Detectives sat down yesterday afternoon with Shannon Matthews, the abducted
schoolgirl, to begin the painstaking task of asking her to reconstruct her
missing 24 days.
Shannon is being cared for by foster parents who earlier allowed her to watch
some of her favourite DVDs, including Shrek, and gave her a kitten to play
with.
“She is on the road to recovery,” said a police spokesman.
The future of the nine-year-old will be discussed by social services chiefs
later this week. She has been made the subject of an emergency protection
order and is likely to be placed on the Child Protection Register for at
least two years.
Her mother Karen, 32, has another six children by five different fathers.
Shannon allegedly ran away from home last month amid claims from other
family members that her mother’s latest boyfriend, Craig Meehan, 22, a
fishmonger, had hit her.
Mother and daughter had a “reunion” of sorts at the hospital where Shannon was
held overnight for tests before being released into care yesterday. A
neighbour who had spoken to Matthews said that she had not been allowed to
cuddle or communicate with her daughter but had been called in by police to
identify her. She had seen Shannon through a two-way mirror and the girl was
not aware her mother was there.
Karen Matthews said: “When I first saw Shannon again I was overwhelmed – I
just couldn’t stop crying, knowing she’s back where she belongs and she’s
safe.
“I never gave up hope and now she’ll be able to come home and sleep in her
room again. We’ve got her new pink bedding which she’ll love.”
However, social workers may now decide to place her away from such a
dysfunctional family. The domestic set-up is further complicated by the fact
that the man accused of abducting Shannon is Meehan’s uncle.
The female officers, accompanied by a child psychologist and a social worker,
will spend time gently talking to Shannon in an interview suite designed to
look like a classroom.
Everything Shannon says will be captured on tape and video to save her from
the possible further trauma of having to give evidence in court.
Detective Superintendent Andy Brennan, from West Yorkshire police’s homicide
and major inquiry team, who led the search, is likely to watch much of the
interview “live” on a CCTV screen.
The police officers will be trying to coax information about her ordeal, using
the details of any television programmes she was allowed to watch to try to
construct a timeline.
Mike Hames, a former head of the paedophile unit at Scotland Yard, said
yesterday: “This is going to take quite a long time to unravel. She may,
when confronted with where she’s been, just clam up.
“Although she’s very bubbly and bright at the moment, it could be that
bringing her back to the time when she went missing might have an adverse
effect on her – so we’ll have to wait and see.”
One objective will be to try to ascertain whether the man accused of abducting
Shannon molested her or tried to set himself up as a surrogate “father”.
Paul Drake, 39, who had changed his name by deed poll to Michael Donovan, is
believed to have dressed Shannon in the clothes of his own daughters.
He and Shannon were found concealed in the storage compartment of a bed at
lunchtime on Friday after police used a battering ram to break down the door
of his flat less than a mile from Shannon’s home in Dewsbury.
Neighbours said that Shannon looked “well dressed and cared for” when she was
carried out by a detective. One said she had heard a child’s laughter coming
from the flat.
Neighbours also said that Drake, who had lived in the flat for four years, had
become withdrawn, “scruffy” and “weird” after his wife Susan was granted
sole custody of their two girls, Chloe, 12, and Kylie, 10.
Yesterday a police forensic team removed a computer and other items from the
flat.
Drake had still not been formally interviewed by detectives yesterday
afternoon. Police sources said his mental state was being “assessed”. His
sister Alice Meehan, 49, claimed that he had abducted a child before – his
own daughter.
“I can’t believe he, my own brother, had Shannon. It feels like he has brought
shame on our family. I have great mixed feelings because he is family and
he’s done this,” she said.
“We think he’s done this because he lost his own children three years ago
after a bitter split from his wife . . . He had custody of the kids but was
eventually deemed unfit because he was not looking after them properly. He
now no longer sees Chloe and Kylie. This killed him.”
She told how Drake was arrested in 2004 when, affected by his children being
taken away, he took his older daughter Chloe out of school when she was nine
and off to Blackpool.
“The police tracked him down at a hotel and brought him back. He spent the
night in a cell and was then told he should never make contact with his
children,” his sister said.
“As far as I’m aware there was never any criminal conviction. I’m sure there’s
no way he would have hurt her. He only took Shannon because he was missing
his kids”.
The family say they never understood why Drake, who claimed disability
allowance for mental issues, changed his name as he would not reveal why.
His sister added: “Our dad kept asking him until his dying day, last November,
but he would never say why. Dad always called him Paul.”
Caroline Meehan, the sister of Karen Matthews’s boyfriend, said: “When they
said the address on the television where Shannon had been found, we just
knew it was him.
“He hadn’t been in touch for the whole time that Shannon’s been missing and
even though he keeps himself to himself it seemed strange. We know he was on
the list for the police to go and see.”
Stephen Bold, 38, who had an on-off relationship with Drake’s former wife,
said he used to look after Chloe when she was a baby.
He said: “[Drake] wasn’t that bothered about his own kids and didn’t seem to
want them. I offered to take Chloe because I love kids.”
Neil Hyett, 36, a coach driver who is married to another of Craig Meehan’s
sisters, Amanda, said he was annoyed that he had not considered Drake as a
suspect before. He revealed that he and his wife “were at one point in the
process of fostering his children”.
Three of Shannon’s half-brothers and half-sisters were yesterday being cared
for by Petra Jamieson, a friend and neighbour. She said: “It’s going to be
chaos over the next few days, everybody wanting to see her, to give her a
cuddle, just jab her in the shoulder to make sure she’s real and that it is
actually her that’s coming home.”
Social workers must now decide if this is a “home” that Shannon should be
returning to, especially as her extended family appear to have a cavalier
attitude as to who cares for whose children.
Lesley Perman-Kerr, a psychologist who has worked with kidnap victims for more
than a decade, said that what happened to Shannon would take an immense
amount of “tender loving care” to overcome.
“I imagine the family is feeling a bit stunned and Shannon might be feeling
disoriented, thinking everything seems a bit unreal. People can feel
emotionally numb after an abduction and many feel uncertain about what will
happen next,” she said.
Karen Matthews’s own words may be a telling factor in the decision. She has
repeatedly said that she believed someone who knew her had snatched her
daughter to hurt her. But she never pointed a finger at Drake and social
workers may be left with the lasting impression that Shannon is still in
danger.
Shannon is one of an estimated 3.8m children in Britain living below the
poverty line. But the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a social research charity,
said that Shannon’s family problems could not be blamed on poverty.
“I am sure dysfunctional families exist across all strata of poverty and
affluence,” a spokesman said.
West Yorkshire police said: “Interviewing Shannon may bea long process but
throughout this inquiry our main focus has been and continues to be her
welfare.
“We have therefore taken the decision that, for now, it is in Shannon’s best
interests that she be made the subject of an emergency police protection
order.
“This will remain in place until we have had time to establish the full facts
of what happened in the time since her disappearance.”
The police emergency protection order is for 72 hours and could be extended
for another seven days. Shannon may be protected for a longer period if the
local authority starts care proceedings.
Sheila Fearnley, a child psychologist, said: “If Shannon went willingly with
her abductor because she knew him, she could have problems trusting adults.
“She may not be sure where to turn in times of need. Children are very
resilient but I would suggest that she and the whole family need expert
guidance, support and help.”
Additional reporting: Brendan Montague
Epic hunt that led to a dingy flat a mile away from kidnap girl's home
When Shannon Matthews vanished in broad daylight on her way home from a school
swimming lesson in Dewsbury on February 19, West Yorkshire police launched
their biggest investigation since the Yorkshire Ripper case in the 1970s,
writes David Leppard.
Alerted by a 999 call from her mother, detectives learnt that Shannon had
spoken of running away. Such talk would probably have to be discounted, they
feared: the freckle-faced nine-year-old had never gone missing before.
As with the murder of 13-year-old Milly Dowler, abducted on her way home from
school in Surrey in 2002, the urgency of their task was driven by a simple
fact: the longer Shannon was missing, the more likely it was that she had
been murdered.
Sir Norman Bettison, the chief constable, made the case his highest priority:
300 officers were assigned to the search – 10% of his force’s operational
strength.
In all missing person inquiries involving children, suspicions soon fall on
family members. Officers began by interviewing members of Shannon’s
immediate family and then widened their inquiry to her extended family.
Reports that her stepfather Craig Meehan, 22, had hit her were discounted.
Defending the amount of time taken to find Shannon just one mile from her
home, a police source said that the investigation had involved “hundreds of
people” in a “huge family network”.
Officers began a trawl of registered sex offenders: there are an estimated
1,400 living within 25 miles of the spot where Shannon was last seen.
More than 200 homes within a half-mile radius of the Matthews’s home were
searched. Half the police sniffer dogs in England and Wales capable of
picking up the scent of bodies were brought in to scour the area.
Karen Matthews said that the disappearance of Shannon had made her question
her trust for her friends and family.
Her instincts turned out to be right. On Friday police battered down the door
of a dingy flat in Lidgate Gardens just a mile from where she disappeared.
They found Shannon alive and unhurt in the base of a bed. Hiding in an
adjacent compartment was Paul Drake, 39, uncle of Meehan.
