The mother of a missing girl has hit out at extra money given to detectives involved in the search for Madeleine McCann.

Karen Downes, 53, said that her daughter Charlene, who was 14 when she went missing in 2003, had been ‘forgotten’.

The Home Office gave another £150,000 to the Maddie investigation which has cost nearly £12,000,000 so far.

Charlene vanished in 2003 and it was feared that she was chopped up and served in kebabs in Blackpool (Picture: PA)

Her mother Karen has hit out at the extra funding for the Maddie search while other missing children are ‘forgotten’ (Picture: Focus Features Ltd)

Mrs Downes said that ‘all missing children need a voice’ but because they are working class their family has been ignored.


She told The Sun: ‘I feel very angry that other children – Charlene and so many others – are being forgotten.

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‘A child goes missing in the UK every three minutes. What about all those others who never come home again?’



She added: [Madeleine] didn’t even go missing in this country – it’s really a matter for the Portuguese police, and yet the money just keeps on rolling in for the search.’

Her daughter vanished in Blackpool on November 1, 2003, and although new CCTV was issued last year there has been no trace of Charlene.

Madeleine McCann on the day she went missing from the family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal (Picture: PA)

Parents Kate and Gerry McCann pose with an artist’s impression of how their daughter might look at the age of nine ahead of a press conference in central London in 2012 (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)

It is feared that her body was chopped up and used in kebabs in the Lancashire town, but two takeaway workers were acquitted of murder in 2007 – at the time Maddie went missing.

Maddie, from Leicester, was three years old when she disappeared in May that year while on holiday with her parents in Praia da Luz, a resort in the Algarge region of Portugal.

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Scotland Yard launched its own investigation, Operation Grange, in 2011 after a Portuguese inquiry failed to make any headway.

UK detectives were granted an extra £150,000 in March this year to continue the probe, until the end of September.

The Home Office said at the time that any requests for further funding by the Met Police would be ‘carefully considered.’

The search has so far cost £11.6 million (Picture: )

The new funding is expected to last until the end of March 2019.

A spokesperson for Maddie’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann said in September: ‘They remain incredibly grateful to the police. They hope the Scotland Yard investigation continues and that more funding is granted.’

There have not been any significant clues to what happened to Maddie.

No arrests have ever been made in the case.

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