Hardly pertinent to the case....

The reaction of the media has been strangely different from that of the photogenic child of professional parents

'Missing children and the media: The wrong kind of family?

The case of Shannon Matthews, the missing nine-year-old from Dewsbury, has developed a cruel overtone: an unspoken suggestion that, because of their lifestyles, her family deserve not our pity but our censure

There is growing disquiet that other questions, posed by the media, have gone far beyond necessity and lifted the lid on an uncomfortable hypocrisy in British society. Yesterday, Ms Matthews, 32, and her partner, Craig Meehan, gave an interview to BBC Radio 4's Today programme about how they have coped during the three-week hunt for the missing schoolgirl.

Some 90 seconds into the interview, the presenter, Sarah Montague, sought to clarify why it was possible Shannon could have been unhappy and run away from the family home on the Dewsbury Moor council estate – a ramshackle but robustly proud community that even the local vicar describes as "an area of acute social deprivation".

Ms Montague said: "Perhaps we should explain. It's a slightly complicated family picture you have, isn't it? You've got seven children, by six fathers?"...

Ms Matthews, a woman who her friends say has barely slept for the last three weeks and spends a part of every day in uncontrollable tears, could conceivably have answered in a number of ways. She might have asked what relevance such an inquiry had to the hunt for her daughter, who disappeared on the afternoon of 19 February while making her way home from a school swimming lesson. Incredulity, anger or a resigned silence may also have been expected.

Instead, she quietly gave the correct number of previous partners with whom she has had a child: "Five."'

The Independent


I celebrate that this child has been found alive and echo the statement of Lyn Costello, co-founder of Mothers Against Murder and Aggression (Mamaa), which campaigns on behalf of victims of violence, who said: "It is a truth that few people want to admit to but the amount of publicity and sympathy you get if you are the victim of a terrible crime in this country depends on your social status. The question asked of Karen Matthews about the numbers of her children and their fathers is very typical. How is that in any sense relevant to what has happened to Shannon?"