Typhaine Taton Is France’s Madeleine McCann

MADELEINE McCann Watch: Anorak’s at-a-glance look at Madeleine McCann in the news - Typhaine Taton is France’s Madeleine McCann…

IN France, five-year-old Typhaine Taton is this year’s Madeleine McCann.

Typhaine Taton disappeared without trace while walking with her mother in broad daylight in the northern French town of Maubeuge - and there’s still no sign of her.

Typhaine Taton is this year’s…

Everyone surely remembers the case of Madeleine McCann, the British girl who disappeared in May 2007, a couple of days short of her fourth birthday, while on holiday with her parents in Portugal.

Madeleine McCann is now the benchmark of all missing children. She is the media’s EveryMaddie. Madeleine McCann: The Benchmark For Missing Children.

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It was a story that made the world headlines for many months, and her whereabouts is still unknown.

And that is what Madeleine McCann became - a story, a single thread narrative spun our of control as the innocent parents’ deperate seach for a missing child became a chance to gawp and speculate:

Here in France there has also been a case of a little girl disappearing without any explanation, and the circumstances are just as extraordinary.

A child disappearing is always extraordinary, despite of the picture of impending doom painted by the press and broadcast media, which seeks to increase the fear and spread anxiety.

It’s a story that has received national coverage but as French investigators have apparently had so little information to go on - just the statement of the mother - they still seem to be at as much of a loss as to what could have happened to the girl as they were last week when the local public prosecutor, Bernard Beffy, told reporters that they had no idea as to Typhaine’s whereabouts.

“We don’t know whether she’s alive or dead and at the same time no hypothesis has been ruled out.”

It really is like Madeleine McCann, and any other unsolved missing person case.

A week ago five-year-old Typhaine disappeared without trace while walking with her mother in the northern French town of Maubeuge.

According to Anne-Sophie Faucheur, the two of them were in the town centre last Thursday afternoon, her daughter roughly 50 metres ahead of her.

Typhaine turned the corner at the intersection of two roads and by the time Faucheur arrived her daughter was nowhere to be seen. She had “disappeared within the space of five seconds” was what she told police.

Says the mother:

“I looked around and then I started to panic,” she said. And rather than ask passers-by or shopkeepers whether they had seen her daughter, she rang her partner, Nicolas Willot, who joined her in the town centre and together they went to the local police station to report Typhaine’s disappearance.

Police opened an investigation and during the past week they have detained and questioned both Faucheur and Willot, later releasing them. Forensic and technical teams have searched the home the couple share with Typhaine and her two sisters.

The father of the five-year-old, François Taton, from whom Faucheur is estranged, has been questioned, as has his mother…

And still there’s apparently no clue as to what happened to Typhaine or where she could be.

Feel free to speculate:

Such speculation that there is more to the fate of the five-year-old than simply having “disappeared within the space of five seconds” led Faucheur to hold Wednesday’s news conference, where she once again repeated what she told the police and journalists before: her daughter had disappeared while the two of them were in the centre of Maubeuge.

“We feel completely powerless. There’s an emptiness,” she said.

“We don’t know anything apart from the fact that we miss her and we are certain she will be found.”

Madeleine McCann is missing - but her place in media folklore seems assured…

Anorak

Posted: 26th, June 2009 | In: Madeleine McCann, Media Comments (7) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink