Chapter 50
February 2022
A quiet Month for Madeleine watchers ?
As we have already noted, the Red Top gutter Tabloids were strangely quiet for the whole of February.
Possible reasons might include a ‘revelation’ that they had been wrong all along (unlikely); an executive decision to print no more rubbish without concrete evidence of the facts (equally unlikely); nervousness at the possible result of the law suit taken by Christian Brückner against SAT 1 and a named presenter/journalist Jutta Rabe (unlikely, but possible); lack of content generated by the Olive Press or similar fantasy machines (more probable) . . .
But behind the scenes some thing very strange has been happening.
A long email correspondence has been going on between the writer and Jon Clarke, owner, editor and journalist for the said Olive Press tabloid supermarket free advert-sheet.
I use the word “Correspondence” loosely. There is convention amongst civilised and educated people that a formal letter or email is at least acknowledged on receipt, even if the contents are merely ‘noted’. Clarke operates on a different level, and clearly thinks it is acceptable simply to ignore emails which pose embarrassing questions or raise inconvenient issues. (He has ‘form’ for this even when contacted by his own professional and disciplinary body in Spain – FAPE, Federación de Asociaciones de Periodistas de España. about a complaint. He simply ignored documents and/or emails sent to him which led to a judgment in absentia which he subsequently sought to vilify as unfair for lack of due process. Needless to say FAPE were “not amused”.)
It started with a long and threatening email, beginning with the deathless, pompous and utterly risible phrase “It has come to my attention…“
Here on his throne, master of his media and property business empire, sits the great man at whose feet unworthy minions scurry to and fro’, humbly bringing things to his attention.
He did not compound the ludicrous cliché with ‘and I view with increasing concern. . .’ . Instead he used “yet again,” but the comic effect was no less.
Comic because in those few words are contained a statement fatal to the subsequent argument. The use of that phrase shows clearly that the author has no first hand knowledge, no evidence, no documentation to support what follows, and is resorting to pomposity and rhetoric to try to conceal that.
And the substance of the complaint which had come to his attention ? An angry accusation that I had published details of his home and his family.
Which of course I had not.
THE END ?
Well yes, but only in theory.
I replied asking for details so that I could take immediate action to rectify any inadvertent slip of the type he was describing.
His reply was more agitated, refusing – or being totally unable – to identify any specifics, reverting to the slightly pathetic “you know where they are“, and making vague references to photos of sign posts, ‘his road’, his wife’s and children’s names, and finished off, most strangely, with an insistence that I remove all reference to the name of his lawyer.
Over the next three emails it gradually became clear that the only thing he could point to was the ‘Open Letter’ which I wrote shortly after the publication of Clarke’s strangely titled book, “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime" (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.)
In the Open Letter I had actually praised the lawyer for his work, and out of courtesy referred to him by name. And where did I find the name ? In the book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.)
But because I detected a possible tension between him and his lawyer, and it did not materially alter the thrust of whatever argument I was making, I did change the wording to remove the name, though as I observed I was not sure how… “your lawyer, whom you have asked me not to name, but who is fulsomely thanked on the Acknowledgements page for helping you out of ‘plenty of scrapes’ has clearly been worth his weight in gold, and the ad hominem attacks on me are slightly more muted and vague than before. . .” was a significant improvement on the original. The lawyer’s name is of course still to be found in the book, “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.). at p.iv
I then looked further at the Open Letter, and at the short paragraph in which I defended myself against a specific allegation in the book. In the book Clarke, amongst other wholly irrelevant and gratuitous information, tells the world through his Amazon world-side sales, that he abandoned his wife and family for several months. He uses the word “separated” as men usually do, but since it is commonly the man who leaves the wife and children and goes off to seek excitement and fields of oats to sow, and it is usually the mother who remains loyal to her responsibilities to her children, the word is clearly a euphemism.
In my Open Letter response I simply told how I had visited the house and left chocolate coins with the child-minder to put under the Christmas tree for the children. And that was it. I had of course no idea about, nor any interest in, Clarke’s marital breakdown. And still don’t. I didn’t want to know, and I cannot imagine there is anyone else on the planet who ‘frankly, gives a damn’. But it is there in all its grisly and gratuitous detail in the book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) at p.68.
He seems proud of what he did. What his wife and his children think of being abandoned, and of his publishing the details, we may never know.
Clarke has then turned, or “spun” that into a bizarre allegation that I revealed details of the location of the house and of his wife and the children.
For those details one only has to read the book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) where dates of birth of children and wife are easy to determine.
Assuming of course that anyone is remotely interested in so doing.
The reality is that the book is stuffed with irrelevant detail which dilutes and diverts from the whole intended ‘who-dun-it’ effect.
But it gets better. Or worse, depending on your point of view.
I shall try to resist the temptation to use the words “extraordinary, strange, weird, ridiculous, and ludicrous,” but readers should sprinkle them liberally into what follows to get the full effect.
Clarke then went on to accuse me of a whole string of other ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’, endlessly repeating this meme about my having revealed details of the location of his house.
What is bizarre about this is that Clarke and his wife run a successful high-end rental business, centred on their own house. It follows, logically, surely, that at some stage in the rental procedure the location of the house has to be revealed. And so it turns out. Even searching for a place to rent in that top-end price bracket will take anyone to detailed maps, mostly from maps.google where it is pinned by name. Both names in fact.
I didn’t do that. It comes from Clarke’s and his wife’s own websites. So as not to incur Clarke’s feigned anger I shall not tell you where to look. But it is not difficult to find.
Why he accuses me of having done so may become clear later.
In one of the tirade of emails he also accused me of inventing the idea that he had been in PdL the night before.
I had to gently point out that it was his own publicity machine for the book, including his own Facebook page on which he trumpeted his double-page spread in one of Spain’s best newspapers, ABC, in which his allegedly verbatim quotes of having received the phone call “that same night” and having arrived in PdL at “one thirty in the morning” were recommended to all his readers. They are incidentally still there for the entire world to see, nearly six months later, as they are on the journalist-in-question’s Muckrack page. But he clearly objects to my discussing the issues raised by the claim.
Chapter 48 covers it in more detail.
Quite why he objects to his own words being quoted I have no idea, but would be open to suggestions.
**
I return now to the strange accusation that I have revealed details of his wife and children, and very specifically that I have deliberately thereby actively and knowingly endangering his family by revealing them. Precisely how it endangers anyone to know a date of birth, or that one child was named after a English king, and the other merely had the middle letter inserted (assuming this was not an inadvertent typographical error overlooked during negligent proof-reading) is not entirely clear.
There are at least thirty-six references in Clarke’s own book to his wife, his children and all their birthdays, including a botched attempt to conceal his wife’s name then negated by use of her familial abbreviation.
Let us remind ourselves that this purports to be a book about Madeleine McCann, and either the ‘search for her’ or the ‘investigation into the alleged crime’. The two issues become strangely elided with the ungrammatical and syntactically confused sub-title “One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve . . .”
[For non-english speakers:
In standard English the verb ‘to Hunt’ can be intransitive or transitive. You can Hunt, or Hunt for, an animal, a child or a solution to a problem. When used as a noun the same rules apply. You cannot conduct A Hunt – followed by a verb. You cannot Hunt TO Solve.
A Quest to solve, or A Hunt for an explanation or for a solution would be acceptable. Language is Clarke’s tool. He is a wordsmith, and should know better. Not even the excuse of 25 years of continuously writing to the dumbed down standard of the Tabloids excuses illiteracies and solecisms like this. And to have it in the sub-title of the book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) is embarrassing, humiliating, or funny, depending on your point of view]
What the ‘Hunt to Solve’ has got to do with Clarke’s family or any of the other padding in the first third of the book is not clear. And yet he accuses me of having released these details and thereby of endangering his family.
It is not only in Clarke’s book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) that he reveals details of his family.
In his own newspaper Clarke regales his readers with personal details of a family a trip to Rome to watch a Euro ’20 match. He illustrates this by publishing a large full-colour full-face selfie photo of his entire family eating sausage rolls at the stadium. And then further down the same page he publishes another photo of the entire family, now back home at their secret location, again full-face and full-length. In neither photo are his children’s eyes obscured in accordance with normal journalistic practice for the protection of minors.
Elsewhere in his own newspaper he has published a full length standing photo of him and wife, captioned with both their names. That particular photo was taken several years ago, but he published all the above within the past eight months. It is recent. He is still doing it.
Again I will not give the links to enable readers to find them, but it is all available on his website for which helpfully he provides a good internal search engine.
Do we assume that Clarke had the recommended full and meaningful conversation with his wife and his children about their own personal rights to privacy before doing this ?
I quote
“Children’s rights advocates have been urging parents to think twice before sharing information about their kids, including their pictures, because there is a conflict between the kids’ right to privacy and their parents’ right to post. Experts believe it’s important to ask your child whether they want their pictures to be shared with the world or not. These conversations will give kids the necessary feeling of autonomy, respect, and parental support, and help them develop their private and public identities.” Unquote
But even if he did, and then published, in print and STILL on the internet, why is he now accusing ME of having done it ?
He did.
I didn’t.
He exonerates himself but blames me.
Can anyone work that out ? (Answers on a postcard please)
There are several possible explanations, none of which may be correct.
Clarke may realise he has been ‘hoist with his own petard’; has been caught in his own trap. He may therefore be metaphorically either hiding under the blanket, the evidence for which is his refusing to reply to emails and pretending letters have not been delivered, or more possibly is acting like a cornered wild beast, liable to lash out at random in its attempts to escape.
If he was acting on the un-evidenced hearsay of a third party – whose identify we may guess at – he may now regret his actions, but be too proud to apologise, in the same way that he never admits that only one of the six or seven versions of his arrival in PdL can be the definitive one.
But that also suggests a large element of cowardice. An inability to come out into the open, state his case and defend his position.
In that regard he is of course following the pattern of all the “Abduction by paedophile” faithful. After fourteen long years they still have no case to put, no evidence to adduce, no position to take, and no defence except endless repetition of the original statement made by the two principal suspects, accompanied by attempts to silence any who dare to question it. And when they fail to silence they resort to ad hominen abuse, smears, sneers and innuendo, before resorting to failed appeals to the law.
There may be psychological issues which may underline this behaviour. A sense of self-importance, which morphs into narcissism, and in turn to one of the well known emotional signs, that of projection – the mental process by which people attribute to others what is in their own minds. More commonly projection refers to “unconsciously taking unwanted emotions or traits you don't like about yourself and attributing them to someone else.” The cheating spouse accuses the partner of infidelity; the boss accuses employees of submitting false overtime claims, whilst himself neglecting his own tasks and spending working hours playing golf, are the classic examples. “Projection does what all defence mechanisms are meant to do: keep discomfort about ourselves at bay and outside our awareness,” “This form of emotional displacement makes it much easier to live with ourselves … because everyone else is responsible for our misery – not us!
As a result of externalising our emotions and perceiving them in others, we create false self-images that portray us as “the victim” or “the good/righteous person” when the reality is that we aren’t.”
We see suggestions of this in another of his favourite attacks on me. That of describing me as ”a senior career detective”, and “a former career detective of three decades long [sic !]”
Quite apart from the infant-school solecism and basic illiteracy of the latter (p.117 Kindle) the facts – sorry to use that rude word – are easy to find.
Anyone who knows me, – or bothers to ask – will know that I was a detective officer for some time in my early service and was then selected and promoted into the training department to pass my skills to the next generation of officers. Later in my service I had “executive supervisory” responsibility for the CID under my command as the Divisional Operational commander. My front-line detective service amounts to less than one quarter of my total service.
All this he could have checked either by research on the internet, or by sending me an email or giving me a ring. He did in fact know it already though I concede he may have forgotten.
Just as he could have discovered the facts about Jill Havern, who he sneeringly refers to in his book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.), as “a controversial blogger by night and driving instructor by day”.
Clarke actually DID contact her by email a long time ago, and seemed delighted to be able to crow that he had discovered she was a driving instructor and that she lived in Cheshire.
Except of course, (those annoying and inconvenient FACTS again), she isn’t and she doesn’t.
So far as she can remember Jill has never been to Cheshire in her life, and has not been a driving instructor for a very long time. Nor was she when Clarke’s book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) was in preparation, and for more than half a decade before his email.
Wrong about the county. Wrong about the town. Wrong about the occupation.
Close enough for a geography student turned Tabloid “hack” (his word), turned Press magnate, turned amateur detective I suppose. But not the sort of attention to detail on which you could base a prosecution.
And remember that all this was available via a polite email or phone call. Most of the ‘facts’ in Clarke’s book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) were not so easily available, and would have required extensive collation and cross-checking, neither skill common amongst “tabloid hacks”.
Talking of politeness my final three emails, two urgent ones to ask for details, links, references, screen shots or quotes to let me address and correct the alleged offences, and the final one, running to some seven pages, with documentary evidence in the form of the photos and screen shots I have mentioned, dismantling the entire series of allegations and accusations received not even an acknowledgment, let alone the courtesy of a reply.
I might have expected that from Clarke, who as we have noted has “form” for ignoring inconvenient letters and emails, but I did not expect that his lawyers to whom I copied the email, would similarly breach their professional codes. Neither replied. Whether this was on Clarke’s instructions, a breach of common courtesy, or Professional Negligence is impossible to ascertain at this point.
Or perhaps they too are going to claim they never received them.
And what was the point of all this nonsense ?
In his first email Clarke said that what I had done was highly illegal, and finished by telling me the email was a warning and that he would be launching legal action against me if I failed to remove the posts.
In his second he again demanded that I remove the personal information and photos I had posted on [sic] his home, plus his wife and children’s details.
By the third the tone became more muted as he realised he had no evidence, and the phrase “You know where they are” appeared, but he sought reinforce his stance with a threat of a costly law suit “if and when” he approached the UK courts.
Given that there were no posts, no photos, and no details, it made removing them rather tricky. And in a further email Clarke admitted that he did not have the time to “pick through the thousands of words . . .”
Or in plain English, either genuinely did not have the time to find the evidence to support his outrageous accusation, or more likely had come to the realisation that there was none.
Unfortunately in both this case and the Madeleine McCann case, and indeed every other case or which I have ever been involved or of which I have ever heard, evidence IS required.
It also, in English law, makes his whole tirade against me a specific offence under s2(1), Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Worthington-v-Metropolitan is the current leading case. The judgment was interesting in that the Justices of Appeal had some comments about clients who lie to their lawyers, and about lawyers who repeat the lies without asking even the simplest questions of their clients to establish the facts.
In Worthington the specific threat was also of legal action, and as in that case it is clear that the specified conditions which Clarke demanded I change did not in fact exist.
Whether his lawyers were complicit in all this and are now deeply embarrassed and ashamed at having been duped, again we may never know.
It goes without saying that since then there has been a deafening silence. From Clarke, from his lawyers and from the many others to whom he copied the entire correspondence. Whether he copied my final email to them including all the attachments. – the evidence – is unclear.
February was not quite as quiet as it looked.
All this he could have checked either by research on the internet, or by sending me an email or giving me a ring. He did in fact know it already though I concede he may have forgotten.
Just as he could have discovered the facts about Jill Havern, who he sneeringly refers to in his book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.), as “a controversial blogger by night and driving instructor by day”.
Clarke actually DID contact her by email a long time ago, and seemed delighted to be able to crow that he had discovered she was a driving instructor and that she lived in Cheshire.
Except of course, (those annoying and inconvenient FACTS again), she isn’t and she doesn’t.
So far as she can remember Jill has never been to Cheshire in her life, and has not been a driving instructor for a very long time. Nor was she when Clarke’s book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) was in preparation, and for more than half a decade before his email.
Wrong about the county. Wrong about the town. Wrong about the occupation.
Close enough for a geography student turned Tabloid “hack” (his word), turned Press magnate, turned amateur detective I suppose. But not the sort of attention to detail on which you could base a prosecution.
And remember that all this was available via a polite email or phone call. Most of the ‘facts’ in Clarke’s book “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.) were not so easily available, and would have required extensive collation and cross-checking, neither skill common amongst “tabloid hacks”.
Talking of politeness my final three emails, two urgent ones to ask for details, links, references, screen shots or quotes to let me address and correct the alleged offences, and the final one, running to some seven pages, with documentary evidence in the form of the photos and screen shots I have mentioned, dismantling the entire series of allegations and accusations received not even an acknowledgment, let alone the courtesy of a reply.
I might have expected that from Clarke, who as we have noted has “form” for ignoring inconvenient letters and emails, but I did not expect that his lawyers to whom I copied the email, would similarly breach their professional codes. Neither replied. Whether this was on Clarke’s instructions, a breach of common courtesy, or Professional Negligence is impossible to ascertain at this point.
Or perhaps they too are going to claim they never received them.
And what was the point of all this nonsense ?
In his first email Clarke said that what I had done was highly illegal, and finished by telling me the email was a warning and that he would be launching legal action against me if I failed to remove the posts.
In his second he again demanded that I remove the personal information and photos I had posted on [sic] his home, plus his wife and children’s details.
By the third the tone became more muted as he realised he had no evidence, and the phrase “You know where they are” appeared, but he sought reinforce his stance with a threat of a costly law suit “if and when” he approached the UK courts.
Given that there were no posts, no photos, and no details, it made removing them rather tricky. And in a further email Clarke admitted that he did not have the time to “pick through the thousands of words . . .”
Or in plain English, either genuinely did not have the time to find the evidence to support his outrageous accusation, or more likely had come to the realisation that there was none.
Unfortunately in both this case and the Madeleine McCann case, and indeed every other case or which I have ever been involved or of which I have ever heard, evidence IS required.
It also, in English law, makes his whole tirade against me a specific offence under s2(1), Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Worthington-v-Metropolitan is the current leading case. The judgment was interesting in that the Justices of Appeal had some comments about clients who lie to their lawyers, and about lawyers who repeat the lies without asking even the simplest questions of their clients to establish the facts.
In Worthington the specific threat was also of legal action, and as in that case it is clear that the specified conditions which Clarke demanded I change did not in fact exist.
Whether his lawyers were complicit in all this and are now deeply embarrassed and ashamed at having been duped, again we may never know.
It goes without saying that since then there has been a deafening silence. From Clarke, from his lawyers and from the many others to whom he copied the entire correspondence. Whether he copied my final email to them including all the attachments. – the evidence – is unclear.
February was not quite as quiet as it looked.