Rose Martin - Shannon. Betrayed From Birth

I t was a bright morning in early September when Karen Matthews stepped out of hospital holding her newborn baby, Shannon. Children across her home town of Dewsbury had just returned to school after the long summer break, kitted out in new uniforms and box-fresh PE kits, for a new year of challenges and opportunities.

But for hours-old Shannon there were to be few such challenges and opportunities in store while she remained with her mum. The baby lying wrapped in a blanket was bonny, with dimples and a healthy cry, but the novelty of bearing her first daughter was already wearing thin on the 23-year-old mother.

Shannon was Karens third baby the product of a two-year relationship with 20-year-old local lad Leon Rose. At first, Karen, then a single mum to a toddler, hadnt been able to get enough of Leon who despite still being a teenager was thick-set and seemed manly. Within months, she had become pregnant by him and given birth to her second child, a boy.

The demands of two young children put pressure on the couple, and the relationship became fraught, but, when the new baby was less than six months old, Karen announced she was pregnant again this time with Shannon. Karen even called Shannon and her elder brother twins because they were both Leons and were so close in age.

Karen and Leons relationship lurched along during and after the pregnancy, a rollercoaster of screaming matches and violent rows followed by periods of making-up and relative calm. Little Shannon was barely two when the shouting matches became too much and Leon left for good.

At just 25, Karens life had already fallen into a depressing cycle of new relationship, pregnancy, birth, break-up, then back to the beginning again. And by the time she hit 32, when Shannon went missing, she had given birth to seven children by six different men. Shannon and her twin were her only kids to share the same father.

During the search for her daughter and her repeated television appeals, Karen Matthews appeared a brutish-looking woman with desperately pale freckled skin, dark rings around her eyes, large, fleshy features and a bushy mass of gingery, auburn hair yanked back into a ponytail with just a few strands of outgrown fringe stuck to her forehead.

But as a child she had been pretty and popular with other kids living nearby. Karen was herself one of seven children born in 1975 to June and Gordon. Unlike their daughters future relationships, June and Gordons marriage weathered the storms of family life and remained strong. They were stalwart examples of Dewsburys traditional working class.

Gordon worked at Foxs Biscuit Factory one of the few remaining big employers in the town. June held down a job in textiles while still working long and hard around the home, cooking fresh food for her kids and trying to ensure they left for school in clean clothes and with scrubbed faces.

Life was generally happy but tough in the Matthews household it was a constant struggle to make ends meet and the kids were kept strictly in line by their parents. There was little emphasis on education and Karen grew up with few aspirations, her goal in life from an early age being purely to have children. She frequently bunked off school and by the age of 16, with an appalling attendance record, she was still barely able to read. Her IQ, at about 74, was defined as borderline low intelligence.

Karen had rarely left Dewsbury since she was a child and the boundaries of the former mill town were pretty much the perimeters of her existence. Growing up with five brothers, Karen quickly learned that to make herself heard in such a boisterous environment she had to shout loudest and use all her feminine wiles to gain attention.

Her only sister, Julie Poskitt, who is five years older, recalled a largely happy childhood. But she has said it was clear from a very young age that she and Karen were very different. While Julie yearned to grow up and settle down with a steady bloke, Karen was always looking for the next boyfriend, the next compliment and the next bit of excitement. And so it was as a teenager that Karens life started to slide off the rails.

At 14, Karens relationship with her mother broke down completely following a series of rows. I ended up in a childrens home because I couldnt cope with all the stress and lies and stuff, Karen told a TV documentary team during the search for Shannon. She didnt explain what she meant by stress and lies, but the problems were sufficiently bad that she stayed away from home for a couple of years. After I got over that they took me out of the childrens home, she said. I stayed with them for a bit and then I went to live with my boyfriends mum. I was about 17 or 18.