Brit Award-winner Beverley Craven has revealed how her three daughters plan to have preventative double mastectomies after they were told they have a 50 per cent chance of getting breast cancer.
The 50-year-old singer-songwriter, who was named best newcomer in 1991 and found international fame with her breakthrough single Promise Me, was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer in 2005 and her sister, mother-of-four Kathy, is terminally ill with the disease.
After seeking advice from a gene counsellor, she has been told that her daughters Mollie, 21, Brenna, 18, and Connie, 16, stand a 50 per cent chance of getting breast cancer. Craven recalled: “They said to me that once they’ve had babies and breastfed them they will undergo double mastectomies.
“I think it’s really sad that until a cure is found for breast cancer, women at high risk have little choice but to mutilate themselves. My girls are very brave and sensible. It will be their choice and I won’t try to influence them but they have been inspired by Angelina Jolie’s decision.”
Jolie had the procedure after inheriting a rare gene mutation from her mother Marcheline Bertrand, who died from breast cancer in 2007.
Craven, who lives in Beaconsfield, added: “My sister, who was diagnosed in 2008, was given the all-clear when she had her double mastectomy because as far as the doctors were concerned, you remove the breast, you remove the problem. Actually, the cancer had already got into her blood and gone to her liver which is why she is now terminally ill.” Her cousin Sara died of the disease at 46 and Craven told the Daily Express: “If Sara hadn’t flagged it up for the rest of us I might be in an entirely different position now.”
