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An individual from Poland who asserted to be Madeleine McCann "pursued that myth" and harassed the missing girl's parents by dispatching electronic messages, placing telephone calls and turning up at their address, a court has heard.

The first defendant and Julia Wandelt conducted a "systematic intimidation", the court was informed, and in one defendant's situation, that occurred over two and a half years.

On Monday, the court heard Ms Wandelt consistently asserted she was Madeleine and was abducted and transported to the European nation.

The first accused and Ms Wandelt each deny a count of stalking resulting in serious alarm and distress to Kate and Gerry McCann between mid-2022 and February this year.

The child's vanishing in 2007 - at the three years old during a family holiday in the European country - is among the most extensively covered child disappearance incidents and remains unsolved.

Legal counsel also mentioned the international focus that the disappearance had directed toward the family.

"Among numerous devastating outcomes for the McCann family has been their constant inability to escape the glare of publicity that accompanied that incident.

"The attention they have received has sometimes lacked compassionate, sometimes far from it.

"There continues to exist a number of people who persist in refusing to acknowledge their plight and spread conspiracy theories.

"Unfortunately, these accused individuals belong to that latter group."

Increasing Actions

The court heard from mid-2022, the defendant had begun to speak to "any willing listener" that she was Madeleine.

Legal authorities said that, in early 2023, the accused was in contact with a Polish charity created to help with historic missing persons cases and offer support and advice to people looking for individuals who had disappeared.

Based on court testimony, Ms Wandelt initially said she was missing German girl Inga Gehricke.

But after these claims were dismissed by the charity, the accused then contacted the group with a conviction she could be another missing child - a disappeared infant from the American state in the United States - before contacting them about her insistence she was Madeleine McCann.

'Failed to Stop'

The defendant's conviction escalated to an effort to contact the hospital where both the McCanns were employed.

A 20-minute call to the reception led to a notification from the NHS trust's communications manager to the investigation team, the UK inquiry into the vanishing.

The jury was told the defendant made further attempts to reach out to officials and then the father directly via email in June 2023.

In one email, she wrote: "I could be your daughter, there's a chance I'm her."

She continued people were "trying to cover up the story" and claimed there were resemblances between her and Madeleine, including having marks in the identical locations.

But her efforts went unanswered, which court officials said "failed to discourage" the defendant - who then made communication with the family's other daughter Amelie via social media.

Telling her she was her "sole chance", she sent doctored images to show they were "possibly connected" and claimed to have memories of life before the abduction, the trial was told.

These assertions, the proceedings revealed, were restated in 2024 when Ms Wendalt is accused of "repeatedly" contacted Mrs McCann's cell phone over the course of a day - calling her "mother", claiming to recall feeding the family's son Sean, of engaging in ring a roses in the back garden of the family's home in the Leicestershire village, the English county, and of the evening Madeleine was abducted.

In one message, she stated: "I remember you visited my bedroom before the incident, touched my hair and said 'I care for you and I will find you'."

Court proceedings of Ms Wendalt, of Jana Kochanowskiego in Lubin, Poland, and the second defendant, of Caerau Court Road in the Welsh city, proceeds.