The parents of Madeleine McCann have defended leaving their daughter alone on the night she disappeared, as their local newspaper banned from its website “spiteful and defamatory” comments about the couple.

Kate and Gerry McCann will meet Portuguese police today to see if there has been any progress in the case. Mr McCann has spent the past four days in the United States, meeting experts on child abduction and talking to the media. He was asked why he and his wife left Madeleine and their two other children in a holiday villa while they dined at a nearby restaurant.

He told ABC’s Good Morning America: “We were 50 yards away and could see the apartment. It’s like we were sat at the end of our garden. The kids were sound asleep and being checked regularly. We didn’t think we needed a babysitter. What we did felt perfectly reasonable at the time.

He later told CNN: “We have been assured by the authorities that what we did fell well within the boundaries of good parenting. Madeleine was targeted by a predator. That is the real criminal act here.”

The Leicester Mercury said yesterday that visitors to its website had left messages calling for the McCanns to be prosecuted. Nick Carter, the editor, said: “A tiny minority of people seem to want to say nasty, spiteful and defamatory things. They are bombarding our site, and we had no choice but to block comment entirely on reports about the family.”

Madeleine McCann disappeared 84 days ago, just before her fourth birthday. The only official suspect is Robert Murat, a British man who lived close to the McCanns’ villa in Praia da Luz.

–– A mother who scolded her tantrum-throwing daughter and put her in a car to calm down was told by police that her actions had been inappropriate in the light of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. Ruth Ball, 24, from Luton, criticised Bedfordshire Police for interfering in the disciplining of her child.

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