A young woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann has been convicted of harassing the missing toddler’s family.

However, Julia Wandelt, 24, was cleared of stalking the couple.

A Polish national born three years after Madeleine, Wandelt said she suspected she had been abducted and brought up by a couple who were not her real parents.

She was having mental health issues at the time and had been abused by an elderly relative.

The relative looked like an artist’s drawing of a man who was once a suspect in the Madeleine case, which she stumbled across during internet research on missing children.

She went to Los Angeles and told a US TV chat show audience: “I believe I am Madeleine McCann.”

Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from the family’s rented holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007.

She had been left sleeping with her younger twin siblings, Sean and Amelia, while her parents dined nearby with friends, making intermittent checks on the children.

Madeleine is the world’s most famous missing child, the subject of three international police investigations that have failed to find any trace of her.

Wandelt claimed to have a blemish in the iris of her right eye, like Madeleine’s, and to resemble aged-progressed images of her.

Over three years, she attracted half a million followers on her Instagram account, iammadeleinemccan, and posted her claims on TikTok.

Police told her she was not Madeleine and ordered her not to approach her family, but she ignored the warning.

The McCanns and their children gave evidence in the trial at Leicester Crown Court, describing the upset Wandelt had caused them.

Her co-defendant, Karen Spragg, 61, from Cardiff, was found not guilty of stalking and harassment.

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Public safety is “at risk” because more inmates are being sent to prisons with minimal security, a serving governor has warned – as details emerge of another manhunt for a foreign national offender.

Mark Drury – speaking in his role as representative for open prison governors at the Prison Governors’ Association – told Sky News open prisons that have had no absconders for “many years” are now “suddenly” experiencing a rise in cases.

It comes after a man who was serving a 21-year sentence for kidnap and grievous bodily harm absconded from an open prison in Sussex last month.

Sky News has learned that Ola Abimbola is a foreign national offender who still hasn’t returned to HMP Ford – and Sussex Police says it is working with partners to find him.

WARNING: Some readers may find the content in this article distressing

For Natalie Queiroz, who was stabbed 24 times by her ex-partner while she was eight months’ pregnant with their child, the warnings could not feel starker.

Natalie sustained injuries to all her major organs and her arms, while the knife only missed her unborn baby by 2mm.

“Nobody expected either of us to survive,” she told Sky News.

Babur Raja was sentenced to 18 years for attempted murder, but Natalie has recently been told that he’s set to be moved to an open prison four years earlier than planned.

“Any day now, my ex who created this untold horror is about to go to an open prison,” Natalie said.

Open prisons – otherwise known as Category D jails – have minimal security and are traditionally used to house prisoners right at the end of their sentence, to prepare them for integrating back into society.

With overcrowding in higher security jails, policy changes mean more prisoners are eligible for a transfer to open conditions earlier on in their sentence.

“It doesn’t feel right, it’s terrifying, and it also doesn’t feel like justice,” Natalie said, wiping away tears at points.

Previously, rules stated a transfer to open prison could only take place within three years of their eligibility for parole – but no earlier than five years before their automatic release date.

The five-year component was dropped in March last year under the previous government, but the parole eligibility element was extended to five years in April 2025.

Raja, who is due for release in 2034, has parole eligibility 12 years into his sentence, which is 2028.

Under the rule change, this eligibility for open prison is set for this year – but under the new rules it could have been 2023, which is within five years of his parole date.

Another change, introduced in the spring, means certain offenders can be assumed suitable for open prisons three years early – extended from two years.

Natalie has been campaigning to prevent violent offenders and domestic abuse perpetrators from being eligible to transfer to an open prison early.

She’s had meetings with ministers and raised both her case and others.

“They actually said – he is dangerous,” she told Sky News.

“I said to [the minister]: ‘How can you make a risk assessment for someone like that?’

“And they went: ‘If we’re honest, we can’t’.”

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The government told Sky News that Raja’s crimes were “horrific” and that their “thoughts remain with the victim”.

They also insist that the “small number of offenders eligible for moves to open prison face a strict, thorough risk assessment” – while anyone breaking the rules “can be immediately returned”.

But Mr Drury describes risk assessments as an “algorithm tick box” because of “the pressure on offender management units”.

These warnings come at an already embarrassing time for the Prison Service after migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu was mistakenly freed last month.

This week, it emerged two others have been freed in error since then, amid new release checks.

In response to this report, the Ministry of Justice says it “inherited a justice system in crisis, with prisons days away from collapse” – forcing “firm action to get the situation back under control”.

The government has promised to add 14,000 new prison places by 2031 and introduce sentencing reforms.

The US Congress has written to Andrew Mountbatten Windsor requesting an interview with him in connection with his “long-standing friendship” with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said it is investigating the late financier’s “sex trafficking operations”.

It told Andrew: “The committee is seeking to uncover the identities of Mr Epstein’s co-conspirators and enablers, and to understand the full extent of his criminal operations.

“Well-documented allegations against you, along with your long-standing friendship with Mr Epstein, indicate that you may possess knowledge of his activities relevant to our investigation.

“In the interest of justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, we request that you co-operate with the committee’s investigation by sitting for a transcribed interview with the committee.”

Read the letter in full

Virginia Giuffre, who died in April, accused Andrew of sexually assaulting her after being introduced by Epstein. Andrew has always vehemently denied her accusations.

The letter to the former prince, is addressed to Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, the home he agreed last week to leave, when he was stripped of his royal titles.

It outlines his “close relationship” with Epstein and references a recently revealed 2011 email exchange in which Andrew told him “we are in this together”.

And it says the committee has identified “financial records containing notations such as ‘massage for Andrew’ that raise serious questions”.

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The committee said Andrew’s links to Epstein “further confirms our suspicion that you may have valuable information about the crimes committed by Mr Epstein and his co-conspirators”.

The letter, signed by 16 members of Congress, requested Andrew responds by 20 November.

It came as the King officially stripped his disgraced brother of both his HRH style and his prince title.

The move followed the publication Ms Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs, and the US government’s release of documents from the paedophile’s estate.

Ms Giuffre alleged she was forced to have sex with Andrew three times – once at convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell’s home in London, once in Epstein’s address in Manhattan, and once on the disgraced financier’s private island, Little St James.

The incident at Maxwell’s home allegedly occurred when Ms Giuffre was 17 years old.

Epstein took his own life in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.