Shannon’s Mum in Court
The mother of schoolgirl Shannon Matthews will appear in court today to face charges relating to the disappearance of her nine year old daughter.
Karen Matthews, 32, was arrested at her home in Dewsbury on Sunday evening and will appear in Dewsbury Magistrates’ Court today accused of perverting the course of justice and child neglect.
Shannon went missing on 19th February and was last seen leaving school, her disappearance sparked a massive search which involved over 200 Police Officers and an additional 200 volunteers from the local community. On 13th March Shannon was found alive in the storage compartment of a divan bed, in a house belonging to a relative of her stepfather, just a mile from her home.
Since then Shannon has remained in the care of social services only seeing her Mother and stepfather briefly in the company of police. Last week stepfather Craig Meehan 22, was charged with pocessing indecent images of children and is awaiting trial although it is believed that these images do not relate to Shannon.
Peter Mann, spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said: “We have carefully considered all of the evidence in the file and decided there is sufficient evidence to charge Karen Matthews with perverting the course of justice and child neglect.
It is understood that Police are investigating similarities between the Shannon disapperance and a storyline in Channel 4 drama Shameless, which was screened a month before the schoolgirls disappearance. This related to claims made in several newspapers that people claiming to be representatives of the Matthews family approached Gerry and Kate McCann, parents of the missing Madeline McCann, for funding the search process.
A spokesman for her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, said they had received “a number of approaches” for aid from the Find Madeleine Fund from purported representatives of the Matthews family.
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