Shannon Matthews: Karen Matthews’ Hair, Donovan’s Lair And Indira Swann
SHANNON WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Shannon Matthews
DAILY MIRROR (front page): “SHANNON’S HIDEAWAY”
A look at the room at Michael Donovan’s flat where Shannon Matthews lived in secret for 24 days.
Pages 4 and 5: “The dirty flat that was Shannon’s home for 24 days”
Look at the “THREADBARE CARPETS, DIRTY WALLS, TARRY FURNITURE…” It’s a “scruffy bedroom containing cheap wooden furniture.”
Amazing! This must the be the only flat not to boast a feature wall and a wet room.
Anything else?
An electronic keyboard and, bizarrely, a glue gun lie on top of a metal framed double bunk. Underneath there is a CD by Busted, one of Shannon’s favourite bands, and a leaflet giving details of a range of Sold Out action PC games.
Near a smoke alarm case there is a copy of Arrive Alive, a colourful highway code book for youngsters. The booklet gives children tips about planning their journeys. Ironically, it also tells how to make sure they know where they are going and recommends that they always choose the safest route.
“’LIES’ MUM IN COURT” – “Judge Peter Collier told her she will stand trial on November 11 alongside Michael Donovan, 39, who is charged with kidnapping and false imprisonment.”
DAILY STAR (front page): “SHANNON SECRET KIDNAP CELLS REVEALED”
Pages 4 and 5: “SHANNON’S SECRET LAIR”. It’s an “EXCLUSIVE” (see Mirror).
Our exclusive pictures were taken inside her uncle Michael Donovan’s £80,000 flat in Dewsbury, West Yorks, just a mile from her own house.
Any other facts?
Yesterday, Matthews appeared via videolink at Leeds Crown Court over offences relating to her daughter’s alleged abduction. She is being held on remand at New Hall Prison, near Wakefield, where she is said to be on suicide watch.
Matthews was shown in the videolink sitting behind a table wearing a blue T-shirt under a grey top and with her red hair hanging loose over her shoulders.
She spoke only to confirm her name and to say that she could hear the proceedings in court. Matthews has been charged with perverting the course of justice and child neglect. She is due to stand trial with Donovan on November 11.
THE SUN: “KIDS SAFETY GUIDE IN SHANNON ‘JAIL’”
Donovan’s home is a “rubbish strewn maisonette”
DAILY EXPRESS (front page): “Shannon’s mother on trial with man accused of kidnap”
“Shannon’s: Mother to go on trial with the man accused of abduction”
It is alleged that she “repeatedly concealed information in relation to the whereabouts of Shannon Matthews in interviews and other contacts with officers with the West Yorkshire Police and claimed to have no knowledge of her whereabouts”
There’s a picure of Michael Donovan’s second bedroom. The image in all newspapers is not of the room wher Shannon was found. This is not Shannon’s lair.
DAILY MAIL: “What these parents tell us about the value of the family – and the sneering Left that loves to attack it”
They opened the e-mail after they knew their beloved daughter was dead. Gregory and Louise Swann surely wept even more to read what Indira had written, not long before she was tragically killed, along with four other young women, in that terrible gap year crash in Ecuador.
The Mail is gawping at the parents of killed backpacker Indira Swann. Rather than being grieving parents Bel Mooney sees them as emblems of something more. Are you ready for another game of Anorak’s Tabloid Bingo? Eyes down…
The case of Shannon, whose mother Karen has seven children by five fathers, raises fundamental questions about different types of family life.
So, too, does that of 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, the teenager murdered in Goa in February after her mother, Fiona MacKeown, who has eight other children, went travelling…
Let’s repeat: poor little Shannon Matthews was definitely unlucky to be born into the wrong kind of family.
And Indira Swann, as her last email to her parents so poignantly shows, was blessed indeed to be born into the right kind of family.
Shannon Matthews: Compare and contrast
Posted: 17th, April 2008 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews, Tabloids Comments (6) | TrackBack | Permalink
