Gerry McCann, the father of missing Madeleine, has hit out at the British media for the way it treated his family following the search for his daughter.
He said stories that appeared in the press became "highly speculative" and that "unless our phones were hacked, which I don't think they were, these were simply made up."
McCann told the Leveson Inquiry on Wednesday it was "crass and insensitive to suggest that by engaging [with the media] with a view to find your daughter, [that] the press can write anything they want about you without punishment."
He also revealed that the editor of the now defunct News of the World "beat" the couple "into submission" to agree to an interview with the tabloid, after they gave an interview to Hello! magazine.
The McCann's said they agreed to give the interview to the magazine for free in order to promote a EU wide child abduction alert system.
But Colin Myler, the-then editor of NotW, "berated" them over the decision.
"Mr Myler was irate when he learned of the publication," McCann said.
"He was berating us for not doing an interview with the News of the World and told us how supportive the paper had been.
"He basically beat us into submission verbally… and we agreed to do an interview the day after."
Kate McCann also recalled the moment she found out her diary had been published by the tabloid.
"I felt totally violated," she said."I'd written these thoughts and words at the most desperate time of my life."
She said it was her "only way of communicating with Madeline" and the decision to publish them showed "no respect" for her as "a grieving mother or a human being".
Kate McCann said she believed the diary had been obtained from the Portuguese police files and then translated back into English in order to be published in the paper.
The couple arrived at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Wednesday to give evidence following the testimonies of Mark Lewis, a lawyer for phone hacking victims, and Sheryl Gascoigne, the former wife the England footballer.
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Gerry McCann told the inquiry the press were initially helpful when his four-year-old daughter went missing in Portugal in 2007.
"We could the distinct impression that there was a genuine want to help among journalists... there was a huge amount of empathy," he said.
But that soon changed: "We were being tried by the media and were unable to defend ourselves."
The inquiry heard about a series of newspaper stories and headlines that contained inaccurate reports about the case, many of which implied the McCann's were to blame for their daughter's disappearance.
This included one Daily Mirror headline that read: "She's Dead".
Gerry McCann said this was presented as fact even there was no proof. Madeline's father said this was one of the "most distressing headlines" they had seen.
He also described the scene as the McCann family made their way to the airport in Portugal to fly home to the UK. He said the number of journalists and photographers in pursuit made the trip "frankly dangerous".
After they returned home the McCann's said they were "hemmed in" their house for days before the police moved the press away from their property.
Kate McCann said that photographers would hide behind hedges and then jump out at her in her car in order to photograph her looking startled or scared.
"They would bang on the windows sometimes with the camera lenses," she says.
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