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A Polish national who asserted to be the missing girl "maintained that false narrative" and stalked the missing girl's parents by sending emails, placing telephone calls and appearing at their address, a court has heard.

The first defendant and Julia Wandelt carried out a "campaign of harassment", Leicester Crown Court heard, and in Ms Wandelt's case, that lasted for thirty months.

On Monday, jurors were told the defendant repeatedly claimed she was the missing child and was taken and taken to Poland.

The first accused and Ms Wandelt each deny a charge of harassment causing significant distress and distress to Madeleine's parents between June 2022 and February this year.

Madeleine's disappearance in 2007 - at the age of three during a vacation in Portugal - is among the most widely reported missing child cases and remains unsolved.

The prosecutor also mentioned the global attention that the disappearance had directed toward the family.

"Among numerous tragic consequences for Madeleine's parents has been their constant inability to escape the glare of publicity that came with that incident.

"The attention they have experienced has not always been compassionate, sometimes far from it.

"There remains a number of people who continue to fail to acknowledge their plight and spread conspiracy theories.

"Regrettably, these accused individuals belong to that second category."

Escalating Behavior

The court heard from mid-2022, Ms Wandelt had begun to speak to "any willing listener" that she was the missing child.

The prosecutor said that, in early 2023, the accused was in communication with a Polish charity established to assist with historic missing persons cases and offer support and guidance to people looking for individuals who had disappeared.

According to court testimony, the defendant initially said she was the disappeared child Inga Gehricke.

But after these assertions were ruled out by the charity, the accused then reached out to the charity with a conviction she could be another missing child - a disappeared infant from the American state in the US - before contacting them about her insistence she was Madeleine McCann.

'Did Not Deter'

The defendant's conviction escalated to an attempt to call the medical facility where the parents worked.

A 20-minute call to the reception resulted in a report back from the NHS trust's communications manager to Operation Grange, the British investigation into the disappearance.

Court proceedings revealed Ms Wandelt made further attempts to contact the authorities and then the father personally through electronic mail in mid-2023.

In one email, she stated: "I could be your daughter, it's possible I am the missing girl."

She continued people were "trying to cover up the case" and claimed there were resemblances between her and Madeleine, including having marks in the same places.

But her efforts went without response, which the prosecutor said "did not deter" the defendant - who then made communication with Madeleine's younger sister the sibling via online platforms.

Telling her she was her "only hope", she transmitted altered photographs to show they were "possibly connected" and claimed to have recollections of life before the abduction, the court heard.

These claims, the proceedings revealed, were restated in this year when the defendant is accused of "consistently" messaged Mrs McCann's cell phone over the course of a day - referring to her as "mother", asserting memory of giving food to the family's son the boy, of playing children's games in the back garden of the family's home in the Leicestershire village, the English county, and of the evening Madeleine was abducted.

In a communication, she stated: "I recall 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 an address in the Polish city, Poland, and the second defendant, of Caerau Court Road in the Welsh city, proceeds.