Bad Mummy Kate McCann, Medea and the Media Dr Nicola Goc University of Tasmania

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1 Bad Mummy Kate McCann, Medea and the Media Dr Nicola Goc University of Tasmania Abstract Ever since three-year-old Madeline McCann went missing from a Portuguese resort in May 2007 while her parents were having dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant the world s news services have carried rolling news bulletins about the story of every parent s worst nightmare. From day one news bulletins ran with parallel news discourses: one focusing on the desperate search for the child and hypothesising about the evil predator who allegedly kidnapped the child; and the other a moral news discourse focusing on the bad parents who left their children home alone. Outside this news paradigm through news web blogs a vociferous global debate has proliferated that has centred on the behaviour of the McCanns, and in particular on the mother, Kate McCann. In Medea style (reminiscent of Lindy Chamberlain in the pre-digital age) Kate McCann has become the central figure in the public discourse about the missing toddler. She is being judged as guilty or innocent of her child s disappearance through a moral frame. Kate McCann, it is said, is unemotional, and yet she is also too emotional, she laughs too much, she doesn t cry enough, she dresses inappropriately, and she deliberately courts the media, she was depressed and struggled with her difficult child she is a bad mother. Since Madeline McCann s disappearance there have been many twists and turns in the police investigation, and even more twists and turns in the ongoing news coverage, with both feeding into a strident public discourse which positions the debate within a moral frame. This paper will map both the news coverage and public discourse on the disappearance of Madeline McCann to draw parallels with the 1980 disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain in outback Australia and will uncover a recurrent and disturbing meta-narrative that places Kate McCann, not as a grieving mother, but in a deviant Medea frame. From the moment three-year-old English girl Madeline McCann was reported missing from the family s holiday villa in Portugal on May 2007 her disappearance became a media sensation with blanket coverage around the world. Barbara Barnett suggests events become news when they shatter the fairy-tale notions we have about love, home, and the family (Barnett, year, 419). The disappearance of a beloved three-year-old child while on holiday in a foreign country, like the disappearance of baby Azaria Chamberlain from a camping ground in the Australian outback 27 years earlier, was ready-made news. These stories work for the media because they have the ingredients of a classic fairy-tale with the sinister disappearance of a sleeping beauty, an evil stranger, and a wicked witch and in the case of Azaria a monstrous wolf. Fairy tales and folk stories have huge appeal because they speak to our collective unconscious. The McCann and Chamberlain stories tell of every parent s hidden anxiety: is my child safe while she/he is sleeping? From the first news reports both stories 1

2 captivated the public. The UK tabloid the Daily Telegraph, writing two days after Madeleine McCann disappeared, said: It is a story that chills the heart of every parent; something that will have stopped each one of us dead yesterday when we heard about Madeleine's disappearance. There but for the grace of... was the single thought that would have united us. (Jardin, Daily Telegraph 6 May 2007) The disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann was simply every parent s worst nightmare. When 10-week-old Azaria Chamberlain disappeared from a tent at a camping ground at Uluru (then known as Ayer s Rock) in outback Australia in 1980 the story immediately captivated media and public attention. When Lindy Chamberlain claimed a dingo had taken her baby there was widespread public support for the Chamberlains (this was the quintessential Australian nightmare) and at the same time the Northern Territory police came under increasing pressure to find the missing baby just as the Portuguese police have come under pressure to find Madeleine. A week after Azaria disappeared her bloodstained jumpsuit; singlet, booties and a nappy were found near a dingo lair. An inquest in February 1981 concluded that a dingo had indeed attacked the baby. However, without a body, lingering suspicions remained with some complaining that the unemotional demeanour of the Chamberlains immediately after Azaria went missing was suspicious. This same suspicion has befallen the McCanns with suggestions that their demeanour as seen on television points to their guilt. For Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton the suspicions of the public and the NT police, whose suspicions led to a second inquest at which English pathologist, Dr James Cameron, gave evidence that an ultraviolet photograph he had taken of the jumpsuit showed that Azaria s neck had been slashed and that on the back of her jumpsuit he found the imprint of an adult female hand. He also argued that the baby had been buried in the jumpsuit. With his evidence public and media opinion turned against Lindy overnight, just as it has done for Kate McCann since revelations of forensic evidence have emerged. Lindy Chamberlain was charged with the murder of her daughter, the Crown attested that she had cut the baby s throat while seated in the car, had hidden the body in the car and later buried it, and later still had dug the baby up, taken off the clothing and reburied the body, planting the clothing elsewhere. Her husband, Michael was accused of being an accessory in the disposal of the body. Lindy Chamberlain was convicted of Azaria s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour in one of Australia s toughest prison s Darwin s, Berrima jail. Her second daughter was born in prison and taken from her immediately after birth. She served four years of a life sentence in jail and then in 1986 Azaria s missing matinee jacket was found in a dingo s lair leading to Lindy Chamberlain s acquittal. 2

3 Thirty years later there are disturbing resonances in the media coverage and in the public discourse surrounding Kate McCann with the court of public opinion turning on the mother within days of the disappearance of Madeleine. Less than 48 hours after Madeline s disappearance people were asking how could a mother leave her child alone while she went out to dinner? By focusing on the how could they? by labelling Kate and Gerry and McCann as bad parents a distance was created between the McCanns and the rest of us, between the unimaginable and our own safe lives, reassuring us that it was alright to be captivated by their story, it was alright to hungrily surf the web for the latest news, because it could not happen to us. Booker-prize winning author Anne Enright, in a controversial article published in October 2007, agreed distancing yourself from the McCanns was a potent form of magic it keeps our children safe. She admitted, disliking the McCanns was an international sport (Enright 2007). When the Portuguese police officially named Kate McCann as an arguidi, and Gerry as an accessory, in September 2007 this revelation unleashed the Medea trope in sensational news headlines: Maddy s mum to become a suspect the Times reported, (Times 8 Sept. 2007), while the tabloid press were less restrained: Suspects! screamed the front-page of the Daily Mirror. The Sun posed the question directly to Kate McCann: Did you sedate Maddie? Upon hearing the news Lindy Chamberlain told Newsweek, Here we have a mother and there s talk about her being charged for murder and once again they haven t got a body, they ve got no facts (Bulletin 26 Oct. 2007). Kate McCann and Lindy Chamberlain Kate McCann, like Lindy Chamberlain, has been judged innocent or guilty on highly prejudicial, lurid and speculative news reports. But unlike the 1980s, when most of the public discussion was done at private gathering or on a limited scale through highly mediated talkback shows where ranting callers vilified Lindy Chamberlain, in the 21 st century the World Wide Web has created a global platform for the public not only to access news 24/7, but also to participate in the news discourse. With just a click on the link embedded into the news text readers are now encouraged to have their say on any news story through message boards and comments links. And when the mainstream news media creates sensational, unsubstantiated news stories from rumour, innuendo and unverifiable material the public feel emboldened to create their own speculative news discourse. The advent of interactive news provided a platform where the public quickly became a rabid mob hijacking the Madeleine McCann news. Times journalist Janice Turner suggested a legion of Internet forums brim with bile about the McCanns because the possibility of the McCann s guilt has given many permission to vent their own pent-up emotions. Perhaps, she argues: we need the McCanns to be guilty. It is callous to say it, but how can a case that, by necessity, has engaged us so intimately not allow us a stake in its outcome? (Turner, Times 15 Sept. 2007). 3

4 When the Portuguese police named Kate McCann as official suspect in September the tone of the news coverage changed dramatically, prompting Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton to appear on national television in Australia defending the McCanns. I am possibly the only woman in the world who knows what the McCanns are going through in the court of public opinion, she said, appealing for people not to pre-judge the McCanns in the way she had been in the 1980s. She said she felt particularly sorry for Kate McCann after hearing reports that the Portuguese police were pressuring Kate to admit her guilt. That sounds like a mirror image, doesn t it? Lie and tell us that you did it, and you can go free, tell us the truth and you can t (Cazzulino, 2007, p6). She urged people not to judge the McCanns on the alleged forensic evidence, recalling the injustice she endured because of incorrect forensic reports. Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton says when the media began reporting rumours and speculation the public turned against her. The rumours she faced included: The name Azaria meant, Sacrifice in the Wilderness. False. The name is Hebrew meaning Blessed by God. Lindy always dressed Azaria in black. False. She had one black dress belonging to he son Reagan which she dressed Azaria in. The car was awash in blood. Forensic experts claimed to have identified a large quantity of infant blood in the Chamberlain s car leading to speculation that Lindy had slit her daughter s throat whilst sitting in the front seat. False. It was later discovered that the blood was in fact a combination of deadener, milkshake, and copper dust. Azaria s clothing was found folded. False. The man who found the clothing said it was scattered. A policeman handled the clothing (not the jacket which was found years later) and then replaced the clothes on the ground to be photographed. Lindy had done a thesis on dingoes. False. As a Girl Guide she wrote a paragraph about the dingo in a project on dogs. The Chamberlains had underlined in red a story in their Bible in which a woman kills a man by driving a tent pole through his head. False. There was no underlining in the 19 th century family Bible. In the manufacture of news about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann we are again seeing the media create news reports from rumour and speculation. Journalists, working at both tabloid and broadsheet news outlets are writing Medea news narratives from rumour, speculation and unproven allegations and like the Lindy Chamberlain and the salacious media reports of bloody handprints, slit throats, religious sacrifices, and arterial blood sprays under the dashboard of the family car, the Kate and Gerry McCanns are also facing equally salacious speculative news reports. As in the case of Azaria, the absence of a body has the seen police and media focus on forensics from other sources. From August claims were 4

5 emerging daily of new forensic evidence being found that pointed to the guilt of the McCanns. Was Maddy given a fatal overdose of sleeping tablets? The French newspaper France Soir speculated that Maddie had been drugged by her mother, citing hard evidence in the hands of the Portuguese police, leading the way for other news outlets around the globe to report this new development. The Daily Mirror s front-page (14 Sept. 2007) coverage of this new development illustrates how the media was boldly employing the two frames of guilt and innocence. The top half of its front page was devoted to an exclusive soft profile of the McCanns while the bottom half was given over to a story on the allegations that Kate McCann drugged her daughter under the headlined: Maddy pills overdose. Blood clue found in Maddie s room The media, drawing upon unconfirmed unsourced police reports, speculated that Kate McCann had drugged Madeleine who accidentally died from an overdose, and later hid her body for almost a month then disposed of it at an unknown site. This theory, sourced from alleged police leaks, was, according to the Daily Mail, supported by the finding of blood spatter in the resort apartment rented by the McCanns (Daily Mail 8 Aug.). The Daily Mail offered dual explanations one sinister and one innocent for the forensic evidence in an attempt to satisfy all reader s viewpoints. The sinister explanation for the traces of blood allegedly found on the floor under a sofa in the apartment was that her body had been hidden there and later moved. The innocent explanation was that Madeleine, after accidentally cutting herself, crawled under the sofa. Missing from the speculative media reports about blood and body fluids were comments from the DNA lab or the British police confirming the reports. Eventually DNA tests showed that the tiny specks of blood found in the apartment were not Madeleine s, although news reports carried the rider that the DNA results were only 72 percent accurate because the blood sample was not fresh (Hudson, 2007). The rumour was found to be false, but, as in the Lindy Chamberlain case, the damage was done. Corpse in McCann Car Lindy Chamberlain was accused of slitting her daughter s throat while she sat in the front seat of the family car now the media speculated that blood and body fluids had been found in the McCann s hire car and that they were Madeleine s. The reporting became incestuous with the Daily Mail reporting: media reports have described [DNA] matches in the car. Associated Press journalist Charles Miranda wrote a story more fitting as a TV murder mystery script than a news report, about that two sniffer dogs, Eddie and Keela, attached to the South Yorkshire Police Department, who had detected human blood in the hire car. The dogs brought to Portugal to hunt for clues, he told readers, were considered Europe s best and 5

6 were hired out for $1,200 a day plus expenses (Miranda, Maddie DNA 10 Sept. 2007). It was her blood in Parents Hire Car: New DNA tests report the Daily Express reported (16 Oct. 2007) while the Evening Standard told its readers: Corpse in McCann Car (16 Oct. 2007). Absent from these sensational media reports were qualifications that the unsubstantiated forensic evidence just might be wrong. The scent of a corpse: dogs smell death on McCann bible. Media reports in September also claimed that cadaver dogs detected the smell of death on Kate McCann s Bible. This rumour eerily parallels the rumour that the deeply religious Chamberlains (Michael was a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor) had killed their daughter as part of a religious sacrifice. News reports claimed the Chamberlains had underlined in red a story in the family Bible in which a woman kills a man by driving a tent pole through his head. Now the media speculated that the devoted Catholic McCanns had killed their daughter in a bizarre religious ritual: It has been reported the bible was found open at the story of how David killed his son. Police say the imputation is Mrs McCann, a staunch Catholic, killed her child after reading the passage or referred to the story to take solace for Madeleine s accidental death (Charles Miranda, A.P., 10 September 2007) Charles Miranda reported that the Portuguese detectives confirmed that Mrs McCann s bible was a key piece of evidence in the case. Spinning a compelling tale Miranda told his readers that a Bible with the scent of death and an English Springer spaniel called Eddie hold the clues to the case of missing Madeleine McCann Europe s most talked-about news story. The Medea Narrative Kate McCann Like Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, Kate McCann has been tried in the court of public opinion for how she looks, how she reacts in front of the news cameras. Lindy Chamberlain was judged guilty in the court of public opinion (and then the criminal court) for the murder of her baby daughter Azaria because she said the media said she appeared too controlled, too hard and too uncaring. Her decision to be interviewed on television after the death of Azaria led to accusations of heartlessness, self-aggrandizement and cynicism. Kate McCann, in the media spotlight, has also received widespread criticism, being described by the media as cold and composed, and criticised for rarely crying in public and most damning of all she is considered to be too slim, too pretty too immaculately dressed and too sexy. According to Times journalist Janice Turner, The McCanns have become the Beckhams of grief, prey to the celebrity culture that trivialises all in its wake. Among their positive facets now being used against them are the McCanns good looks. A plainer couple would have received sufficient coverage, not this cult-like overexposure (Turner 2007). The public, and the media, has been openly critical of Kate McCann s physical appearance as a slim, beautiful young woman since the first week of her ordeal. Anne Enright said that most of the animosity against the McCanns was centred on the figure of Madeleine s beautiful 6

7 mother. BBC radio presenter, Vanessa Feltz agreed there was no doubt that Kate McCann s slim, pretty, carefully put together appearance has had an alienating effect on some people. With resonances of Lindy Chamberlain s experience a groundswell of anti-kate public opinion has been unleashed since Kate McCann was officially named as a suspect. Vanessa Feltz said at the time: When I asked what this bad feeling was based on, answers included: She s had her blonde highlights redone. What kind of grieving mother would do that? And: She s too slim and obsessed with coordinating her clothes with her hair ribbons. That s not normal behaviour for a mother in her position. (Feltz. Times 15 Sept. 2007) Janice Turner wrote about a magazine editor who told her she was restraining herself from running a spread on Mrs McCann s seemingly infinite supply of summer tops: hr heartbreak wardrobe. (Turner 2007), while the Sunday Times ran a story under the headline Too serene for sympathy putting forward a possible explanation as to why people don t sympathise with Kate McCann. In the age of misery memoirs and reality TV, Margarette Driscoll wrote, if you do show stoicism and coolness in the face of trauma, you are despised for it (Driscoll, 2007). Kate McCann s mother, Susan Healy, told the Liverpool Echo that her daughter felt the media was persecuting her because she did not look suitably maternal. She told her mother that if she weighed another two stone, had a bigger bosom and looked more maternal, people would be more sympathetic (Brown 2007). The New York Daily News embellished this report to read that Kate McCann believed she was being persecuted because she was slim and blonde. In a story titled: Kate McCann Feels Persecuted Because of Her Looks, they noted that some critics complained that Kate McCann appeared cold and seldom showed distress in public and had pointed out that the slender blonde always appears to be immaculately groomed (NYdailynews.com 16 Oct. 2007). The Times Margarette Driscoll, however, says if Kate McCann thinks people don t like her because she does not appear sufficiently maternal, then she is way off beam arguing: This is the age of the yummy mummy and in those stakes McCann, who looks as though she could be Sienna Miller s older sister, is queen. It is her coolness of her manner that repels, not her skinniness, nor her careful choice of jewellery. (Driscoll, Times 21 Oct. 2007) Face it: we need the McCanns to be guilty By mid-september with the allegations mounting against Kate McCann the pack was baying for the McCann s blood, with 17,000 people having signed an online petition calling for social services to remove the McCanns twins. Janice Turner was not alone amongst journalists in asking why so many newspaper mailbags Internet forums were brimming with bile? Why this sudden outburst of dark jokes in Private Eye and internet quips about how many children can be carried in a new vehicle called the Renault McCann? Is it really fury at what Kate and Gerry McCann might have done? Or is it that the possibility of their guilt 7

8 has given many permission to vent, at last, emotions they have bottled up all summer long? (Turner, 2007) Anne Enright It is not only journalists who feel compelled to speculate on what happened to Madeleine McCann and to air their opinions about Kate McCann, the 2007 Man Booker prize-winning novelist, Anne Enright, gave literary and intellectual weight to the abuse that Kate McCann has endured both in sections of the media and on the internet. Enright entered the public debate in October when she wrote a scathing article in the London Review of Books in which she speculated on just how Kate McCann had drugged Madeleine before exposing the core of her annoyance at Kate McCann: we are obliged to lay eyes on her all the time, she wrote, admitting, that this makes harridans of us all (Enright 2007). Enright talked of Kate McCann s flat sadness and the very occasional glimpse of a wounded narcissism that flecks her public appearances, adding that she herself has never objected to good-looking women. She also wrote about her husband s speculation that the Tapas 9 had been involved in wife-swapping, and she even considered how the body of a dead child could fit into the boot of her own car. She admitted that in August, the sudden conviction that the McCanns did it swept over her own family holiday in a peculiar hallelujah. She said: We do not forgive them the stupid stiff, like wearing ribbons, or going jogging next day, or holding hands on the way into mass. Enright, with a superior tone, told readers that she disliked the McCanns earlier than most people and that she was angry with them for their failure to accept that their daughter was probably dead. I wanted them to grieve, which is to say to go away. And yet she admitted to an obsession with the case and to searching for interviews with the McCanns late at night, on You Tube. Some have questioned why a writer as sensitive as Enright, whose novel (The Gathering) is regarded as a haunting portrayal of a fictional family s grief and loss, could so brutally hold forth about another, real mother s grief and loss? Perhaps Enright s intemperate and ill-timed opinions reaffirm the potent pleasure we all find in making judgments about the Medea figure, the mother thrust into the public s gaze through the unexplained or suspicious disappearance of her child. Conclusion Almost thirty years after Lindy Chamberlain s vilification by the Australian media and public, it seems nothing much has changed. Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton says Kate McCann has been through the worst thing that can ever happen to a parent the loss of a beloved child and the gut wrenching incomparable agony of not knowing exactly what s happened. She says: What are we doing being a public jury again? How can you apologise to me and do this again to someone else? Life is not a TV show. You can t have the answers nicely packaged in an hour. Sometimes there are no easy answers. The life of the McCann family is not a reality TV show for you to live vicarious horror and trauma through. They are a real family just like my family was. (New Idea 22 Sept. 2007) 8

9 Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton remembers the pressure she was under and knows that it will be the same for Kate McCann. Nothing can make anyone else understand. It s impossible, like learning to swim while drowning. There s no textbook to say, this is how to handle it, this is what s going to happen next, this is the way you can go through it. It doesn t happen (Thorn 2007). Kate McCann is the media s latest Medea, but she follows in the footsteps of many others including Lindy Chamberlain, Sally Clark, Trupti Patel, Angela Cannings, and Donna Anthony. The media will continue to create Medea news narratives as long as society craves for lurid stories about evil mothers. Works Cited: Barnett, Barbara. Medea in the Media: Narrative and Myth in Newspaper Coverage of Women Who Kill their Children. Journalism Vol 7 (4): Enright, Anne. Diary. London Review of Books, 4 Oct Thorn, Frank. Lindy Chamberlain Shudders At Parallels with Madeleine s Disappearance. Hello! 25 Sept No 988 pp News Media: Brown, David. Why I m Being Persecuted, by Kate McCann. Times, 17 Oct < Button, James. Madeleine Overdosed Say French: Newspaper Claims Pills Killed Child. 15 Sept The Age. Cazzulino, Michelle. Lindy Knows Pain. Herald Sun, 13 Sept. 2007, p6. Child Watch. Sunday Times 6 May Chamberlain-Creighton, Lindy. Why Lindy s Mad as Hell. Open letter. New Idea. 22 Sept pp16-7. Driscoll, Margarette. Too Serene for Sympathy. Sunday Times 21 Oct < Feltz, Vanessa. Don t Condemn Kate Jut on Appearances. Daily Express. 11 Sept < Greenhill, Sam and Michael Seamark, Hair Find Stings Parents. Daily Mail. Herald Sun, World, 13 Sept 2007, p36. Greenslade, Roy. The Point of the McCann s Exercise. 3 Dec < DNA Evidence Tells Two Different Stories. Daily Mail. Herald Sun, World, 13 Sept 2007 p36. Jardin, Cassandra. When every parent's nightmare becomes a frightening reality. Daily Telegraph 6 May Kate McCann Feels Persecuted Because of Her Looks New York Daily News. 16 Oct < 16_kate_mccann_feels_persecuted_because_of_.html> Knight, India. :Madeleine McCann: You are all Guilty. The Sunday Times, 16 Sept < Mediamonkey. Loaded List Misfires. Guardian 15 Jan Miranda, Charles. Maddie DNA Found in Car s Boot: Police. Associated Press. 10 September Mercury, World. p Police Pressured Kate McCann to Say She Killed Maddie: Family. Daily Telegraph. 9 Sept < The Scent of a Corpse: Dogs Smell Death on McCann Bible. Associated Press. 10 Sept Mercury, World. p17. Press Association. Kate McCann To Be Quizzed Again. Guardian. 14 Sept Showdown for Tapas Seven. The Sun. 5 Dec Turner, Janice. Face it: We Need the McCanns to be Guilty. Times 15 Sept Why I m Being Persecuted, by Kate McCann, Times 17 Oct References Bird, Steve. Madeleine s Parents Names as Suspects. 8 Sept Times. 9

10 Blood Clue Found in Maddie s Room. Daily Mail. Mercury. World. 8 Aug p18. Crispin, Ken. The Crown versus Chamberlain Sutherland: Albatross Bryson, John. Evil Angels. Victoria: Viking, Chamberlain, Lindy. Through My Eyes. London: Heineman, Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton. Is the Media to Blame? Goc, Nicola. Medicine, Medea and the Media: The Rise and Fall of Roy Meadow. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Tasmania, Hartley, Clodagh. Maddie Latest. The Sun. 24 Oct < Madeleine McCann: How the Story Unfolded. Daily Telegraph. telegraph.co.uk. < Polditch, David. McCanns or a Friend Must Be to Blame. 23 Oct Daily Express. < Wood, Briar. The Trials of Motherhood: The Case of Azaria and Lindy Chamberlain. Moving Targets, Helen Birch (Ed). London: Virago, pp