Social workers visit McCanns to see if their twins are at risk

Rosemary Bennett, Patrick Foster and David Brown
Social workers visited Kate and Gerry McCann yesterday to assess whether their twins were at any risk. The couple, who are official suspects in the disappearance of their other child, Madeleine, are expected to return to Portugal to be reinterviewed by police.

Two child welfare experts spent an hour with the couple, their two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie, and several close relatives at the family’s home in Rothley, Leicestershire.

The couple have made preparations to leave the twins with an aunt if they have to return to the Algarve, where they are suspected of accidentally killing Madeleine during a holiday 134 days ago.

A judge has to decide by next Thursday whether police have sufficient evidence to reinterview Mr and Mrs McCann, both 39, on suspicion of homicide by negligence and concealing Madeleine’s corpse. He has authorised detectives to use Mrs McCann’s diary as evidence and to examine her husband’s computer.


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The couple were visited by a male and a female social worker from Leicestershire County Council at 11.30am for an hour-long meeting.

A spokeswoman for the family said: “As responsible parents concerned for the welfare of their twins, on return from Portugal Gerry and Kate contacted social services to arrange a meeting to discuss their wellbeing.”

Trish Cameron, a sister of Mr McCann, is expected to care for Sean and Amelie if their parents have to leave the country. She went for a walk with the twins for an hour before the meeting with the social workers.

Other visitors at the house included Mr McCann’s brother, John, and Mrs McCann’s parents, and Brian and Susan Healy, and her uncle, Brian Kennedy. John McCann said: “Kate has invited social services round to make sure that everything is OK. That was at her behest. They will co-operate with anyone who has the family’s best interests at heart.”

A meeting at the home of parents who are involved in a case where a child is believed to have been harmed is standard practice and does not mean that the twins were judged to be at risk. Social workers could carry out a further “core assessment” into the welfare of the twins, which would involve other agencies such as the police and the family’s GP.

Last night France Soir, a French newspaper, claimed that traces of a large quantity of sleeping pills were found in DNA samples from bodily fluids taken from the boot of a car hired by the couple 25 days after Madeleine disappeared. The Portuguese police have not commented on the story, and the McCanns have previously denied giving Madeleine sleeping pills.

Senior officers wanted to charge Mrs McCann last week, which would have kept her in Portugal for more than a year awaiting trial. However, after a meeting between the McCanns’ Portuguese lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu, and the Attorney-General, Fernando José Pinto Monteiro, it was decided not to bring any charges. Instead, both were named as arguidos, or formal suspects, last Friday.

The couple were released on the weakest form of bail, which allowed them to return to Britain on Sunday, to the dismay of detectives involved in the investigation. The couple continue to deny vigorously any involvement in their daughter’s disappearance.

Philomena McCann, Madeleine´s aunt, confirmed this week that the family would look after the twins if their parents had to return to Portugal. “Of course they’re worried about having the children taken away from them,” she said. “Kate said to my mother, ‘There’s no way those kids are going to get taken by Portuguese social services’ and that my mum and sister Trish have to take the kids.”

Detectives have been authorised by a Portuguese judge to seize the diaries that Mrs McCann kept after her daughter’s disappearance and the laptop computer on which her husband wrote an internet blog about Madeleine’s disappearance that was read by millions of people.

Copies of the diaries have already been made by the police, who hope that they will help to build up a psychological profile of Mrs McCann. Police have previously examined Mr McCann’s laptop computer, but are now believed to want to make further checks on its e-mail records.

The diaries have been added to a 4,000-page dossier of police evidence which was presented to Judge Pedro Miguel dos Anjos Frias on Tuesday.

Two Portuguese newspapers reported yesterday that the diaries disclosed that Mrs McCann, a locum GP, had difficulty coping with the twins, whom she referred to as “hysterical”, and that she complained that her husband was not doing enough to look after the children.

They also claimed that although Mrs McCann does not confess to any crime, she does reveal details about the hours before she reported Madeleine missing at 10pm on May 3.