It’s sick to turn our Shannon’s trauma into a TV show, Sheridan
As Sheridan Smith stars in new BBC drama of schoolgirl ‘abducted’ by her mother, her furious grandparents say...
THERE was a time when, like any doting grandmother, June Matthews filled her home with framed photos of her granddaughter: the one of her in a primary school portrait, hair in a top knot, for example; or as a little girl, smiling, head to one side, standing in a garden of roses.
Yet today, none of these are on display in her small West Yorkshire bungalow. They have been gathered up and shut away, carefully hidden in a cupboard, consigned to the airtight darkness of a biscuit tin.
For June and her husband Gordon, such images are simply too painful to think about, let alone see every day. Because the child they once regarded as their own is Shannon Matthews, the little girl who ‘disappeared’ in the most extraordinary circumstances nearly ten years ago and has now been taken from them. Perhaps forever.
It was a destructive, humiliating saga: following a 24-day search in the town of Dewsbury, nine-year-old Shannon was found drugged, tethered and hidden beneath a bed. And the person responsible was none other than her own mother, Karen, June’s daughter.
As time passes, June and Gordon have done their best to forget, to shut
‘Shannon deserves to live her life in peace’
away these memories and concentrate on what they call ‘the good times’.
It is never easy and there are many tearful conversations, but right now that task must seem impossible because of a new BBC dramatisation of the whole sordid episode, which is forcing them to confront their waking nightmare once again.
On Tuesday, the corporation will broadcast The Moorside, a two-part series based on Shannon’s kidnap and Karen’s cruel deception.
The drama stars Bafta-winning actress Sheridan Smith as Karen’s friend Julie Bushby, while Game of Thrones actress Gemma Whelan plays Karen herself.
June and Gordon will not be watching a show they describe as not merely hurtful, but a disgrace.
‘Shannon deserves to live her life in peace. She deserves to be left alone,’ says June, 73.
‘What happened to her was a trauma, a tragedy. It is sick and disgusting that it is being turned into a TV show. It isn’t entertainment. It’s real life and it hasn’t even been ten years since it happened. If she sees it, Shannon is old enough now to understand that it is about her. She will know it is about the terrible things that happened to her. How is that fair?
‘It will upset her. They shouldn’t be dragging up the past and what happened. It should be left in the past. I’m very surprised that Sheridan Smith and actresses like that have agreed to take part.’
Sitting in the tiny front room where they moved after Karen’s arrest, Gordon, 75, adds his voice. ‘I won’t have that programme on in this house,’ he says. ‘What they’re doing isn’t right. The poor love. She should be left alone to forget.’
Insult was added to injury, they say, when they received a letter from the production company behind the BBC programme asking them to pass on a letter to Karen, explaining she was to be one of the characters in the drama. ‘We haven’t seen or spoken to Karen since she was arrested,’ says Gordon, incredulous.
‘That letter has been sitting in the kitchen cupboard for weeks. We don’t know why they sent it to us and we haven’t known what to do with it.’
Karen served four years of her eight-year sentence and was given a new identity on her release in April
‘June and Gordon are the forgotten victims’
2012. Now aged 40, she is unemployed and living alone in southern England.
Shannon, now 18, was completely removed from her family, even the grandparents who did so much to bring her up, and today lives under a new identity. In many ways, June and Gordon are the forgotten victims of Karen’s scheme to stage Shannon’s disappearance, then claim a reward.
Gordon’s health has deteriorated badly. He has lost almost three stones in weight and has been in and out of hospital, with anxiety leaving him without an appetite. June, his wife of nearly 50 years, puts it down to the stress of everything that happened during those terrible months in 2008 and all they’ve endured since.
Gordon sits quietly, close to tears, while June gets up to busy herself
with the washing up. The two were particularly close to Shannon, the second of Karen’s seven children by five different fathers.
Karen had been judged incapable of looking after her daughter long before the fake kidnapping plot. Indeed, when she was newly born, June and Gordon happily stepped in to look after her, taking Shannon into their home as soon as she came out of hospital.
‘We had a call from a social worker,’ says June. ‘We were asked if we could look after Shannon. Of course we welcomed her. We looked after her for the first few months of her life, until it was time for her to go back to Karen. Her first days, weeks and months were with us. She was very special to us.’
There was a spare room and bunk beds covered in brightlycoloured spreads where, over the years, their grandchildren would often sleep. Next door was a toy room, filled with dolls and teddy bears. Their home, they say, became a sanctuary for Shannon and her siblings, a safe haven away from their difficult home life with Karen.
‘They stayed with us all the time,’ recalls Gordon. ‘We loved having all the grandkids in the house. They were always happy here. They brought us a lot of joy.’
June adds: ‘We would often walk up to the park with Shannon in the afternoons. I always made her home-cooked food and bought her new clothes. Her favourite was my beef stew.’
It made Shannon’s disappearance in February 2008, apparently on her way home from a swimming lesson, all the more distressing – an ordeal that became even harder to bear when the police ransacked their home in the hunt for the missing girl. They had found a speck of blood on some of Gordon’s clothes, the result of a simple nick to the cheek while shaving. As a result, the clothes were taken away and their house searched from top to bottom. They felt accused, embarrassed and, above all, sick with worry. ‘As the days went by, we became more and more concerned,’ says June. ‘I would wake in the night, thinking I’d heard her tap on the door. I prayed for her to turn up at our home. I went to church and prayed for her safe return. I cried in bed every night. Then, more than three weeks into the search, came news: Shannon had been found alive in the home of Michael Donovan, the uncle of Karen’s boyfriend, Craig Meehan. For Shannon’s grandparents, the initial, overwhelming emotions were of joy and relief. ‘It was so unexpected,’ June recalls. ‘The police had told us the longer she was missing, the more likely it was she was dead. We just couldn’t believe it – when they found her, it was the best feeling in the world.’ With Karen talking to the police, social workers brought Shannon’s younger brother and sister, who still lived with their mother at the time, to the comfort of their grandparents’ house. They were dirty, hungry and tired, so June set about looking after them – with baths, clean clothes and supper. She was told they would be staying with her for three days. It was not long, however, before the joy turned to despera- tion. Later that night, as the truth of Karen’s behaviour started to emerge under questioning, the children were taken back into local authority care.
June and Gordon never saw Shannon or her siblings again.
‘The children were crying, saying, “No nana, I don’t want to go. I want to stay here, nana”,’ says June. ‘We just wanted them safe with us, in their old room. We thought Shannon was going to be brought straight round when she was found, but it never happened.’
Later, it emerged that Karen had planned Shannon’s kidnap after seeing the Madeleine McCann case on the news. With complete disregard for her well-being, she had kidnapped and concealed Shannon, holding her captive in the base of a divan bed, drugged and tethered to a roof beam by a makeshift noose and strap.
The plan was to later release the little girl in Dewsbury market, have Donovan ‘find’ her, and claim the £50,000 reward money offered for her safe return.
On December 4, 2008, Karen Matthews and Michael Donovan were found guilty of kidnapping, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice. Both were sentenced to eight years in prison.
Karen wrote to her parents from her prison cell, asking them to visit her and blaming the whole kidnap plot on her former boyfriend, Craig Meehan, who was later convicted of possessing indecent images of children. ‘I am so sorry,’ she wrote. ‘I miss you both so much. Please help me mum and dad, I should not be in this place.’
As recently as December, she publicly begged for her parents’ forgiveness, saying, ‘I love my mum and dad and I miss them. I would hate to lose them before I had the chance to say, “Sorry.”’
But for June and Gordon, there is no redemption. ‘What Karen did to Shannon is unforgivable,’ says Gordon. ‘That poor mite, that poor girl.
‘And what she put us through almost killed us. She knew the police had searched our house, she knew what was happening and she didn’t say anything. I can’t forgive her. She is dead to me.’
June agrees: ‘She is our daughter at the end of the day. But I won’t forgive her. I can’t.’
When the case concluded, June and Gordon had hoped to care for Shannon and her siblings themselves, but when they went to court they were told they were too old. As a result, they have lost not only their daughter, but their grandchildren too.
Today, all they have is the occasional update from social services.
‘I was shown a picture recently. She looked beautiful.’
Indeed, they have come to accept that it was for the best that Shannon was adopted by a family outside of the Dewsbury Moor area and given a new life and a new identity.
But the pain of losing her is no easier to bear.
‘We think of her every day,’ says June. ‘God love her. But I know she’s had a happy nine years and will have a good life.’
After all they have been through, she says, it is not much to ask that the family are left alone.
‘We want to think of all the good memories and remember the lovely times when they were little.’
Gordon looks away for a moment, then turns back, tears shining in his eyes.
‘My one wish is that, when she is old enough to understand what happened properly, she will come and knock on that door,’ he says. ‘But I fear it will be too late and I won’t be here to see her. I will be up there in heaven, looking down on her.’
‘I can’t forgive her, she is dead to me’