Daily Mirror: MAXINE CARR GETS BOOB JOB ON NHS

EXCLUSIVE She says small chest makes her depressed

By Emily Cook And David Willetts

Maxine Carr is planning to have her shrinking breasts enlarged on the NHS.

The former fiancee of Soham child killer Ian Huntley has convinced doctors that she must have the £3,000 operation. She has said she is depressed because her boobs are too small.

But Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "This is disgusting. Why should hard working families foot the bill for this woman's plastic surgery?

"Taxpayers' money is meant to be spent on people who need and deserve help, not on criminals who never spared a thought for wider society when they committed their crimes."

Advertisement
As a teenager, Carr used to proudly flaunt her large breasts at boozy parties. She had a bee tattooed on one of them and flashed them at a karaoke night in a pub.

She was jailed for 42 months in 2002 for perverting the course of justice when she lied to cover-up Huntley's murder of 10-year-old friends Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells. She is known to have suffered from eating disorders and lost her shapely figure. Former classroom assistant Carr, 31, was freed half way through her jail sentence and was given a new identity.

It was reported that she was turned down for a boob job in 2004.

But now doctors have approved her operation on medical grounds as they would have to for other potential cosmetic surgery patients.

She is likely to have argued that the surgery would help restore her confidence, make her less prone to stress and improve her relationships with men.

Carr got engaged in January to her boyfriend of two years and is due to marry later this year.

Sources said she has lost so much weight she is stick thin. As the pounds dropped off, Carr has been upset at being left almost flat-chested.

Evil murderer Huntley, 34, who was caretaker at Jessica and Holly's school in Soham, Cambs, where Carr also worked, is serving a double life sentence.

He was in "monster mansion" Wakefield jail in West Yorks but has now been transferred to Frankland prison in Co Durham.

Last year more than 1,400 breast augmentation operations were carried out on the NHS in England. To qualify for surgery on the Health Service, patients must meet specific criteria set out by their local health authority.

They will normally need a referral from a GP. And they will then have a consultation with a plastic surgeon and an assessment by a psychiatrist, or psychologist.

Doctors will then give the green light if they feel there is enough social, psychological or physical benefit to be gained from surgery.

LIFE & CRIME

December 17, 2003: Ian Huntley is found guilty of murdering Soham girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and given two life sentences. Maxine Carr gets three-and-a-half years for conspiring to pervert course of justice.

May 14, 2004: Carr freed after 21 months (most of it on remand before the verdict) and given new identity.

July 22, 2004: Carr's mum Shirley Capp, jailed for six months for intimidating a witness in Soham trial.

February 2005: High Court grants an order protecting Carr's new identity permanently.