Julia Faustyna, Wandelt or Wendell? Woman claiming to be Madeleine McCann goes by 3 different surnames
LONDON, ENGLAND: The identity of a woman claiming to be Madeleine McCann has been called into question as she released a series of claims to draw the attention of concerned authorities in the hope they will test her DNA. This especially so since there is some confusion about her surname and the family she currently belongs to.
Julia Faustyna, who has also been identified by outlets as Julia Wendell and Julia Wandelt, started posting videos and pictures of herself online while sharing her belief she might be the missing daughter of Kate and Gerry McCann, who disappeared in Portugal in May 2007, when she was just three years old.
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What's her real name?
While most outlets and social media discussions are referring to the woman as Polish native "Julia Faustyna," some have also identified her as Julia Wendell and Julia Wandelt. Her claims that she might be Madeleine are being scrutinized by sleuths on social media, sparking discussions and debates across various platforms. One Reddit thread titled "Thoughts on Julia Faustyna" asked users for their respective opinions on the legitimacy of Julia's claims. "What does everyone think about this girl claiming there’s a possibility she’s Madeleine?" Redditor @u/GurGroundbreaking473 posted. "I just can’t see it. I mean don’t get me wrong a lot of things make sense and she’s definitely been through some shit but I just can’t see it being true that she’s Maddy."
Fellow Redditors chimed in with their two cents, with one pointing out the discrepancies in her reported name and identity. "I find it odd, that she goes by so many different surnames - I’ve found Julia Faustyna, Julia Wendell, and Julia Wandelt," user @LoudChallenge3536 wrote. "The latter came up with some very interesting results on Facebook, and you can clearly see, that she cherrypicks the comparison pictures because every other one doesn’t even remotely look like Madeleine." They added, "And her YouTube channel is Madeleine McCann, which is pretty distasteful. I hope she’s ready for the backlash when the truth comes out, but she obviously needs help. She’s also a singer and model, although not very popular as that though. But she’s raking in followers now, seems very convenient."
Julia compared her physical appearance with images used in the search for Madeleine. “I think I can be Madeleine,” she said. “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." She said she remembers "practically nothing from my childhood," which she attributes to post-traumatic amnesia as a result of being allegedly sexually abused by a pedophile. Julia has not identified the perp but claimed to recognize the facial composite image 4B from the Find Madeleine website.
'I do have a few memories'
She also claimed her family rarely discussed her childhood abuse and that her abuser is her grandmother's second husband who is not well-liked in the family. “During the therapy, I started to analyze a lot, reflect and ask a lot of uncomfortable questions to my family, until at one point my mother couldn’t stand the barrage of questions and cut me off from therapy beginning in 2021,” she said. “I do have a few memories. The earliest of these are vacations. But I completely don’t recall my mother being there, for example, or my stepfather, much less my dad." She added, "Apparently, a medical university student in Wroclaw (Poland) testified that he saw Madeleine McCann, a few days after her abduction, in Wroclaw. I happened to live in Wroclaw all the time and have only been living in another city for a year.”
Julia also said she was trying to get authorities in the UK and Poland to probe her claim. “I think I can be Madeleine. I need a DNA test,” she said on Instagram. “Police investigators from UK and Poland try to ignore me. I will tell my story in posts here. Help me.” In her latest post on Monday, February 20, Julia revealed that Kate and Gerry McCann had agreed to a DNA test. The embattled couple, from Leicestershire, lost their daughter in an abduction on the night of May 3, 2007, when she went missing from her bed while on a holiday in the town of Praia da Luz in Portugal. Madeleine was three years old at the time, which means she would be 19 years old if she were alive today.