While the search for Madeleine McCann briefly lulled from our television sets and magazine covers, behind closed doors, the parents of the missing child were fighting a long and separate battle in the courts. Their plight? To obtain an apology from the UK's media for a 100 plus inaccurate articles claiming the couple had caused the death of young Maddy. Today, in a landmark case, Kate and Jerry McCann found their names back in the limelight as they won their case against the Express newspapers. Not only will the couple receive a public apology, in the form of half page spreads, but they have also received £550,000 for the Find Madeleine Fund. A spokesman for the family said:

"It is fitting the search for Madeleine will benefit from the wrongs that have been committed against us, her parents. Express newspapers rightly acknowledge they ran stories with absolutely no evidence. [The Express had] the worse track record, with a number of headlines seeing libellous statements and false claims repeated". "The sustained run of defamation by the group caused great distress, not just for Gerry and Kate, but for their family [and] provided an absolute distraction to the search to find Madeleine."