For the past 15 years since their three-year-old daughter Madeleine disappeared, Kate and Gerry McCann have been through hell and high water.
In 2007, while the family were enjoying a relaxing holiday with friends in Portugal, Madeleine went missing from their hotel room.
Her parents were having dinner at their hotel’s tapas restaurant just 55 metres away, and had agreed that one parent would check on their children every 30 minutes.
At 10pm, when Kate McCann went to check on Madeleine and her younger twins, Sean and Amelie, both two at the time, Maddie was gone.
Now, a Polish woman who is claiming to be Madeleine McCann has gone viral, thrusting the case of missing Madeleine back into the headlines.
Julia Wandelt has taken to Instagram to share her belief she may be the missing child after “police investigators from UK and Poland try to ignore [her].”
She became suspicious after hearing “something” from her grandmother “a few months ago”. The woman is 21-years-old – if Maddie is alive she would be 19-years-old today – but said her age could be wrong.
Her ‘evidence’ includes the same freckle on her leg and a speck in her eye in the same place as Madeleine.
21-year-old Julia Wandelt is claiming to be Madeleine McCann.
(Image: Instagram)After advocating for a DNA test, the young woman has posted on her Instagram page named @iammadeleinemccan claiming that “Kate and Gerry McCann agreed for DNA test!”
Whilst this hasn’t been confirmed by Maddie’s parents, they have always said that they would follow any lead in an attempt to find their daughter.
Whilst they have always appeared united in their fight for Maddie’s return, Kate and Gerry have faced intense media scrutiny and have been forced to make peace with a life in which their daughter is permanently absent.
They’re tough circumstances that would test any relationship, so are they still married after all these years?
Kate and Gerry were reportedly “inseparable” when they first met.
(Image: Getty)The couple are both doctors and met in Glasgow in 1993 while they were both working as junior doctors.
After working in obstetrics and gynaecology, Kate became a GP, while Gerry worked in sports medicine, before moving into cardiology.
The pair have been described by friends as “inseparable” during that time, and they married five years after meeting, in 1998.
They had their first child, Madeleine, in 2003 after going through IVF treatment.
The family currently live in Rothley, a small English town in Leicestershire, about 2.5 hours north of London – it’s the same house the family has always lived in.
Kate says she has kept Madeleine’s bedroom in its original condition, and even buys her presents each birthday and Christmas for her to open, in the event she is ever found.
Kate says the pain of their missing daughter put a strain on their marriage.
(Image: Getty)Keeping their marriage together hasn’t always been easy for the McCanns, who are still together after all these years.
In fact, Kate says the couple’s relationship nearly broke down shortly after Maddie disappeared, because she withdrew into herself.
In her 2012 autobiography, Madeleine: Our Daughter’s Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her, Kate wrote that she stopped reading, playing music or even having sex with her husband.
The couple were horrified by fears that their daughter had been kidnapped by a sex trafficker, or that a paedophile may have taken her.
Those horrible sexual images impacted their ability to enjoy sex.
“Tortured as I was by these images, it’s not surprising that even the thought of sex repulsed me,” Kate wrote.
“I worried about Gerry and me. I worried that if I didn’t get our sex life on track our whole relationship would break down.”
She says if it were not for her husband’s kindness and persistence, their marriage would not have survived.
Recalling how supportive Gerry was during the darkest days of their lives, she wrote: “He would put his arm round me, reassuring me and telling me that he loved me.”
Kate and Gerry have managed to stay together despite what has happened to them.
(Image: Getty)Kate and Gerry have always denied any involvement in Madeleine’s death, and they’ve vowed to “never give up” hope of finding their daughter.
For now, the McCann’s try to live a life as “normal as possible” for their other two children, Sean and Amelie, both 17, despite the fact that the twins have “grown up essentially without Madeleine but knowing their sister is missing and they want her back.”
“They [the twins] have their own friends and they keep busy and they’re really sporty but their only wish is for their big sister to come home. We miss our complete family of five,” Kate told The Sun.
“As a family 98 percent of the time we’re busy. I don’t know if that’s a conscious thing but it helps. The urge to look for Madeleine absolutely hasn’t changed at all.”
