image courtesy of the McCann Gallery
MMRG updated this article on 14 May 2019. It was originally written by Tony Bennett on 8 April 2014.
The purpose of Tony's article was to inform CMOMM readers about the astonishingly close relationship between Jim Gamble and the McCanns, right from the moment Madeleine was reported missing, and to explain how two other characters, psychologist Dr Joe Sullivan and criminologist and 'child abuse expert', Mark Williams-Thomas, have also been very closely connected with both the McCanns and Jim Gamble.
UPDATE: Since Tony wrote his article, information emerged during 2017 that the 'Wayback Machine', which interrogates websites, forums and blogs etc. and which can give a complete history of created pages, articles and posts etc., had found what has been called a 'dummy entry' (i.e. a blank page) for 'Madeleine McCann' on the CEOP website, dated 30 April 2007. Jim Gamble was the Head of CEOP at the time.
This intended to confirm the views of many that something serious had happened to Madeleine McCann the day before (Sunday 29 April), and that this page had been set up - ready and waiting, so to speak - for the day later in the week when the McCanns would formally announce that Madeleine had been 'abducted'.
MMRG would like to add the following. When challenged by Madeleine McCann about the entry for 30 April, Wayback Machine originally confirmed that the entry was genuine, adding that Wayback Macine had such an excellent reputation that its evidence was often used in the U.S. courts. However, days later, after considerable publicity over this find on the internet, Wayback Machine changed their story, claiming it was only a 'glitch'.
One of the many who doubted this was merely a glitch was Richard Hall, an electronic engineer with vast I.T. experience on the internet, computers and digital technology. He is also the maker of five extremely informative documentaries on the Madeleine McCann case, which have been viewed by millions.
PART ONE
JOINED AT THE HIP
Starring the McCanns and Jim Gamble
Supporting cast: Psychologist Dr Joe Sullivan and ‘child abuse expert’ Mark Williams-Thomas
The remarkable tale of three middle-aged men who hover around the McCann case, seemingly for ever.
Three middle-aged men who, like the Portuguese Police, Scotland Yard and a whole host of private detectives employed by the McCanns – and like the rest of us – do not know yet what really happened to Madeleine McCann. But three middle-aged men all deeply interested in the subject of child sexual abuse – and who keep linking their interest to the McCanns.
This little article consists of a few cobbled-together notes of how often they’ve popped up here and there to make comments about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. It may not be the complete picture. Detective Chief Superintendent Graham Hill also gets a mention.
Profile: Jim Gamble (BBC)
Jim Gamble resigned because he wanted greater independence for CEOP
The resignation of Jim Gamble from his position as Chief Executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) has been described by campaigners as a sad day for child protection.
It is testament to Mr Gamble's pivotal role in bringing the issue of child abuse to the top of the news agenda.
CEOP, under his watch, had become internationally recognised for the work it has done to track paedophiles using the web. Home Secretary Theresa May's decision to merge CEOP with the National Crime Agency was a step too far for Mr Gamble, who had long campaigned for greater independence for the unit. He felt very strongly that the work the unit was doing was so important that it needed to be a stand-alone department.
CEOP was set up in 2006 and has been the driving force behind a range of activities designed to track and prevent online paedophile activities.
It was able to track the exchange of photos and other materials related to child abuse on peer-to-peer networks, a previously unmonitored area of the web and one hugely exploited by paedophiles.
It also campaigned for an online panic button for social networking sites to allow young people to report abuse. Bebo and MySpace installed the button last year and Facebook finally adopted it in July last year [2013]. Mr Gamble is regarded as an expert in online crime but he began his career in Northern Ireland as an ordinary offline policeman.
Hunting paedophiles
He quickly rose through the ranks and became the head of Northern Ireland's anti-terrorist intelligence unit in Belfast. Promoted to Deputy Chief Constable, Mr Gamble became the Deputy Director General of the National Crime Squad, which later merged with the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
In this role Gamble began to gain his reputation as the UK's foremost hunter of paedophiles, heading up Operation Ore, the UK's largest ever police investigation into who was viewing internet child abuse images. The operation identified over 7,000 suspects and led to more than 2,000 convictions - but it proved highly controversial. There were criticisms that the net was hauling in too many innocent people and that some of those convicted had not viewed images of child abuse at all but were actually victims of identity theft.
But there is little doubt that the work started by Mr Gamble has led to some of the most predatory paedophiles being stopped in their tracks. In interviews, Mr Gamble was always keen to stress that, while his work was embedded in the online world, the images and activities the unit monitored were real children who were being abused.
He was key to changing the way the media wrote about the issue, asking that headlines about "child porn" be dropped to reflect the true picture - that behind the grotesque images were hundreds of victims who could potentially be rescued.
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A. CEOP was formed just months before Madeleine McCann was reported missing
JIM GAMBLE was the Director of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Service (CEOP). CEOP was actually a private company, funded by the government and by private sources (more below). It was first set up in 2006, the year before Madeleine McCann was reported missing. Since 2010, it has been merged with the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), now the National Crime Agency.
B. The days after Madeleine was reported missing
Days after Madeleine McCann was reported missing, JIM GAMBLE was active on TV and in the press asking people who had holidayed recently in Praia da Luz to send in their holiday pictures to him at CEOP. An e-mail address was given. No-one knows whether, in demanding these pictures be sent to him, he had permission from the Portuguese Police. No-one knows what he did with any pictures that were sent to him. Leicestershire Police had already been sent in to ‘assist’ the Portuguese Police. Neither was it clear why photos should be sent to Jim Gamble and not to Leicestershire Police.
It appears that the Portuguese Police never got these pictures.
One report told us later: “Gonçalo Amaral, the former PJ inspector, recalls that, with the consent of the Portuguese authorities, an appeal was made for tourists to send in photos from the day and the night of Maddie’s disappearance. The purpose was 'to identify anyone suspicious who might appear [to be] looking at the family', he says. But despite 'much that arrived at the English police', none of those images ever reached us”.
The PJ have not received any photos at all resulting from the campaign launched by the Leicestershire Police, asking tourists who were on holiday in Praia da Luz to send copies of photos taken during the two weeks preceding Madeleine McCann's disappearance. The appeal had been launched by Leicestershire police, in coordination with CEOP and ACPO.
According to a source close to the investigation in the United Kingdom, several hundred photos were sent to the British authorities, most of them downloaded via internet pages specially created for the occasion.
“We will then evaluate these images - at a rate of 1000 images an hour - so that before long we are sending the significant information to the Portuguese authorities”, JIM GAMBLE, Head of CEOP had promised. According to Jim Gamble, the official objective of this campaign was to make progress with the investigation into Madeleine's disappearance, using, notably, a program for facial recognition for all the people ‘who might seem out of place or to be behaving strangely’.
"Wondering what the real purpose was of launching the public appeal....We have not had access to those photos," one of the investigators confirms, stressing that the only photos the PJ were able to receive came to them directly from witnesses”.
At the same time, another CEOP man was parachuted into Praia da Luz - DR JOE SULLIVAN. He was clearly sent there by his boss JIM GAMBLE – but why, exactly? The press reported: “Highly respected forensic psychologist DR JOE SULLIVAN arrived in Praia da Luz within days of Madeleine's disappearance as part of a so-called 'Cracker' team, with Detective Chief Superintendent GRAHAM HILL. He returned to the UK on 9 May 2007”.
In addition, MARK WILLIAMS-THOMAS went to Praia da Luz immediately Madeleine was reported missing. Here he is being interviewed in Praia da Luz on 10 May 2007, when he was described as having ‘been out with us here for several days’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqKSjwwVSuM He made several strong and detailed criticisms of the Portuguese investigation, even though he can have known little about what was really going on in the PJ offices in Portimao.
C. The ‘LOOK for Madeleine’ campaign
An early McCann Team campaign featured Madeleine’s coloboma – the ‘leak’ from the pupil to the iris. They designed a campaign logo: ‘LOOK for Madeleine’ with the second ‘O’ featuring a black line from the centre of the ‘O’ to the outside, looking like Madeleine’s eye. It was noted by some that this ‘O’ looked very similar to the design of the letter ‘C’ in CEOP.
D. Mark Williams-Thomas – on SKY NEWS night after night
On 15 September 2007, GazetaDigital published an article by Duarte Levy and Paulo Reis about MARK WILLIAMS-THOMAS and his views on the Madeleine McCann case. Here’s part of their article:
“Mark Williams-Thomas, a former policeman and managing director of WT Associates, a PR company specialising in child protection, media handling and advice for high profile cases, urged Portuguese police to ditch the case against the McCanns – a case that he classified as ‘ludicrous’ - and follow another lead that he thinks could take PJ to the real kidnapper.
The managing director of PR company WT Associates, who is usually introduced to SKY NEWS viewers only as a ‘child protection expert’ or ‘crime expert’, criticised the Polícia Judiciária for not paying attention to “such a strong line of inquiry”. The PR expert maintained that “even if over 90% of murders are domestic-related”, he “can’t accept that Gerry and Kate as parents of the child could have been involved in her murder”.
For the managing director of WT Associates, “the answer to the case may lie in the disappearance of an eight-year-old Portuguese girl in 2004 -Joana Cipriano”. She vanished from a village just seven miles from Praia da Luz, where Madeleine disappeared.
Leonor Cipriano and her brother, who had a incestuous relationship, were both sentenced to 16 years in jail, after appealing to the Portuguese Supreme Court, for the murder of Joana Cipriano. Her body was never found, but blood found inside the family’s refrigerator and the confession of Joana’s uncle were sufficient to convince the jury. Her case has been used, by the British Media, in what seems to be an attempt to discredit Portuguese Police, comparing it with Madeleine’s case.
Leonor Cipriano, who never confessed to the the crime, accused five CID officers of beating her. Later, she was not able to identify any of the five officers, when she was taken to a police line-up, behind a two-way mirror. The Public Prosecutor’s Office decide to charge the five CID officers. ASFIC, the CID inspectors’ union, filed a formal complaint against the Public Prosecutor's magistrate, because he didn’t included in the case's dossier the results of the police line-up.
The fact that one of the officers accused is Chief Inspector Gonçalo Amaral casts ‘huge doubt’ on him, according to the Managing Director of WT Associates, who believes that Mr. Amaral should be ousted from the investigation of Madeleine’s case: "Even if we work on the basis that he is innocent, given this allegation against him, he shouldn't have anything to do with the Madeleine investigation”, the PR expert told SKY NEWS”.
Questioned yesterday, September 14, about his business relationship, as an expert also in media handling and advice for high profile cases, Mr. MARK WILLIAMS-THOMAS initially confirmed that his company had a contract to provide services to the McCann. Asked to confirm some details of that business relationship, he changed his initial answer and denied any relationship, admitting only that he has “been in contact with the press officers for the family.”
We asked also to SKY NEWS if they were aware of the fact that Mr Mark Williams-Thomas was also the owner and managing director of a PR company, as SKY NEWS has invited almost every day, to comment about the Madeleine McCann case, introducing him only as a ‘child protection expert’ or a ‘crime expert’. We are waiting for SKY NEWS to answer those questions”.
SKY NEWS never did supply an answer to their questions. There are a few other points we should note about this interesting article, as follows:
- MARK WILLIAMS-THOMAS was indeed commenting almost nightly on the McCann case for SKY NEWS, responding to the latest news about Madeleine’s fate
- There is a real question mark in the article as to whether he had at any time had a financial relationship with the McCanns. He initially said he had a ‘contract to provide services for the McCanns’
- The article is incorrect about Leonor Cipriano; in fact both she and her brother made voluntary confessions to this appalling crime
- Mark Williams-Thomas, it appears, was able to deceive viewers about Leonor Cipriano, failing to tell them that she had been justly sentenced to 16 years for her terrible crime
- There is evidence in the above article that Mark Williams-Thomas lacked objectivity in his commentaries on Madeleine’s disappearance.
E. CEOP and the 'Minute for Madeleine' video
In November 2009, the ‘Minute for Madeleine’ video was produced and released. It was intended to ‘go viral’ on the internet, and did so. It was a CEOP production which featured an age-progressed sketch of Madeleine as she might be, aged about six. So the Minute for Madeleine video was masterminded by JIM GAMBLE. But the video itself was narrated by DR JOE SULLIVAN. According to the mccannfiles.com site, Sullivan “helped in the production of, and personally narrated, the 'A Minute for Madeleine' campaign video; an appeal directly to the person keeping a 'secret' about Madeleine, 'who knows who's involved in her disappearance' and who may have been groomed by the perpetrator(s) to stay quiet”. The ‘Minute for Madeleine’ video promoted the logos of six organisations at the end of the video, including ‘Missing Children’, ‘PACT’ and ‘Missing & Exploited’.
Jim Gamble said at the time that “…the message was founded on the belief that, like Jaycee Dugard in California and Natasha Kampusch in Austria, Madeleine could be rescued or reappear despite being missing for more than two years. He said he had “studied 11 child abduction cases in which the victims had reappeared after long periods in captivity”.
Kate and Gerry McCann appeared on TV together with JIM GAMBLE. At the time, ITN News reported that: “The criminal psychologist behind a new Madeleine McCann appeal, DR JOE SULLIVAN has told ITV News that her abductor is very likely to strike again”.
JIM GAMBLE was interviewed for SKY TV [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJtkRE4P18I ] and other media to promote the ‘Minute for Madeleine’ video.
F. A row about Facebook: Gamble gets angry
On 18 November 2009, a blogger wrote the message below after hearing JIM GAMBLE lay into Facebook for refusing to add a ‘Report to CEOP panic button’ to their pages. The blogger observed:
“I, too, heard Mr Gamble on the Radio this morning (BBC Radio4). He sounded quite bullying himself - but that tends to be his calling card. Implicit in his comments was a suggestion that if any site refuses to host a CEOP 'panic button' they are failing in their duty of care to the young and there must, therefore, be something 'wrong' with them. It's no surprise to hear such attitudes from an organisation like CEOP, which has grown so powerful on the back of the current paedohysteria - and an almost wholly uncritical media.
“Mr Gamble, whose fondness for dropping 'keywords' into his interview responses ('predator', 'grooming', etc.) is a past-master at hyping up the sensationalism - hardly surprising at a time when so many competing 'partner agencies' (another favourite Gambleism) are looking for funds from an ever-dwindling pot.
“I was surprised to hear him tell the BBC interviewer that the CEOP panic button receives 10,000 hits a month. Really? 10,000? A month? Naturally, the BBC interviewer let that little gem slip past completely unremarked upon. If it's true - and as ever with CEOP we have no mechanism for establishing that - then surely it represents a headline story of unimaginable proportions?
“Ironically, given the context, I have little doubt Facebook will eventually be bullied into having to accept CEOP's unwanted presence on their site: the Paedogeddon will brook no argument, no dissent, after all, and after Mr Gamble's tirade against them this morning on live radio (and no doubt by now across a more than accommodating media) I suspect they will have no option but to cave in to his demands or risk more name-calling in the future.
“In the end, it's worth remembering CEOP is a public/private company (and also part of the UK police service). Yes, it's a company. JIM GAMBLE is its CEO. It receives the bulk of its funding from the UK government (i.e. taxpayers) and from private sources (step forward Microsoft, BT, O2, Virgin, VISA, etc. etc.) which all runs into £millions every year. It makes a bit of cash on the side flogging off training seminars, publications and instructional packs to 'stakeholders' (yes, there's another Gambleism). As a commercial concern, CEOP cannot insist companies like Facebook carry its marque - but Mr Gamble seems to think they should be forced to do so. Of course, he knows that by wielding the trusty 'won't someone please think of children?' banner (along with his usual bluster and well-rehearsed hyperbole) wherever he goes he can almost always get his own way”.
Continued/ https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t16215-joined-at-the-hip-starring-the-mccanns-and-jim-gamble#401047
For discussion, please visit this thread: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t9342-joined-at-the-hip-starring-the-mccanns-and-jim-gamble
