Karen Matthews’ accomplice Michael Donovan had his OWN daughters taken into care ‘after he made them watch him have sex with prostitutes’
THE accomplice of "Britain's worst mum" Karen Matthews once had his own two daughters taken into care after allegations were made that he made them watch him have sex with PROSTITUTES.
Sick Michael Donovan held terrified Shannon captive at his dingy flat for 24 days, while he and her mum plotted her "disappearance" to try and claim a £50,000 reward for her safe return.
Social workers had also been alerted to him after teachers discovered love letters from him in one of his girls' lunch boxes.
Donovan was born Paul Drake, the youngest of nine children, and brought up on an estate in Dewsbury.
Throughout his life he had learning difficulties, only having around half the average IQ, and attended a Hartshead Moor special school where he claims he was bullied.
From the age of 11 he began getting in trouble with the juvenile courts, his first offences were three counts of arson and shoplifting.
When he was 16 he was convicted of causing criminal damage and at the time ran away from home and never returned.
Three years later he changed his name by Deed Poll, naming himself after a character in the 1980s television sci-fi series “V”.
It was while undergoing psychiatric treatment that he met Susan Bird and they later married and had two daughters.
He claims she was violent to him, had a drug problem and they divorced.
His children were later taken into care and it was when legal proceedings to try and get the girls back failed that he picked up his daughter from school and took her to Blackpool.
Shannon disappeared on her way home from a swimming lesson at Westmoor primary school in 2008, in a case that shocked the nation.
Hundreds of neighbours joined the search which cost West Yorkshire Police £3.2million and lasted 24 days.
The nine-year-old was found tethered and drugged inside the base of a double bed at relative Michael Donovan’s grotty flat almost a month after she disappeared.
It later emerged Karen Matthews, Shannon’s mum, who was going out with Donovan’s nephew Craig Meehan at the time – had devised the elaborate plot with her accomplice in a bid to claim the £50,000 reward money for finding Shannon.
They had planned to release the schoolgirl, "discover her" then take her to a police station and claim the reward before splitting.
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