The father of a polish woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann has said she is ‘sick but not bad’.
Julia Wandelt bombarded Maddie’s parents with messages and calls, insisting she was their missing daughter, despite DNA tests showing otherwise.
The 24-year-old from the city of Gorzów Wielkopolski even twice visited the McCanns’ hometown of Rothley in Leicestershire.
However her father Jacek, a 61-year-old radiologist, said that Wandelt would not listen to his pleas that her parents were not the McCanns.
‘We had gone for a drive and then, just as she did when this all started a few years ago, she said to me, ‘Daddy, I love you, but you are not my dad, I am Madeleine McCann’, he said.
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He added when he last saw just before Christmas, Wandelt appeared to be coming to terms with the fact she is not Madeleine, but had since doubled down on her claims.
Wandelt’s birth certificate confirms she was born in 2001, Daily Mail reported.
This is two years before the birth of Madeleine McCann, who disappeared from her parent’s home in Praia da Luz, Portugal when she was three years old in 2007.
Wandelt has not lived with her father since she was very young, when he split from her mother Dorota, who brought her up with her subsequent partner Piotr.
Jacek, who now lives with his new partner and their two children, aged 12 and nine, said that Wandelt was a ‘happy, normal’ girl until she was abused by her step-grandfather Peter Ney at 11.
Ney, aged 74 at the time of the abuse, who Jacek refers to as a ‘monster’, was convicted in 2012.
A change in Wandelt’s personality was also noted by her schoolteachers from 2011, who observed in her reports that she needed to be ‘the centre of attention’.
Jacek admitted that he wasn’t involved in bringing her up as much as he would have liked, particularly after Wandelt’s family moved to Wroclaw.
‘Julia is not bad, she is sick and needs help. Every day I think of her and I pray that she may get well’, he added.
One of Wandelt’s childhood friends said that she was looking for support rather than fame, and had shown improvement since taking therapy for two years in 2021, but had not seen her since then.
Wandelt started reaching out to Madeleine’s parents in 2022, after posting a series of photos comparing her face to the missing girl’s.
Her spurious claims attracted more than a million followers on Tiktok.
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