WE HELPED THE MCCANNS! - Part 4a

19  SIR PHILIP GREEN, very rich businessman   

Hello. My name’s Philip Green. Well, SIR Philip Green to the likes of you reading this. You don’t get made a ‘Sir’ for nothing, you know. Look at ‘Sir’ Jimmy Savile for example.

I am a very successful and clever businessman. I am most famous for selling British Home Stores (BHS) for £1 whilst paying myself and my wife a small fortune in fees as Directors. (Enough to buy me that famous £100 million yacht, anyway, so we are talking millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions).  That way, I cheated BHS pensioners out of £571 million. That’s a lot of cash. Of course, now that this matter has been brought to my attention, I have found just over half of that to help out those pensioners. Give me some at least some credit for that!

What did I do for the McCanns?  I provided my private jet to fly them to meet the Pope. This was just three weeks after Madeleine was reported missing. It was a very important part of helping to make them famous - and of course it reminded everybody not just of my fabulous wealth, but also my legendary generosity

20  JIM GAMBLE, former Head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Service, now Director of the private company InEqe

Hi! You may remember that I led the highly controversial Operation Ore, an investigation into people who watched child sexual abuse online via the U.S.-based American-based internet site, Landslide. Look up ‘Operation Ore’ on Landslide, and you’ll see that Operation Ore resulted in 7,250 suspects being identified, 4,283 homes being searched, 3,744 arrests, 1,848 charged, 1,451 convictions, 493 cautioned and 140 children removed from suspected dangerous situations  Also, at least 33 people committed suicide rather than face justice. So my campaign was very successful, and on the back of it I was promoted to the new post of Head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Service, or ‘CEOP’ for short.

When Madeleine was reported missing, I went swiftly into action. There is evidence that I set up a dummy CEOP webpage for missing Madeleine during Monday 30 April - three days before Madeleine was reported missing. But I’m not admitting anything about that; in fact I have publicly denied it.

First of all, I asked anyone who had been in Praia da Luz around the time of the McCanns’ holiday to send me their holiday snaps, in case Madeleine’s abductor was on one of them. I have never revealed how many photos were sent in, and I never sent these photos on to the Portuguese police, as I should have done. They stayed with CEOP. One press report noted: “Gonçalo Amaral, the former PJ inspector, recalls that, with the consent of the Portuguese authorities, an appeal was made for tourists to send in photos…The purpose was ‘to identify anyone suspicious who might appear looking at the family’, he says. But despite “much that arrived at the English police, none of those images ever reached us”.

As the Head of CEOP, I lent my considerable weight to suggestions by the McCanns that Madeleine had been abducted by a lone paedophile, or a group of paedophiles - even though the only evidence that there even was an abduction came from the McCanns and their close circle of friends. In this work, I had a team of trusty people around me who could be relied to stay ‘on message’: Mark Williams-Thomas, Dr Joe Sullivan and Graham Hill, to name three.

An early McCann Team campaign featured Madeleine’s coloboma – the ‘leak’ from her pupil to the iris. They designed a campaign logo: ‘LOOK for Madeleine’ with the second ‘O’ featuring a black line from the centre of the ‘O’ to the outside, looking like Madeleine’s eye. It was noted by some that this ‘O’ looked very similar to the design of the letter ‘C’ in CEOP. Hmmm.   

CEOP, by the way, was actually set up as a company, it was not part of any police force or government department, although it was generally regarded as being part of the police service.  I was its CEO. We got a substantial amount of our funding from private sources, e.g. from Sir Richard Branson (Virgin), Microsoft, BT, O2, and VISA.

On Monday 21 May, just 18 days after Madeleine was reported missing, I had a meeting in my office with Gerry McCann, who had come over to England for the weekend. There were a few others at that key meeting, but I’m not letting on who they were. We made plans. And again, sorry, but I’m not sharing with you what those plans were.

After that, I would often appear together with the McCanns on TV sofas, helping them to project the story of how a paedophile abductor had ‘stolen’ Madeleine. If Madeleine had been stolen by a paedophile, it was extremely likely that by now Madeleine would have been killed. But the McCanns wanted to emphasise that Madeleine was still alive - after all, it helped keep the donations coming in to their ‘Find Madeleine Fund’ - so I went along with them.

In May 2009, after Madeleine had been missing for two years, I appeared in a CEOP-produced video: ‘Minute for Madeleine’. Again, it rehearsed the theory that Madeleine was abducted by a paedophile. And I went on SKY News and other media to promote it: Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJtkRE4P18I

A year later I again showed my commitment to the McCanns and the paedophile theory. I organised a CEOP conference on 26 January 2010, when I invited both Gerry McCann and my good mates Dr Joe Sullivan and Graham Hill to speak. The conference was titled: “Taken: Sexually-motivated child abductions” - an event ‘for law enforcement officers only’. Once again, then, having Gerry at my conference promoted the ‘abduction by a paedophile’ theory.

Someone asked me by e-mail why Gerry McCann had been asked to speak at a conference on sexually-motivated child abductions. I replied via my Training Officer, who replied on 19 January:

“Thank you for your interest in the work of CEOP and your comments. The fact that we invite a speaker does not mean that we endorse their views. Our conferences allow people to exchange and challenge views. The current position regarding the McCanns is that they are the parents of a missing child who is presumed to have been abducted: that being the case anything that Gerry McCann has to say will be of interest to those who work in [law enforcement] and will attend the conference”. 

Around this time, the McCanns were pushing hard for the government to set up a review by a British police force into the reported disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Guess who was given the job of preparing a feasibility study for this review? Yep! You’re right! ME!    

In March, the Yorkshire Evening Post reported that I was “spearheading the carrying-out of a scoping exercise to assess the feasibility of a review by a British police force into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann”. I did my scoping review, recommending how it should be done. And the review, called Operation Grange, was set up a year later, on 12 May 2011.

On 10 April 2010, as the Independent reported: “Jim Gamble of CEOP told the BBC he believed some sex offenders should be encouraged to seek treatment rather than be threatened with jail terms…some offenders should receive a police caution, then be managed within the community. He said too many people were being convicted of paedophilia to be dealt with in the criminal justice system”. I was criticised for that as being soft on paedophiles. Michelle Elliott, Director of the charity Kidscape, said: “Mr Gamble's views on people who download illegal images [are wrong]. They are just as guilty as the people taking the photos. If they didn't view, the child wouldn't be abused. Therefore I think those people deserve prison’.” Huh! What does she know!

Soon after that kerfuffle, I lost my post as Head of CEOP. The new Home Secretary, Theresa May, had decided CEOP should be brought under the Serious and Organised Crime Directorate, now the National Crime Agency. In a huff, I offered to resign. Theresa May accepted! 

I’m proud of my work for the McCanns. I helped people to believe in the abduction. And my scoping report prepared the way for that mighty Scotland Yard investigation, Operation Grange, which has so far cost about £13 million and achieved…er…well, nothing so far. Here’s hoping, though!

 “WE HELPED THE MCCANNS!” was devised and written by the Madeleine McCann Research Group, December 2017

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