As Madeleine McCann’s parents marked her 20th birthday on Friday, they said they won’t stop looking for their daughter, who vanished from a Portuguese resort in 2007.
“Happy birthday Madeleine,” they wrote on the Official Find Madeleine Campaign Facebook page on Friday. “Still very much missed. Still looking. For as long as it takes…”
They also posted a birthday YouTube video, which begins with a title card reading, “We love you and we’re waiting for you. We’re never going to give up.”
Madeleine, then 3 years old, disappeared while on vacation with her family in Praia da Luz, Portugal. British couple Kate and Gerry McCann had left Madeleine and their 2-year-old twin children in a rental unit while they dined with friends at a restaurant a short walk away. When Kate went to check on the children, she realized Madeleine was missing.
That same year, Kate and Gerry were named as suspects in the disappearance, but they were later cleared.
In April 2022, Portuguese prosecutors said a man had been identified as a suspect. That man — whose name was not disclosed — was the first official suspect Portuguese prosecutors had identified since the McCanns were under suspicion, according to Reuters.
German police had previously accused convicted child abuser Christian Brueckner of involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance. But Brueckner, who’s currently in prison in Germany for raping a woman near where Madeline disappeared, denied the accusation and has not been charged in the case.
German police also said that Madeline was assumed to be dead. But the McCanns “have never given up hope of finding Madeleine alive, even now despite all these grim reports that are emerging, because they haven’t had anything to suggest the worst has happened,” family spokesperson Clarence Mitchell told BBC Radio in 2020, per People.
Mitchell added that the McCanns are seeking “to establish the truth of what happened back in May 2007 and to bring whoever is responsible, whether that’s one person or more, to justice.”