Kate McCann: 'I'm being persecuted because of my looks'

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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"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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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.