Rebuttal of "Fact" 40


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40. Asked to comment on his reaction at learning that Madeleine had been abducted, Dr Gerald McCann said: ‘It was like being told you were overdrawn on your student loan”.

 

Verdict - Misquoted and significantly Misrepresented.

Source - Media Interview.

 


 

Summary of Verifiable Facts

 

  1. The source of this is a TV interview. 
  2. The discussion was about how the couple were coping emotionally.
  3. Gerry McCann did not say what the MMRG claim he said. 
  4. Gerry McCann used the analogy of a bank overdraft to describe how utterly wretched they had felt - not just rock bottom, but "In the red"

 

 

Discussion

 

As with all of the "facts" in their leaflet, the MMRG has not provided a source for this. The source is an interview with Sky News. The interviewer is Ian Woods:-

 

Quote:

 

IW: I think that everyone has just been incredibly impressed with you as a couple and how you’ve dealt with this. There was a period after a week or so where you looked as if you were almost broken and who could not understand that? And then there seemed to be a sort of a strength come from somewhere. Is that a fair point? Is that what happened and what brought it about?

 

KMcC: I think that’s definitely true, isn’t it [looks at Gerry and sighs]

 

GMcC: Certainly, you know, at the end of that first week there was so much emotion that we had spent and we actually had a period where we discussed this openly that we felt devoid, completely devoid of emotion. The analogy that I like to use is a bit like when we were students and you’d got to your overdraft limit and you’d gone beyond it and there was just nothing left in the tank. Also, I think, physically and mentally we were shattered but, you know, as we gradually got more on an even keel and we started to get back into the black and we’d also worked tirelessly behind the scenes to put support mechanisms in place including our legal team. The response with the fund which was really driven by offers rather than us thinking we needed it. And once these were in place then it helped us to focus on what we really needed to focus on.

 

 

Comparison

 

MMRG quote: "It was like being told you were overdrawn on your student loan"  *(see Additional Note below)

 

Actual Quote: "...we felt devoid, completely devoid of emotion. The analogy that I like to use is a bit like when we were students and you’d got to your overdraft limit and you’d gone beyond it and there was just nothing left in the tank"

 

 

Conclusions

 

Gerry McCann was describing how utterly wretched they had felt - not just rock bottom, but "in the red" . i.e. "emotionally overdrawn". This is quite different from the MMRG's suggestion that Gerry McCann equated the feeling of losing Madeleine to the feeling of being told he was "overdrawn on [his] student loan".

 

Additional Note

 

It should be noted that the MMRG hasn't given due consideration to their own mis-quote, given its peculiar wording of being "overdrawn on a loan." How can one be overdrawn on a loan?