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The parents of Madeleine McCann were forced today to deny involvement in their daughter's abduction, after a German journalist suggested that their actions since her disappearance had led many people to suspect them.
Kate McCann looked aghast and her husband Gerry's voice shook with emotion in response to
comments by experienced radio journalist Sabine Mueller at the start of the couple's visit to Berlin to raise awareness of Madeleine's kidnap 35 days ago.
"More and more people seem to be pointing the finger at you, saying the way you behave is not the way people would normally behave when their child is abducted and they seem to imply that you might have something to do with it," Ms Mueller said.
A visibly horrified Mrs McCann leaned immediately into the microphone.
"To be honest, I don't actually think that is the case," she told a press conference.
"I think that is a very small minority of people that are criticising us.
The facts are that we were dining very close to the children and we were checking them very, very regularly.
You know, we are very responsible parents and we love our children so much and I think it is only a very few people that are actually criticising us." Her husband added: "I have never heard before that anyone considers us suspects in this and the Portuguese police certainly don't."
Chief Inspector Olegarion Sousa, spokesman for the inquiry in Portugal, has always insisted there are "no suspicions" surrounding the McCanns despite insinuations to the contrary in some Portuguese papers after Mr McCann spent 13 hours in a police station on May 11, finally emerging at 3am.
His reasons for being there, it emerged later, was to go over his initial statement as part of a revision of the inquiry.
The McCanns, visibly strained during the 24-hour visit made because of Portugal's popularity with German tourists, also defended their decision to continue their tour of Europe, which had already taken them to Spain and Italy.
Consultant cardiologist Mr McCann, who has been by far the stronger of the two in the past extraordinary month but who struggled at times to compose himself yesterday, said: "I can understand why people are amazed at what Kate and I are doing.
Before this happened to us, we would have been amazed.
I am sure everyone in this room has asked themselves how, when our daughter whom we love so much is missing, can we continue to function?"In the first two or three days we were almost non-functional and one of the worst feelings of all - along with the terror, the anguish and the despair - was helplessness.
"If we had...stayed indoors, locked ourselves away and waited, and waited, and waited, for a month, we would be shells of the people we are." The McCanns' advisers were astonished by the initial line of questioning.
"Quite frankly, I was ready for them to walk out of the press conference," said one source close to the couple.
But Ms Mueller, 35, of German Radio, later defended herself.
"I felt it was a question that needed to be asked," she said.
"I don't suspect the McCanns of being involved [and] I did not want to hurt these people."
Later the McCanns left for an emotional return to Amsterdam, where they lived until Madeleine was one.
They will returning later today to the Algarve for a jazz concert in their daughter's name in Lagos, near the resort of Praia da Luz where she vanished.
- INDEPENDENT
