Julia Faustyna, the woman claiming to be missing British toddler Madeleine McCann has told her side of the story in an exclusive interview on the US talk show Dr Phil.
Faustyna has made headlines around the world lately for her claims that she is the missing three-year-old, presenting photos and childhood memories to support her assertion.
During her appearance on Monday’s March 27 broadcast, Faustyna reiterated her claims that she is indeed the British toddler who went missing back in 2007.
“About a year ago I started to research on the internet because I started to think that maybe I’m (a) missing child,” Faustyna said on the show.
“I thought in my life something is wrong here because my mother didn’t hug me, didn’t say, ‘I love you’ so it was a little suspicious to me.
“I want to know who I am, and I want to know if I am Madeleine McCann.”
Dr Phil challenged the 21-year-old regarding her beliefs, citing her mother’s claims that Faustyna is indeed her daughter.
“She said that but she hasn’t shown me any proof,” Faustyna replied.
Answers regarding Faustyna’s ancestry and identity are expected to come to light shortly after the woman submitted samples for DNA testing.
“If that result is consistent with your mother, that shows you are biologically related, what you will think then?” Dr Phil asked.
“I think that mothers should not do these things to their children,” Faustyna said.
“If she is my biological mother, I don’t want to have contact with her.
“But I believe she is not my mother.”
Dr Phil later compared side-by-side images of Madeleine and Faustyna, comparing the eyes and cheekbones of the pair, factors Faustyna has relied on to prove her claims.
“It’s a dimple, not a birthmark. You think you have a similar dimple?” Dr Phil asked while referring to the images.
“My picture when I was 17 years old, I had a dimple” Faustyna replied.
Dr Phil’s attempts to compare the two images to prove or disprove Faustyna’s assertions may have been in vain as Swiss software company AVA-X recently utilised its facial recognition technology to dismiss the woman’s claims.
The technology compared childhood and adult photos of Faustyna which resulted in a match. However, when her photos were compared with those of Maddie the technology found that “it is impossible that Julia is Maddie”, according to AVA-X CEO Christian Fehrlin who added that the “results were very clear”.
“In the case of Julia, her childhood photos were matched with her current face and also a current photo with a photo of Maddie,” Ferhlin told 7 News.
“The software has proven to be very accurate.
“We measure the distance of the faces.
“The distance was so great that it is 99 per cent impossible that Julia is the missing Maddie.
“The distance indicates how unlikely it is that two faces are the same person.”
Faustyna recent Dr Phil interview comes a month after she first took to social media saying “I think I can be Madeleine.”
“I don’t remember my childhood practically at all, but I do have a few memories,” she said.
“The earliest of these are vacations – I remember baby turtles (turtles hatch in May/June just from what I’ve read) and white apartment blocks, a bar where there was a performance by some ladies in costumes (folk costumes, I think, I don’t know), but I completely don’t recall my mother being there, for example, or my stepfather, much less my dad.
“I have a defect in my eye, in the same eye, the kind of defect Madeleine had.
“Except that in my case it’s faded more and more every year. I talked to the doctor and there is a possibility that this defect was operable, and so logically it seems to me that if someone kidnaps a child about whom everyone ‘trumpets’ that he has such a defect in the eye, it seems to me that such a kidnapper will do everything he can to remove or cover up such a defect.
“What I really need is the truth.”