THE DEWSBURY MEDIA WITCH TRIAL - Karen Matthews & Michael Donovan

The Middle Ages are famous for witch trials, in which Christian paranoia turned against vulnerable members of its community (usually spinsters and eccentrics), accusing them of complicity with the Devil, and the victims were tortured and, unable to prove their innocence, were duly convicted and burned at the stake, like human sacrifices, for the pleasure and recruitment of the Church and the mob. But in the course of time, the evolution of talent, and our experience of self-government, took over, and this sort of thing disappeared.

Until now. After thirty years of Mrs Thatcher's free capitalism, and on the cusp of a massive credit crunch that was caused by her fake housing economy, in which she sold off council housing at way below the market prices and swung the public housing market to house buying, we have the witch hunts back again. And it is not the Church that sanctions them now, but mob media pressure and the paedophile craze, both of which have Thatcherism and television for its origins. We are living in an age of free persecution and paranoia.

The media images of Karen Matthews taken during the public disappearance of her daughter and her arrest bear a striking resemblance to that of a startled rabbit caught in a car's headlamps. She looks like someone astonished by something unexpected and very large and imposing. She looks frightened and amazed.

The prosecution case at her trial in November 2008 is based on the unlikely contention that mother Karen Matthews and her co-defendant Michael Donovan conspired to kidnap her daughter Shannon (aged 9) and hide her away in his flat so that they could extort reward money from the media by releasing her in a pretence of discovery.

However the charges are surely thoughtless. The charge of kidnapping cannot apply to a mother except as a legal technicality in very unusual circumstances, and it cannot apply to a man who has been asked to keep her daughter in his flat at the mother's behest and agreement, except in a custody dispute where its value would be less. Furthermore, the charge that they "kidnapped" her daughter in order to extort reward money from the media is not appropriate, because there wasn't any reward money when Karen Matthews announced the disappearance of her daughter, and they had no reason to expect any. The reward money emerged as part of the media storm that this situation unleashed.

If the co-defendants subsequently hoped to exploit the reward money opportunity, this is only consistent with the example set by their peers on television and in government everywhere, and their motive for delaying Shannon's public reappearance would include the embarrassment and danger of the situation that they had found themselves trapped in.

Concealing one's daughter from the media is not kidnapping surely, and neither is misinforming the police as to her whereabouts (that is just wasting police time).

Michael Donovan's plea of Not Guilty accepted the charge of kidnapping by claiming that Karen Matthews had forced him to keep her daughter in his flat, and that he was frightened of her (his situation in custody was frightening).

Karen Matthews's plea of Not Guilty also accepted the charge of kidnapping by claiming that she knew nothing about Shannon's whereabouts, but witnesses report that she was entirely relaxed about the situation while her daughter was missing, and Donovan is not likely to implicate her if she were not involved, and she implicated everyone in the family except herself.

The truth of the matter seems to have been given by Matthews herself when she was arrested, and by the witness Amanda Hyett. Matthews told the police that she had asked Donovan to keep Shannon in his flat in an initiative to help her get away from her present housemate Craig Meehan, while Hyett, Meehan's sister, reported that Matthews and Donovan had been lovers and that Matthews had meant to move in with Donovan. The announcement of Shannon's disappearance occurred when Matthews changed her mind, and it was to cover her tracks. If this were the case, then once the media had got involved, they would have been trapped in the situation that is the subject of this trial.

This explanation is plausible, if eccentric, since Donovan had already had experience of bringing up children as a father himself, and when the social services had taken one of his children into care he took the child back as he disapproved of it, which indicates a responsible concern for his child. The prosecution at the trial included this incident in its case and used it as a precedent for their "abduction" charge. It is common practise in pretentious prosecutions to snaffle points that count in the defendant's favour to disarm their defence in this way.

Furthermore, Karen Matthews had had seven children by five different fathers, and so, having had one by Meehan (who was also 10 years her junior), it would logically be time for another change of potential father.

So was this the truth? The algebra of the equation suggests that it is. The algebra of action and reaction, or of cause and effect, has the co-defendants responding to an apparently pretentious prosecution with a pretentious defence in which they have turned against each other, each accusing the other, while according to the sister of Craig Meehan they had been lovers previously, so that their reaction against the prosecution is the opposite of their relationship before, just as their defence in each case is the opposite of the prosecution. The common factors in these symmetrical reversals are the pretence factor and the malice factor, which have arisen from the prosecution and passed inwards through the defence.

...Where it rebounded on Donovan in jail when a prisoner attacked him and fractured his jaw during the prosecution case of the trial.

During the days leading to the discovery of Shannon, Karen Matthews had begun to tell the media that someone close to the family might have taken her, and that it was to "get back at her". This undermines the prosecution claim that the two had concealed Shannon for the reward money, since this would have undermined any plan for Donovan to "discover" her and take the reward money. Donovan was Craig Meehan's uncle.

In their case against Donovan, the prosecution used little Shannon's terror when the police entered the flat to incriminate Donovan, who was hiding under the bed with the child. They were hiding from the police, and a more likely cause of the girl's fear would have been the arrival of the police, because they smashed their way in through the front door.

Shannon was discovered in Donovan's flat when neighbours reported to the police that they could hear a child's footfalls in there, and witnesses also reported hearing a child's laughter in the flat.

One point of the prosecution case was that Shannon was kept in the flat in a drugged state, there being traces of the sedative temazepam in her hair. However this point is immaterial as the evidence showed that the child had been taking these for months before her media disappearance. Apparently children are often given sleep inducing drugs these days.

Another aspect of the prosecution case was evidence of a list of rules for Shannon to observe, witten neatly on notepaper, which included instructions not to thump her feet on the floor and not to have the TV above a certain volume level. These indicate that Donovan had the girl's co-operation during her stay in the flat, the purpose of these instructions being to minimize the risk of neighbours hearing her inside the flat.

In conjunction with this evidence was a bizarre elastic strap, tied to a roof beam in the loft and which stretched down through the loft hatch with a loop on the end, which the prosecution alleges was used to tether Shannon and restrict her movements inside the flat. At the trial Donovan denied having any knowledge of it, claiming that he was not able to get into the loft, and neighbours understood that he was not steady on his legs. The function of this strap was clearly to restrict movement inside the flat, but it would have no practical use in relation to the list of rules, for it would increase the risk of rebellious noise inside the flat. This strap is strange but a more likely explanation for its function would be to prevent a dog from scratching at the front door when the tenant was out. No one seems to have questioned Shannon about this strap device for the trial.

The accusation that Shannon was kept drugged inside the flat is evidently false and this undermines the same charge relating to the strap. These points are the reason for the charge of "false imprisonment".

Therefore, logically, every aspect of the prosecution case against Donovan and Matthews is pretentious, including the charge of "false imprisonment".

The search for Shannon lasted 24 days and cost £3.2 million, and it was a big media circus throughout. Someone is required to pay for it, and the profiteers of this type of expense always consider that the tax payers should pay for it, and this includes the likes of Michael Donovan and Karen Matthews. They are being exploited. The irony is that Shannon seems to have been "imprisoned" in the flat by the circus itself, and it would be interesting to learn how much this show trial has cost the tax payers too.

The irony is that just as Mrs Thatcher's anti-talented economy and television have created this case and its prosecution as well, they are also the reason that children are needing drugs to sleep nowadays, hence the termazepam traces in Shannon's hair.