Madeleine McCann, a bubbly girl who loves anything pink and sparkly, just turned 16 years old, but her parents won’t be able to celebrate this day with her. They don’t know where she is.
Over 12 years have passed since Madeleine vanished from their vacation home in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on the night of May 3, 2007. She was only three at the time.
Her parents Kate and Gerry McCann are still determined to find their girl, and the Home Office, UK’s top law enforcement agency, has agreed to keep funding the search through next March. The Home Office provided as much as £300,000 ($380,520) of funding toward Metropolitan Police Service to fund the search, and they are budgeting for a similar level of funding this year, according to its official blog.
The investigation, known as Operation Grange, has cost around £11.75 ($15 million) to date.
Madeleine was sleeping alone when she disappeared from her resort bedroom. Her parents had gone to a tapas restaurant nearby after putting her and twin siblings to bed. Police and the family believe that she was abducted, although what happened remains a mystery.
Remembrance, Hope
“It’s that time of year again. As much as we’d like to fast forward the first couple of weeks of May, there’s no getting around it,” the couple wrote on a website they founded called FindMadeleine, ahead of the 12th Anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance.
“The months and years roll by too quickly … It’s impossible to put into words just how that makes us feel. There is comfort and reassurance though in knowing that the investigation continues and many people around the world remain vigilant,” they said, thanking the ongoing support from the community.
On May 11, one day before Madeleine’s birthday, the family put out cards and gifts for their disappeared daughter, in their pink-painted bedroom in Rothley, Leicester, the same way they did it every Christmas and birthdays over the past 12 years.
The gifts that Kate hand-selected will be waiting there, wrapped, until the girl returns one day to open them, according to the Mirror.
“It would be lovely to have a real celebration one day. We never lose hope,” said Brian Kennedy, Madeleine’s uncle, according to the Daily Mail.
“We love you and we’re waiting for you and we’re never going to give up,” they wrote on a Facebook post accompanied with a photo of 3-year-old Madeleine, a bright smile under a pink summer hat. The yellow and green ribbon on the corner symbolizes courage and hope, according to another post.
Kate McCann said that Madeleine’s birthday was her toughest day.
“That’s when you really feel her absence,” she said, according to the Mirror.
“We couldn’t bear for Madeleine to be forgotten or to become just a ‘story.’ She is a real person and still our ‘little girl’ and as we always have,” the couple wrote in another Facebook post in May of last year.