Shannon's mother jailed for 8 years

12 April 2012

The mother of Shannon Matthews has been jailed for eight years for her role in the kidnap of her own daughter.

Karen Matthews, 33, of Moorside Road, Dewsbury Moor, West Yorkshire, was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court after being found guilty last month of kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice.

Her former partner's uncle, Michael Donovan, 40, was convicted of the same offences and was also jailed for eight years. Shannon was found in Donovan's flat in Lidgate Gardens, Batley Carr, West Yorkshire, 24 days after she went missing in February last year.

The judge, Mr Justice McCombe, said: "The offences that you committed were truly despicable. It is impossible to conceive how you could have found it in you to put this young girl through the ordeal that you inflicted upon her.

"It is incomprehensible that you could have permitted your friends, neighbours and in your case, Matthews, even your children to sacrifice time and energy in extensive searches for the supposedly missing child."

The judge said it was doubtful Matthews and Donovan could have planned and carried out the kidnap without other people.

He added that he would not draw a distinction between the two of them in their sentences.

He said: "In my judgment, their culpability is the same. In saying that, having regard to their low intellect, as emerged in evidence at trial and in the pre-sentence reports, it must be doubtful whether they could have conceived or continued these offences without the assistance or connivance of others.

"The pre-sentence report in Matthews' case comments that neither defendant seems to have the cognitive ability to devise and orchestrate such an elaborate offence with any degree of likelihood of success."

The judge said that although Shannon was not physically harmed during the time she spent at Donovan's flat, her experience must have been "highly disturbing". But he said a report about Shannon after the kidnap stated she was "disturbed and traumatised and frightened" after her ordeal.

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