleine Mccann
• Crime

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