A Polish girl who claimed to be Madeleine McCann says she regrets her actions after receiving abuse and loss of life threats.
Julia Wendell created social media profiles with the deal with @IamMadeleineMcCann and even appeared on the Dr Phil discuss present within the US after making the claims.
However her claims had been proved false after she took a DNA check. Its outcomes proved she had no relation to Madeleine, who went lacking aged three throughout a household vacation in Portugal in 2007.
Plus Julia is 2 years older than Madeleine, who could be round 20 years of age now.
Julia, 22, has now instructed a BBC podcast that she ‘regrets’ the whole affair, insisting she ‘by no means meant to harm anybody – together with the McCanns’.
She claims she has a variety of gaps in her reminiscence following childhood abuse, and he or she grew to become suspicious about her previous after her mother and father dismissed questions on whether or not she was adopted.
Earlier than claiming to be lacking Maddie, Julia had additionally claimed to be three different lacking women, a MailOnline investigation revealed.
Her social media posts attracted important unfavourable consideration – although Julia claimed to ‘actually wish to know who I’m’.
She instructed the podcast: ‘I knew that there can be individuals who won’t consider me or hate me, however I didn’t count on that I’ll get loss of life threats, for instance.
‘I used to be attempting to be sturdy even when individuals mentioned, “it is best to die”, “you need to be raped”, “you need to be killed”, “you need to be murdered”, “you shouldn’t exist on this world”.’
Julia says she latched on to the assumption that she was Madeleine McCann after later seeing sketches of a possible suspect within the case that bore similarities to her abuser.
She mentioned: ‘I do know [what] my abuser appears like. And I do know that is very, similar to the suspects from [the] Madeleine McCann case.’
Julia beforehand mentioned: ‘I don’t bear in mind most of my childhood however my earliest reminiscence could be very sturdy and it’s about holidays in a sizzling place the place there’s a seashore and white or very mild colored buildings with flats. I don’t see my household on this reminiscence.’
She additionally insists she has many bodily similarities with lacking Madeleine, together with a coloboma of the iris – a uncommon eye abnormality affecting the form of the pupil.
She mentioned she ‘simply needed to express regret’ to folks Kate and Gerry McCann ‘as a result of each individual can react otherwise and perhaps it introduced them extra unhappiness.’
The BBC spoke to individuals related to the McCanns and the household’s official search organisation, Discover Madeleine, who mentioned they had been keen to just accept Julia’s apology.
Police investigating Madeleine’s disappearance hope they might get nearer to fixing the case, with prime suspect Christian Brueckner set to go on trial subsequent month.
Convicted rapist Brueckner, 45, is accused of raping and sexually assaulting a number of ladies and a younger woman.
The assaults are all mentioned to have taken place between 2000 and 2017 when he lived on Portugal’s Algarve coast – the realm the place Madeleine was taken.
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