Shannon Matthews: what future will she have?

[colonel]

Well Keith, for sheer scaremongering- this post really takes the biscuit!

Cared for children these days are placed with foster carers usually as soon as possible. Yes, usually within the same borough or county- but not in the same town to specifically prevent them from meeting their parents again. In this case, she will probably be fostered many miles away.

The aim is to get the child adopted ASAP, unless there are special circumstances where this would not work.

Expect Shannon to be currently [a] happy, miles from Dewsbury, [c] more middle-class than you could probably ever imagine and [d] adopted within 2 years.

Children's homes and other institutions have gone now, Keith- and thank God for that.

[BobB]

Errmm...

I think you will find that she was systematically drugged for the last 20 months (anti-depressants and sleeping pills) whilst her mother was neglecting her and her 6 siblings.
i suppose it depends on what you call 'abuse', but that fits into my definition!

[beutelwolf]

max_tranmere wrote:

> I feel very sorry for this 8 year old girl. Her mother,
> although nasty and clearly deserving of what 's coming her way,
> is about to spend a huge amount of time in jail, and the girl
> has to face so many people refering to her mother as 'evil'.

I doubt she'll get back to her mother again, after this.
Neither will her siblings.

[dynatech]

Far from being a let-down for the media, this sorry tale will keep them in 'prime-time tv specials' & special magazine/tabloid features for some time.

You can bet your bottom dollar that they won't identify the role that they have played in this though

[Jonone]

In the past there were films like 'Ace In The Hole' and 'The Sweet Smell Of Success' which exposed parts of the media for what they are - complicit. Watching the Mark Kermode interview with Angelina Jolie last week he praised a performance in which she played the wife of kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl. From 'All The Presidents Men', through Veronica Guerin and Daniel Pearl the portrayals of journalists have been as crusaders, righters of wrongs and principled martyrs. This may hold true for some, but for many this is a myth, and i'm not pointing the finger just at tabloid journalism here. 'Serious' journalism is equally guilty .

[max_tranmere]

I hope that the girl will be adopted by decent parents who she can regard as her own, and she can try to forget she ever had her other mother. That way she has a chance. I know people who were fostered or adopted and they usually take to the new parents so well that it is like they are their birth parents.

I do wonder how people like Karen Matthews end up like they do. It can't be poverty. She would have had a fortune in Benefits every week - for a house, for herself, and for the 7 kids (by 5 differnt men). She had a satelite TV system and she probably drank and smoked quite a lot (people like her always do). So she was hardly poor. She would likely have had some kind of cash-in-hand thing going on on the side aswell - quite common for people like that.

She (the mother) is a total chav. She is now going to spend years in the nick, and I wonder what she'll do when she gets out. Go back on Benefit for the rest of her life most likely. Incredible isnt it. She contributes nothing to society during her whole life, she takes probably more than ?1 million in Benefits and rent during her life. She will cost the country a fortune in prison costs, then at the end of her worthless life she will die - having spent her whole life taking and giving nothing.

[steve56]

Well said Max

[Jonone]

Max, there isn't an answer for why people make poor choices. One could speculate that in Karen Matthew's case you're looking at a cycle of deprivation but not the material deprivation you talk of. More an emotional and spiritual deprivation which inhibits the right (adaptive) kind of growth and development. Whether or not you choose to see it this way Karen Matthews is a victim too, although she's responsible for the choices she's made and their consequences.

Write her off if you must Max, but people can and do change and prison could be a positive intervention in this respect.

[Floydoid]

I'm sure that Shannon must be with a lovely family who will be able to provide for her everything she could previously only have dreamed of.

As for the so called mother, she can rot in hell for all I care.