Notes/Thoughts on Madeleine Foundation Part One

I know this is quite long but I just can't help myself - the BBC segment is so well put together, well researched, well transitioned. Complete with Tony Bennett getting owned by a 17 yro girl.

Goes up to Part 1 of the videos posted by Pjay.


“Well, it’s a Saturday afternoon and most people are busy enjoying their weekend…”
Right off the bat, makes the distinction between “most” people and the members of the Madeleine foundation.

“but… in Nottingham”
Immediately suggests this is not a normal activity.

The first scenes of Hare having to scale the steps of a building, make a phone call – just to discover their location – paranoia, self-importance. This is reminiscent of investigations into any group that knows it’s on the fringes of society, that the majority of people do not approve – think about it, why would a meeting that’s on the pulse of British society hide it? If they are speaking for the Silent Majority why hide their meeting locations – people ought to be banging down the door.

“Self-proclaimed” Madeleine Foundation – suggests group of amateurs with no official imprimatur of any kind – either family related or police-related. The feeling of amateurism is heightened by the cartoonish lengths Hare must go through, including being given the hotel not as the location of the conference but only as a meeting place, to go to a meeting that the Foundation knows he’s going to attend and was willing to host him at! This is hardly a whistle-blower and an unknown reporter busting a previously unknown location. “taken to the REAL venue”

Bennett and Greene immediately pegged as fame-seekers – “keen to promote his new book, made up of ‘selected’ excerpts from the case files” G: “also happy to be pictured”.

19 meeting at the meeting – British and French – no cameras, only notes. Sold him copy of their new book. Yet, couldn’t understand what the Foundation is about!
Very key. What did they try to explain to Hare about their motivations, about what they are about, that didn’t jive with the meeting? And who is so unwilling to be recorded, to be photographed? This was their major annual conference, and Hare sat through the whole thing, yet found himself still at a loss about what the Foundation was about.

Hare well educated on case – part of East Midlands team, interviewed the McCanns in PDL and in Portimao when official suspects – commented on crowd, booing, at the time.

Hare’s damning comment on Amaral:

And three months later I was in Portimao when they (the McCanns) were made official suspects (cue Hare reporting on Kate McCann walking through onlookers, being booed, before entering police station) a development largely thanks to this man, the Portuguese detective Goncalo Amaral (cue Amaral walking into courthouse recently). But he was later taken off the case, and in 2008, the McCanns had their suspect status removed. (Cue Kate saying) And won libel damages for some of the lurid press coverage they received.


Hare uses that to segue into “front page news of a different kind” and introduce the Foundation and the Rothley leaf drop. He uses the news clip of his BBC colleagues discussing the local people’s anger and disgust at the leaflet drop as the introduction to the Foundation after providing the background (McCanns cleared, etc.)

That transition suggests to the public that here was a matter that was closed – the McCanns are not suspects in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, and they were only ever made suspects largely at the behest of a police officer who has since been an embarrassment (as seen in the courthouse footage) and who was removed from the investigation; and yet here is a group of “19 individuals… some… from all over the country… and 1 French couple” – who are so paranoid and think that they are so highly important that they have an official organization, make a BBC reporter that they are expecting go to two places before revealing the location of their annual “meeting”, and even have an official book – although only with “selected” parts of the case file. Who claim to seek the truth about “what happened to Madeleine McCann”, yet the reporter can’t figure them out from their own meeting. Plus, the majority of their members won’t allow their images to be associated with this activity and association they find so important. The transition also subtly undercuts the Foundation’s claim that millions agree with them by leading not with the McCanns predictable upset and anger but with the outrage of their neighbors and the other people in their village – they use the term “targeted.”

The next line is even more important in terms of taking down Amaral. Hare does not merely say that Amaral is discredited – that’s obvious, but plenty of discredited people pushed credible ideas and theories in all sorts of fields. What Hare says is that “150 leaflets” were distributed “in the McCanns’ own neighborhood” “repeating the NOW-DISCREDITED AMARAL-THEORY that Madeleine had died in her parents holiday apartment and covered it up”.

He doesn’t say anything about Amaral the man. He says the THEORY that Madeleine died in 5A (what he characterizes as “the Amaral theory”) is what is discredited! He even includes, specifically the idea that the McCanns covered it up as the “Amaral-theory” – a specifically “now-discreted” theory. That’s the Foundation’s entire raison d’etre – no wonder he can’t figure out what they are about!

The graphics of the photos of the 4 who did the leaflet drop being put through mail slots is positively hilarious, and Butler’s frozen visage on hers couldn’t be more deer in headlights.

At this point in the segment, a mere 5:10 minutes in, what you have is a group of people the majority of whom are unwilling to be photographed or videotaped, giving a BBC reporter the run-around through child’s-play wannabe CIA techniques, who are devoted to a thesis that is discredited – yet claim to want to know the “truth” about what happened Madeleine McCann.

Segue to the Butler interview. Butler claims immediately that Bennett had been to Rothley before, and she had not. Butler keeps a calm façade actually, and is helped by the fact that the camera cuts from her fact to the photo of happy, smiling Madeleine on the horse. A picture where Kate is also smiling, touching the pony, faced to Madeleine – as Butler describes how this group of people as I’ve described them above – went to that specific pony farm specifically to have lunch because Madeleine rode a pony there.

Can you imagine what you’d think at that point about what these people’s true motivations are, had you no real idea they existed? Not to mention this woman, this hard-faced woman, casually stating, as if reciting her shopping list, “the farm where Kate took the children.” As if she and “Kate” were close personal friends, as if she knows the McCanns, knows Madeleine, knows their routine, their behaviors. Like it is perfectly common to have on the tip of your tongue that “Kate took the children to the farm” – therefore you went there, too, to have lunch, because you think she killed her daughter.

“And then he (Bennett) told me I must leaflet their (the McCanns) road… Helene’s legs went to jelly, and she wouldn’t do it , so I did it. I did not leaflet the McCanns’ home at all.”

That’s Butler in a nutshell, isn’t it? Orders, orders, orders, just following orders mate, and look – I even mitigated the orders by not shoving the leaflet right in their door socket!!

Bennett’s denial of giving Butler those orders is transitioned nicely into him giving the McCanns’ lawyers an agreement – and promptly from the penalties associated with breaking the agreement into a shot of Bennett pulling his case of (new) leaflets and sign into the literal public square.

And the music playing over the clip of Bennett handing out these new leaflets? “I don’t care what the people may say, what they may say about me”. And his mission is described as part of Goncalo Amaral Awareness Day – a man whose thesis Hare tore apart earlier in the segment in one carefully placed and worded sentences. And who does Bennett have with him on this lovely day? A proud Foundation member, so proud of their mission that she literally flees from the camera, ‘round a pole.

And the public!
“Evil people, there are some evil people in this world… I think she’s just been stolen.”
“There’s a conspiracy theory about everything!” (said with exasperation).
Bennett: people think that we are representing the McCanns in some way (doesn’t that worry you?) not really, no, because it’s a chance to explain to people what we’re about and that there is a big mystery involved in this case.

Well, actually, the past 8 minutes have taught us – no, there isn’t. And Tony’s comments suggest that the majority of people cluck their tongues to him about the case, where Madeleine is, what was done to the McCanns, thinking he is associated with them – and then, and only then, does he reveal what he thinks – leading to exasperated man comments, etc.

The lady admittedly could go either way – is she saying she doesn’t want to go on the record about the Foundation or the McCanns?

The sweet and sincere older couple is quite fed up (I mean for you guys ;p), clearly has been disputing Bennett for a few moments there, and I can’t quite make out totally what they are saying, but are obviously disapproving – all as Bennett piously says, “The NSPCC says that we should never ever leave children of that age alone, even for a few seconds.”

No wonder Simon Hare is confused. What does that have to do with the thesis that Madeleine McCann died in her parents apartment and they covered up her body?

You can hear the older man saying, “Bless yourself,” or “you were blessed yourself” – either meaning, “mind your own business and count your own blessings” or possibly continuing an earlier point he made that people used to – such as when he and Bennett were children – leave children alone, leave children to watch other children, etc. Or that mistakes are made and rarely do people have to pay such a high price.

Sassy sincere older lady, my new favorite person, basically then ends the conversation by saying, “… and nobody had the right to take her.”

Bennett is reduced to moving his head and saying, “no, no, that’s right.” Then he tells the camera “not one person has come back to complain at all.” Very well may be true! Yet we saw people dispute him right there on the street – something he claims NEVER happens, and that when it does happen, he is easily able to sway them. We are also about to watch him get owned by a 17 yro girl!

The schoolgirl points out the obvious about what this does to the McCanns if she was abducted, that they are “clearly struggling with the grief already” and Bennett says, “if, the question is if she was abducted” – at which point her friend, another teenage girl fixes this grown man right in her sight and states, “And you don’t find what you’re doing at all disrespectful?”, shaking her head back and forth in disapproval. Bennett says, “well, you could call it disrespectful”, and which point Little Missy (my second new favorite person) immediately shuts him down and refuses a leaflet. She won’t be reading it, she finds it sick and disrespectful.

He can’t handle a polite, civil, disgusted 17 yro girl. No wonder he collapsed to Carter Ruck.

I’d also point out that no doubt, because her friend said, “if”, Bennett counts her as a questioner, someone open to “the possibility” the McCanns were involved. But it’s quite obvious from the way she says it and from her concern about what Bennett’s actions do to the McCanns that she is allowing the notion for Bennett’s – but that she believes that the McCanns are suffering obvious grief and worries for them what crusades such as Bennett’s do to them. She clearly thinks it’s more likely than not that Madeleine was in fact abducted. If this is what Bennett counts as positive interactions, well.

At the end, the comments from adults describe the activity as “a bit distasteful” and one woman chokes up, saying she has a 2 yro and if this happened to her… knowing this (Bennett’s activity) was going on would upset her.

End Part I

Thanks bluj.