A rape survivor has said she is afraid Christian Brueckner, the prime suspect in Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, will “hunt her down” after his release from jail. Brueckner will be freed from a German prison in September after serving a seven-year sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman.
In October 2024, he was acquitted of raping Hazel Behan, 41, and another woman and girl in Portugal, and is awaiting the result of a High Court appeal lodged by Ms Behan, challenging the Portuguese authorities’ investigation of the crime. The Dublin native was violently attacked in an apartment in Praia da Rocha three years before Madeleine’s disappearance. “His sentence may be ending, but mine never did,” she told The Sun. “I have lived with fear every day for 21 years. Fear that I’ll see him. Fear that he’ll find out where I live and hunt me down.”
“I also have fear that he’ll do to someone else what he did to me,” Ms Behan added. “I’ve called him out in a public forum and I have genuine concern [that] he could confront me.
“I wouldn’t put anything past a person like him. If he is released, I will worry for every woman and child who, like me, believes the justice system is protecting them. A leopard doesn’t change his spots.”
Despite prosecutors naming 48-year-old Brueckner as the only suspect in four-year-old Madeleine’s disappearance from Praia da Luz in 2007, he denies any involvement and has yet to face formal charges.
German police concluded a three-day search of the area around Brueckner’s home near the resort she had been staying at with her family last week after it reportedly failed to yield any new findings.
“If he is released in September, he can go anywhere he wants,” Ms Behan said. “The police can only get involved in protecting me if he comes into my garden.
“The system may be ready to let him go, but I’m not. And neither is the wider society that deserves to feel safe.”
She also extended her sympathy to the McCann family, who marked 18 years since their daughter’s disappearance from a hotel room while they ate dinner nearby last month.
“As a parent, I cannot begin to imagine what they have gone through and continue to go through every day for the past 18 years,” she added.