Fiona MacKeown’s Benefits Fraud Linked To Daughter Scarlett’s Rape And Murder
FIONA MacKeown has been charged with benefit fraud. When Fiona MacKeown’s daughter Scarlett Keeling was raped and murdered in Goa, the voracious media examined the mother.
The Mail’s writers queued up to suggest that Keating’s lifestyle was in some way complicit in her daughter’s death:
“Sorry, but I blame Scarlett’s mother,” said Allison Pearson on the Mail’s front page.
Keith Waterhouse gave us:
A family of eight, living entirely on benefit allowances, managed to get as far as Goa for an extended holiday, where one of their number was murdered.
In his – oh, the irony – eponymous column, the Sun’s Jon Gaunt whined:
“Let’s not beat about the bush, Fiona MacKeown is an irresponsible mother… Fiona is typical of the kind of mother who wants everything and sees her kids as an inconvenience that can be palmed off at any excuse – she’s a clear example of the ME, ME, ME generation.”
Fiona MacKeown was not dumb and feckless. She was self-aware:
“I have nine children which makes you strong and there has been a lot to do. When I have nothing to do but think – it’s very hard. She really fought for her life and I think about that all the time.”
How does she feel about all the criticism of her for leaving Scarlett?
“I’m not surprised, really. Look at what’s been said about Madeleine McCann’s mother, and she is the picture of elegance.”
Sarah Sands writing in the Indy, brought the media to the centre of the story:
Perhaps it was negligent to pull children out of school for six months to go travelling, but Fiona MacKeown was only following the advice of Times columnist Mary Ann Sieghart.
Sands gave us this gem:
Similarly, I do not share the distaste of many journalists for Fiona MacKeown’s hippy appearance. She has a calm beauty and resembles Charlotte Rampling in some photographs. Scrubbed up a bit, the whole family could appear in a Calvin Klein advertisement. The children with their tousled hair and burnished bodies laughing on a beach with their carefree mother. It would be an alpha ideal if they had a few million in the bank and a Bryanston education.
The rape and murder of a teenage girl became a debating point:
“’Why I, as a parent, refuse to condemn Scarlett Keeling’s mother’ – You have to trust youngsters at some point, says Cassandra Jardine, who has two teenage girls of her own.”
Now the Mail tells readers:
Goa murder girl’s mother is charged over £50k benefits fiddle
Is the rape and murder of a teen linked to benefit fraud?
Fiona MacKeown, 44, is accused of obtaining £51,401of income support by deception. The charge relates to a three-year period between February 2005 and March 2008 – the month after Scarlett’s body was discovered on a beach in Anjuna in the Indian state.
Coincidence?
Scarlett Keeling: Her mother is accused of obtaining £51,401 of income support by deception during a three-year period between February 2005 and March 2008…
MacKeown, who is now breeding dogs and growing willow trees with a view to making fence panels from the branches, said they related in part to her continuing to claim income support and child benefit after the family left the UK to travel in India.
‘I don’t fully understand the charges against me but my solicitor is confident the amount I am accused of falsely claiming can be reduced. I didn’t realise when I went to India that I had to declare I was going away.’
This is one for the courts to rule on. Or Mail readers, who who show fair people can be:
The only person responsible for her childs death is her fo abandoning her.
Poor Scarlet ,she’d still be alive now if she’d of had a decent mother unlike Fiona Mackeown. Blight on this country are types like her.
who on earth would leave a 15yr old in the care of a stranger,much less agree to her going out with a man some ten yrs older,never mind benefit charge’s she ought to be charged with child neglect.
In other news not in today’s Mail, “Nearly £5million of NHS Suffolk’s budget is wasted every year on throwing away unused medicines”.
Now read on…
Posted: 19th, November 2009 | In: Reviews Comments (10) | TrackBack | Permalink
