Shannon Matthews step father charged

[AnAngelWithin]

10 counts of possessing indecent images of children

makes me

apparantley evolution tells us that step fathers have a high inclination to hurt children that are not theirs

As someone who was abused by their step-father and now has the most wonderful man as step-father to her children (nicer than me to the kids if I'm honest) I have to say that abusers are people, some may put themselves in situations where children are around because they are abusers but I don't think it's fair to label someone becuase they didn't do the deed that produced the child.

the step father is 22 isn't he?
And Shannon is 9? So he is very young for looking after a child that age anyway.
My MIL and all her siblings were abused by her stepmother and her father did nothing...these things do happen.

tbh, I don't know why the references are made to Shannon and her disappearance, and the man who was charged with her abduction on the news sites. It makes it look as if the two cases are connected in some way. so if the stepfather's arrest also has some connection to Shannon's disappearance then surely the police would say that there was a connection, but if he's purely been arrested on the child porn issues then I don't really see why Shannon's name needs to be brought into it. surely there would have been child porn, regardless of shannon's disappearance.

Feel a bit bad for posting this, but did anyone else feel uncomfortable when we were told by Karen about the tickling fights Shannon and Craig used to have? Yes, I know, that ought to be OK in a family, but somehow it didn't feel it in this instance.

in nature a male lion can approach a female and her young,kill the young and the mate with the female to ensure his bloodline continues.....

he doesn't sexually/emotionally/physically abuse the young....thats not evolution thats just being a complete shit

clam - you've missed my point.
what i was trying to say was animals\have ways of behaving hich are abhorrent to us but 'understandable' from their point of view/natural instincts

of course i didn't mean this to mean that someone could kill a child - i was merely trying to state how ridiculous it was to equate sexually/emotionally deviant behaviour to a stepchild as being explainable by 'evoloution'

tbh I think this is very dodgy ground. The man has been charged witt offences relating to child porn, which in itself is dispickable, but there haven't been any references to the sexual abuce of Shannon, or her siblings, so to assume that because he A is their stepfather, and B has been accused (not yet convicted) of downloading images, he has sexually abused Shannon is heading towards the relms of lible.

Of course there is no doubt that there are issues with this family, but aside from alagations made by the grandparents and the fact Shannon hasn't been allowed home, we don't really know what the issues are, so to speculate, especially along the lines of the stepfather being guilty of sexual abuce, isn't necessarily right.

He's been remanded in custody.

probably for his own safety as much as anything else.

I think it is probably quite a "chaotic" family situation.

The press said at the time (a broadsheet) that the police were putting together "a family tree" of people who had familial-type relationships with Shannon Mathews. Apparently this was a large number, as obviously this is not a Janet and John 2 children, 2 parents situation (I'm just making that as a statment and am not implying any criticism BTW).

Then at the same time were also looking at people in the area with convictions for sex offences, including but not limited to those against children. The report I read said that there was an overlap (I believe it said large overlap) between the 2 groups.

Poor Shannon.

well I guess that if you've had 5 partners, they all have siblings who in turn have partners, plus aunts/uncles/parents/cousins it's not beyond the relms of possibility that most people in a particular area have, at some point, had some connection with your family.

i didn't speculate in anyway that her stepdad had done anything to shannon, i was merely answering pots that seemed to state that it was 'only natural behaviour' for stepdads to want to harm their stepchildren!

I had heard that Shannon's mother has only seen her once since she was found, though this may be inaccurate.

I think that it is too much of a coincidence that she ran away and her step-father has been arrested for possessing child-porn. I just don't think that the two things can be unrelated.

dropdeadfred no, but others have as good as accused him of abusing shannon on the basis that "he knows her abductor so must have been abused by him and therefore gone on to abuse". .

Callisto it's possible though that the images may not have been discovered if Shannon hadn't gone missing, but presumably computers etc would have been taken as part of the investigation into Shannon's disappearance. Had she not disappeared, the images may never have been discovered.

I'd also read that Shannon's mother had only seen her once, through a window, but that she was threatening legal action if she was not allowed to see shannon.

I think there's a whole host of things that the police/social services/media either know or suspect, that are not allowed, quite rightly at this stage, to be reported. Time will tell, and I daresay it will come out in the end, although whether that will help Shannon and her siblings is another matter.

Message withdrawn

i feelsorry for Shannon whatever the truth is..she has a very complicated family life at the best of times by the sounds of it

Clam - you are right, there is so much more to come with this. The whole of the family from my father to Karen are all worried about what else is going to come out of this. All I can say for the family, is thank god I was bought up in foster care, I dread to think what could have happened to me.

Immaculate, are you Karen's sister?

I'm her half sister.