Posted by Last updated at 00:37am on 18th October 2007
Kate McCann believes she has been persecuted because she does not look like a typical mother, her family revealed yesterday.
The GP told relatives she has been portrayed as a bad parent because she is slim and does not look traditionally maternal.
In an astonishing outburst she told her mother: ‘If I weighed another two stone, had a bigger bosom and looked more maternal, people would be more sympathetic.’
Mrs McCann has faced five months of barbed comments about her composed appearance during the international manhunt to find her missing daughter Madeleine.
There were claims that Portuguese detectives first suspected she was involved in her daughter’s disappearance because their wives said she looked too controlled and did not weep enough to be the distraught mother of a missing child.
Yesterday her mother Susan Healy said the 39-year- old was “one of the most maternal people I know”.
She claimed Mrs McCann had fought to present ‘a brave face’ to the world but was ‘destroyed inside’ by her fears about missing Madeleine.
In a frank interview given to her local paper, the Liverpool Echo, Mrs Healy defended her daughter and son-in-law against claims that they left their children with four others, sedated them, and even wild allegations that Gerry McCann was not Madeleine’s biological father, which she described as ’scurrilous rubbish’.
She said Mrs McCann had been approached by strangers in the street berating her for being ‘out and about’ while Madeleine was still missing.
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Missing for 167 days: Madeleine McCann
“Kate does feel persecuted,” Mrs Healy, 61, said. “It’s important I let people know she is not this person who is in control all the time.
“She is a very sensitive, caring person and one of the most maternal people I know – she puts me to shame.
“Her life revolves around her children. But now she’s got to the point where she feels she is being persecuted if her twins, Sean and Amelie, cry in public – it’s absolutely crazy.
“All this stuff is going on inside my poor daughter who’s not done anything wrong.”
She added: “Kate just doesn’t understand why people have turned against her.
“She feels she’s being attacked because she isn’t crying every time she is pictured.
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Anguished: Kate’s parents Brian and Susan with Madeleine yellow ribbons
“She’s being targeted because she manages to put on a brave face. People say she has a stern look but inside she’s a wreck. My daughter has lost the most precious thing in her life and she is destroyed inside – we all are.”
Forensic psychologists are said to have analysed Mrs McCann’s demeanour at the request of Portuguese police.
Leaks from inside the investigation have claimed that her controlled public appearance, and even her carefully applied make-up, indicate a “cold and manipulative” personality.
Mrs Healy, of Allerton, Liverpool, said the couple admitted they were wrong to have left Madeleine and their twoyearold twins alone in their holiday apartment while they went out for dinner. But she insisted they were innocent of any crime, saying: “It was a terrible mistake but they did it out of naivety.”
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Haggard: Kate McCann this week
Mrs Healy categorically denied that the McCanns and their friends left seven of their children together in the holiday apartment, or that the couple had sedated any of their children.
“Kate and Gerry don’t like taking tablets themselves and the only thing they have ever given their children, if they were teething or had a temperature, is Calpol,” she said.
February 22nd, 2010 at 4:27 pm
No she looks like a narcissistic mother, who exercises obsessively, cares only about herself, how she looks, what people think of her and is your perfect attention seeker.
Gerry is the overt narcissist to Kate’s covert narcissism.
The complete psychopathic package.
July 5th, 2010 at 6:30 am
Let’s be honest here, it’s Kate’s cold, composed demeanour that made most of us suspicious in the first place.
And she can eff off if she thinks ‘not looking like a mother’ is what makes her look suspicious.
For one, how much of a fucking snob can she be?! It blows my mind how a family who, regardless of how it happened, lost a child, can manage to be such obnoxious snobs at every opportunity.
Not to mention, Shannon Matthews mother looked like the ‘typical mum’ Kate describes, a heavy, plain looking woman, and she was as relentlessly hounded once people realised her behaviour just wasn’t quite right for a mum with a missing kid- just like Kate’s.
It isn’t because you’re skinny you superficial, vain little bitch, dont dare imply people are accusing you of a crime because they’re jealous of you, it’s because you manage to slap on make up and perfectly style your hair the day after your child is supposedly abducted, and never once show any modicum of emotion other than cold, calculating blankness.
Shannon’s mother WAS GUILTY, proven, jailed, etc, and she managed to fucking cry for the cameras.
July 7th, 2010 at 8:35 am
I have no opinion of Kate at all, if she feels persecuted that’s her problem. I take issue with her Mother though. In stating that her daughter had not done anything wrong is, I think, strange. If I had left three children alone all under 4 years old and one was abducted, no matter how many times I stated that I went back to check, I would be prosecuted for abandoning my children.