Entretien avec Kate MC
ITV (This Morning) - 10.07.2012
transcrit par A. Miller
KMC
est interviewée comme ambassadrice de Missing
People
Holly
Willoughby :
Right, over the five years since her daughter Madeleine disappeared
whilst on family holiday in Portugal, Kate McCann has had first-hand
experience of dealing with the pain and heart break of having a loved
one go missing.
Philip
Schofield :
Whilst the search for her daughter continues Kate is
about to help launch a brand new initiative which will hopefully help
find some of the thousands of people who go missing in the UK each
year, and Kate is here now to tell us all about it. And we were just
saying you don’t do many of these things on your own do you?
Kate
MC :
I don’t, usually I have Gerry next to me, you’re right.
PS
:
Well, this is a big, a very big launch, and the launch is tomorrow,
the biggest billboard campaign in British history. So how is it going
to work, what is it?
KMC
:
Well basically it’s a 12 week nationwide campaign and the Outdoor
Media Centre which is kind of the trade body for all of the outdoor
media owners, so all of the people who own billboard space in your
cities towns and your public transport, they’ve teamed up with the
charity Missing People. Basically it’s to try and find missing
children and adults, so starting tomorrow across these screens there
will be featured one child and one adult per week. So there will be a
photograph, the location, time, when they were last seen and a number
416000 to call. And the idea is we know that outdoor advertising
works and we know that publicity is crucial to help finding missing
children, and it works and that’s why it’s…
HW
:
But not only that, it’s a speed thing as well and because these are
screens it can be updated quickly can’t it?
KMC
:
Absolutely. The response time to change an appeal if needed if more
information comes in and they need to change it, if a child is found
and they need to put another appeal up quickly they can do that
pretty much instantly.
PS
:
Well there are 250,000 people go missing each year in the UK,
thankfully the majority are found. But the heartache for the families
whose missing member of the family hasn’t been found is extensive
and on- going isn’t it? Obviously this is something that you know?
KMC
:
It is, it’s erm I mean not only obviously do you go through the
pain and anxiety and fear you have that relentlessness and
uncertainty of not knowing, and that doesn’t go away. PS
:
And so… and so this is your first official role as Ambassador for
Missing People?
KMC
: It is yeh!
PS
: And so there is a great feeling that this open-loop technology this…
the ability to update screens very quickly will help certainly when
it comes to resolving a case… because there is always good news,
the girl who was due to feature prominently in the campaign has been
found, which is fabulous but a new child obviously is very quickly
going to become the focus of that campaign. It’s not just children
either though is it?
KMC
:
No it’s not, it’s, vulnerable adults who go missing as well. I
think primarily or largely it’s going to be children that are
featured but there will be adults too.
HW
:
So I guess the idea is that, if you see one of these billboards in
your town centre just stop and look...
KMC
:
Absolutely.
HW
: Because you never know you might hold the key or some bit of
information to help find that person?
KMC
:
That’s right, and I think everyone can play a part, and it’s
estimated that 10 million people will actually see these boards. You
know obviously we’ve got the summer coming up, we’ve got the
Olympics, and I guess yeh, please stop, take a look, you know it’s
cliché but one person can make a difference.
HW
:
I saw all the tweets on National Missing Persons Day, and the charity
were tweeting every 30 minutes a picture of somebody that had gone
missing and it was going on throughout the day, and I thought it was
brilliant, but two people were found that day.
KMC
:
That’s right, two teenagers were found, yeh.
HW
: So it just goes to show actually this works.
KMC
:
It does work and I mean you can speak to the experts in the States
and they can give you example after example. It really does work and
as I say everybody, everybody can help. PS
:
Is there any chance that this would, that this campaign if it is
successful here, will be extended throughout the rest of Europe?
KMC
:
Well certainly it is an initial 12 week campaign but I think it
probably will continue. It may become more regionally based. I’m
not sure whether it will extend to Europe, it would be fantastic if
it could, or if there are any other companies that could come
forward, cos, you know, basically the Outdoor Media Centre have, you
know, they are putting £1m towards this campaign and we do need
people like that, companies, organisations in order to make
initiatives like this happen.
PS
: You also are active on many fronts because you have launched
the European hotline as well for missing people, you launched that in
May. How has that gone?
KMC
:
Very good from what I’ve heard so far. There’s been a lot of erm
new people come to the number whether it be by phone, or email or to
the website which is encouraging. They’ve had a lot of calls, an
average probably of about 130 calls per day, each day, just to that
number alone, obviously the other numbers are active at the moment.
But it just shows really how a campaign can… ye know…
HW
:
Really help… And I guess having that sort of network of countries
all working together, again that quickness and that response is what
is so important in that situation?
KMC
:
It does, I mean it’s a simple number, one number to remember, erm
and wherever you are in Europe in those 16 countries that so far have
the number, ring that number and you will end up, you know if it’s
not the right place, you’ll be put through straight away to the
right place.
PS
:
We were saying about the effects of a missing person on a family,
this sort of far reaching explosion that goes, that goes out
throughout the whole family this ripple effect. I was reading in the
paper this morning that you were saying, that your own two children
Sean and Amelie, that they still, take an interest, in the fact that
other people take an interest in what you have gone through.
KMC
: Yeh, I mean as a family member who has a loved one missing,
I mean it’s so painful and I think you need to know… you feel
helpless… but you need to know, that there’s other people helping
too! I mean it just gives you great hope and strength and there are
so many families out there in similar positions and, you know, this
campaign itself will help all these families.
PS
:
What about…what about you, because DCI Andy Redwood, who’s
leading the review of the evidence in your case, said his team, were
developing ‘genuinely new information’ what are you aware of,
where is…where is the case now?
KMC
:
Obviously I don’t know all the information. I know new information
has come in that needs to be followed up and obviously there is a lot
of information that’s come from the files from the review as well.
We are at the stage really that we are hoping for the case to be
re-opened, so there isn’t really any change from where we stand
since May.
PS
:
But the Portuguese officials… because in April the Portuguese
Attorney General appeared to rule out the re-opening of the case, is
it still a case of persuading them or getting them further on board?
KMC
: Oh I hope so, I think we felt we needed to allow more time
for people, to...to…you know for the authorities to…to look at
the evidence really before they made a decision.
PS
:
It’s one of those things, that you wonder when you read the
newspapers, and you think I wonder how helpful this is to the family
because at the centre of every big newspaper report there is a family
that is going to be reading it and maybe not wanting to see it, and
there was the evidence from Stephen Birch who spent £40,000 on a
scanner, took scans of the Praia da Luz area and said that he found a
void underneath there, are you aware of all of that? KMC
:
Yeh, I mean ya know the Met let us know about it in advance of it
hitting the newspaper. I guess ya know there was no credibility to
it, I mean, who is this person at the end of the day, ya know so…
HW
:
You have your own campaign this summer, don’t you and this is the
luggage tags? KMC
:
Well, I mean we’re just carrying on basically on what we’ve been
doing last few years really. When people go on holiday in the summer,
we’re saying, please ye know take some posters take some luggage
tags. As you know we had a new age progression produced, launched in
April.
PS
:
Yes this is it here (picture shown)
KMC
:
You know and it’s the same basis really for this campaign, it’s
so important to get an image out there. Ya know as I say there will
be 10 million people view the images that go up in these billboards,
same with Madeleine the more people that they reach you know, the
greater chance of finding that child.
PS
:
As we said, tomorrow is the big launch, it’s the… as we said at
the very beginning, the biggest billboard campaign in British history
and as Kate was saying, just take a couple of minutes to look up and
see whether or not you recognise or can help any of the people that
will appear on these billboards. And thank you very much indeed.
During
interview images of Madeleine, 5A, surrounding area and Portuguese
Police searching scrub land were shown.
