The truth won't mend the pain

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I SOMETIMES wonder if The Truth is all it’s cracked up to be. I wonder if there are times when NOT knowing is better than knowing.

Because now we think we know Madeleine McCann didn’t die, as police suspected, in her holiday apartment. Neither was she taken by an opportunist killer. Nor did she wander off into the sea.

However, what we now think may have happened is worse than all of those scenarios because it looks certain this angel-faced little girl was snatched to order by a vile paedophile ring and delivered to people who hunt down pretty children to degrade. Maybe even kill.

And how much better do we all feel for knowing that? What kind of images are going through your mind at this minute as to the fate of this little mite?

HAVE YOUR SAY: Do you agree with Carole?

If Kate and Gerry McCann thought it was torture NOT knowing what happened to their sweet, innocent girl, what agony must they be living through now knowing she could have been�?maybe still is—a sex toy for a bunch of perverts so depraved that they get their kicks from abusing and killing terrified children.

For months, Kate and Gerry have fought to have the files on the investigation to find Maddie made public. Understandably they wanted the cruelty, stupidity and ineptitude of the Portuguese police exposed. I suspect they also wanted THEIR names and reputations restored. Perhaps they even believed that if Maddie was catapulted back on our front pages it would pump new energy into the increasingly lacklustre hunt for her.

But it hasn’t done that. What the information inside those files has done is confirm our worst fears, the grotesque inevitability that this innocent’s fate was probably neither quick or painless.

Horror

And if I can’t bear to think about what might have happened to her after she was “delivered�?to those perverts I can’t imagine how Kate and Gerry can close their eyes at night without the horror of it exploding inside their heads.

At least when there was still ignorance and hope we believed it would only be a matter of time before Maddie was delivered back into the arms of her family. Even on the black days the only shred of comfort was knowing that if she had been taken by a family who wanted a child of their own, at least she’d be loved and cared for.

Most naively of all, we believed that if she was already dead—THAT was the worst thing that could have happened to her.

Well, now we know it isn’t. Now we know that what might have happened to her while she was alive could have been worse.

Did Kate and Gerry really want to know that? Will having The Truth writ large help them move on with their lives? Will they ever be able to accept she might never come home?

Because while there’s an odd kind of comfort in listening to stories from those well-meaning people in Holland and Belgium who believe they saw and talked to Maddie, it actually makes the whole thing more excruciating knowing that Portuguese police let this little girl slip through their fingers while she was so close and while she was still the Maddie her Mum and Dad knew.

Where’s the comfort for Kate and Gerry knowing while they were running around Praia De Luz, Maddie was alive and talking to strangers just a few hours away from them.

The McCanns have always said they needed to get at the truth of what happened to their daughter.

But what has that “Truth�?delivered. Not peace, not comfort, not a conclusion.

I never really understood what the phrase “Fate Worse Than Death�?actually meant.

Now I think I might.

And, tragically, the only Truth Kate and Gerry have got from the opening of these files is that now they do too.