Anorak Bingo: With Shannon Matthews, Madeleine McCann And Scarlett Keeling
McCANN, MATTHEWS. McKEOWN. It’s all part of Anorak Bingo - the game that’s taking the press by storm. The aim is to get the names ‘McCann’, ‘Matthews’ and ‘MacKeown’ into your article. Get all three and score double points. Pens at the ready…
THE INDEPENDENT: “Sarah Sands: Scarlett Keeling died at the roll of a dice. It’s a perilous game”
Each human tragedy has its socio-economic dimension. The terrifying abduction of Shannon Matthews is coolly discussed as a portrait of a debased white working class, with its multiplicity of fathers and attendant social workers. When Madeleine McCann went missing we rapidly absorbed the context. The parents were doctors, ambitious, gym conscious, dressed in high street chic. The holiday destination, Mark Warner in Portugal, was family minded and middle class. The McCanns felt safe to leave their children in the room, because they were among their own people.
Tick. Tick.
Fiona MacKeown was as trusting of her own way of life. Goa was the geographical affirmation of her identity. Gentle, free, non materialist, non judgmental. True to her beliefs, she has rejected the conventions of work, family structure and social aspiration. She has nine children by five fathers.
One person’s small holding is another person’s squalor. The shack that she calls home looks wretched to me, but I was not very shocked by the interior shots of Scarlett’s bedroom. My daughter’s room is just as untidy.
But let’s look anew at Diona MacKeown. Nice hair… blonde hair…
Similarly, I do not share the distaste of many journalists for Fiona MacKeown’s hippy appearance. She has a calm beauty and resembles Charlotte Rampling in some photographs. Scrubbed up a bit, the whole family could appear in a Calvin Klein advertisement. The children with their tousled hair and burnished bodies laughing on a beach with their carefree mother. It would be an alpha ideal if they had a few million in the bank and a Bryanston education.
Fiona MacKeown’s daughter has bene raped and murdered in India.
Perhaps it was negligent to pull children out of school for six months to go travelling, but Fiona MacKeown was only following the advice of Times columnist Mary Ann Sieghart.
The Times employee took her children on a overseas adventure. She wrote about it. Fiona MacKeown hung on her every word. Let no-one doubt the importance of a newspaper columnist.
Tick.
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: “Behind celebration and blame, anxieties lurk”
Writes Jenny McCartney
“Complicated” -
Therein lay all the elements of a fairy tale satisfactorily resolved. But one little word in the police statement hinted at a different story: the circumstances of her disappearance, it said, were “complicated”.
That is, perhaps, the word that has defined Shannon’s life so far. She is one of Karen Matthews’s seven children, by five different fathers. The shifting male presences in her life must have taken a bit of adjusting to. The current stepfather is Craig Meehan, a 22-year-old fishmonger, whom relatives alleged had been violent towards Shannon and her siblings - a charge Mr Meehan has vigorously denied.
We have become accustomed to treating the disappearance, death or recovery of children as a sort of cathartic public theatre. The long hunt for four-year-old Madeleine McCann has been followed by Shannon’s disappearance and the rape and murder of 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling in Goa. Such cases arouse strong public sympathies, certainly, but frequently also the fiercest censure of the families involved at the very moment when they are at their most vulnerable.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
In the case of the McCanns, a degree of public anger focused on their decision to leave their three children alone while they went for dinner with friends nearby. In that of Scarlett Keeling, her mother, Fiona MacKeown - who has eight other children and a complicated personal life - has been harshly castigated for permitting her daughter to remain with a 25-year-old male tour guide and his aunt while the rest of the family travelled elsewhere.
A front page in the Daily Mail last week advertised an opinion piece with the tastelessly emphatic headline: “Sorry, but I blame Scarlett Keeling’s mother”. There was little mention of the culpability of the men who allegedly gave Scarlett drugs, raped her and left her on the beach to die.
Now, read on…
Posted: 16th, March 2008 | In: Madeleine McCann, Tabloids Comments (66) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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March 16th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Reporter said:
Tip off from ‘Scunthorpe’ on the ball then Carmen, you should never think you know a poster is not who or what they are. You had the info before it broke, is Scunthorpe due an apology.
Administrator: I do not follow this at all. After your social interccourse with Carmen in the early hours I asked you for a reference to this and received no direct reply. Are you referring to this:
Sky News north of England correspondent Mike McCarthy said neighbours had heard the sound of a young girl laughing coming from the flat in the days she was missing.
He added: “It perhaps indicates that Shannon was compliant in some way with having been taken to that flat.”
He also said there are suggestions that some other family members may have been involved in her disappearance
This is not news or even concrete speculation. This is pure thumb suck. It is a figment of a reporter’s imagination and if I were his news editor I would be checking his expenses and handing out the Damien Teddy Award
I do however agree Scunthorpe is long over due an apology and a name change to relieve all those poor Northern people of having that burden for any longer than absolutely necessary. I mean, all those bad jokes….-agw
March 16th, 2008 at 10:21 am
‘A British tourist in Goa has said that he saw Scarlett Keeling on the beach with a man on top of her on the night she was killed. Michael Mannion told the BBC he left Anjuna on the 23 February and has been travelling around India since, scared for his life. ‘
Attention: Devonshire Constabulary:
A fifteen-year-old British girl has been killed in Goa. The child’s mother was several hundred miles away at the time, prima facie child neglect. A British man was apparent witness to the crime or crimes that caused the death of the girl. He neither attempted to prevent it, nor attempted to report it, and is now on the run somewhere in India.
Your responsibilities extend to the investigation of crimes committed by or against British citizens, wherever they may happen to be in the world.
The instrument at your disposal for the apprehension of suspects is INTERPOL, and we hope you will now take steps to issue the necessary international arrest warrants. Do not take Leicestershire Constabulary’s inaction under similar circumstances as your template.
March 16th, 2008 at 10:20 am
29
brandon flours Says:
____
I missed that, i do find LOOK rather antagonising. Was the poster banished again?
March 16th, 2008 at 10:20 am
28 dee
i also think it will all come out
of course, it helps when the family actually co-operate with the cops, don’t set up a slush fund company, don’t make a pact of silence or refuse to answer questions.
simple really
March 16th, 2008 at 10:18 am
dee;amen to that
March 16th, 2008 at 10:17 am
ade
‘Look’ was on Friday night declaring allsorts !!!
March 16th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Like i said in one of my previous posts, the last thing i would want to do, is hurt this youngster. The truth will all come out eventually, the fact that she is alive and in the right hands is all i really need to know right now.
March 16th, 2008 at 10:14 am
what does post 21 actually mean?
beats me fer sure fer sure
March 16th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Yeah mods is shaking in their boots from LOOK
:lol: 
March 16th, 2008 at 10:13 am
have your cake and eat it indeed:
http://tinyurl.com/36e74d
not greedy at all
such fun
March 16th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Thanks for that Carmen,
i was getting in a right pickle trying to find your posts from the weekend.
March 16th, 2008 at 10:11 am
wannabe knacker of the yard…
interesting character this one
http://tinyurl.com/yqbaxv
March 16th, 2008 at 10:07 am
morning all any new developments
March 16th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Tip off from ‘Scunthorpe’ on the ball then Carmen, you should never think you know a poster is not who or what they are. You had the info before it broke, is Scunthorpe due an apology.
Administrator: I do not follow this at all. After your social interccourse with Carmen in the early hours I asked you for a reference this and receved no direct reply. Are you referring to this:
Sky News north of England correspondent Mike McCarthy said neighbours had heard the sound of a young girl laughing coming from the flat in the days she was missing.
He added: “It perhaps indicates that Shannon was compliant in some way with having been taken to that flat.”
He also said there are suggestions that some other family members may have been involved in her disappearance
This is not news or even concrete speculation. This is pure thumb suck. It is a figment of a reporter’s imagination and if I were his news editor I would be checking his expenses and handing out the Damien Teddy Award
I do however agree Scunthorpe is long over due an apology and a name change to relieve all those poor Northern people of having that burden for any longer than absolutely necessary. I mean, all those bad jokes….
March 16th, 2008 at 10:04 am
MODS AND ADMIN
I think this is what you are looking for Dee……..
Agw said - The Dewsbury, Yorkshire, situation, is, at the moment, no-one is charged and Shannon is the subject of a police protection order (under the Children Act 1989). Technically she should not even be named as Shannon since an Emergency Protection Order exists.
This is a device which takes the child into the care of social service teams and even foster parents. The mother and the various sections of her difficult and complex male relationships are unlikely to figure in the nine-year-old’s immediate future well-being.
The police action is similar to the Ward of Court device which is only used where a judge thinks such an order necessary and justified. In this case a magistrate or team of magistrates makes the Order
If anyone is charged, then all reporting will be put on hold and these few hours are the only time the nationals and sites like Anorak can have a go. Because of the protection order we cannot discuss specifics…but since we do not have any there is little to discuss. The police may be heavily censured at a later date because much of what has already leaked out may be considered prejudicial to any trial…again as I far as I know no-one is charged with anything yet and the root causes of this are believed to be a great deal deeper.
I have a police source (not very high up) in the West Yorkshire chain who says there are already deep concerns about coverage and there is another factor…this is the force where one’s Chief Constable is…..
Sir Norman Bettison, described by Anorak in a lift from the Mail as a “greedy, vain moron”. Bettison wants Sir Ian Blair’s job as head of the Met. This is his chance to shine…and who do you think he’ll have ham-strung first. The Daily Mail, Anorak or every single journalist who asks the wrong question or prints the wrong article?
If and once charges are laid it becomes another ball game and we then have to do what we always have done, report what others are saying but making sure we aren’t in the firing line as a result.
Mind you, it is all very newsworthy even this is.
Carmen added - Our main concern here is that the child’s reputation should not be damaged. Nothing illegal may have taken place, in terms of actions against the child. She may not have been held against her will. She should not be labelled as being the victim of anything untoward until the truth is known.
Which leads us to a secondary position, IF anything has taken place that later proves to be illegal, we would not want the perpetrator to escape justice because they were able to show that speculation had taken place on this forum that made a fair trial impossible.
We will be watching carefully everything that is said - if in doubt, don’t say it.
Any wags or wits who think their voice being heard is more important than that child’s reputation or a fair trial of anyone involved in possible wrong doing will find themselves in moderation faster than they can type.
Think before you press ’send’ everybody. OK?
March 16th, 2008 at 10:02 am
i’ll get me coat
need some practice for paddy’s day sessions
March 16th, 2008 at 10:02 am
then there’s the lovely lauren
http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Mptv/1396/0730_0526.jpg
March 16th, 2008 at 9:59 am
back to charlotte
http://www.jerryschatzberg.com/personalities/img/rampling.jpg
yum yum
March 16th, 2008 at 9:58 am
15 craig
maybe he is implicated by not reporting a crime.
fascinating how many “witnesses” show up with a story after the event
with photographic memories too
March 16th, 2008 at 9:44 am
11
mic
……. that bothers me a bit, that he says he saw her several times- before and during her rape- which he said bothered him. but instead of seeking help or intervening himself- he claims he just walked away. only the next day did he crap himself about having witnessed it and fled the area.
why would he crap himself? did he fear he would be implicated? or did he think he would be a target for the rapists because he witnessed it?
for him to know she was 15 and obviously inebriated and then to see her apparently being assaulted (even if it was consensual- he already knew she was underage)- but for him to do nothing is disgusting.
and suspicious?
March 16th, 2008 at 9:43 am
nice car
http://tinyurl.com/29ofef
March 16th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Craig, thanks for the lead to Carmens posts, i will look at them now.
March 16th, 2008 at 9:40 am
dee
the subtleties of what is and isn’t ok to write are complex. it would be quicker for you to look for carmen’s posts (cna;t be that hard to find the relevent topics) than it would for someone to explain anew.
that is all i meant. it isn;t as clear as saying ‘we can talk about shannon case’ or ‘we can;t talk about it’.
there are things that can be said and things that ought not be said.
try looking through a late friday evening post, can;t be so hard to find.
March 16th, 2008 at 9:36 am
I see we now have a British (therefore credible…..no johnny foreigner types, thank you!) witness to the alleged rape.
He claims to have seen her in the bar, seen her being raped, and been on a brown-trousered moped tour of India ever since. Why contact the BBC now?
March 16th, 2008 at 9:35 am
21
Dee Says:
March 16th, 2008 at 9:33 am
20
craig Says:
___
Ok Ok, keep your hair on, it wouldn’t have taken a minute for someone just to say ‘it is’ or ‘it isn’t’ alright now.
Looking over the last couple of days postings would take hours, you know it would, and there are sooo many threads!
March 16th, 2008 at 9:33 am
7
anorak
but it is fiona’s head on charlotte’s bits, isn;t it? i think ade only saw the braces and bypassed the face.
braces can do that to a redblooded man…
which film is it from? i kinda remember it but can;t place it.
March 16th, 2008 at 9:30 am
charlotte rampling: the muckiest name ever. just rolls off the tongue like a … like a…..
March 16th, 2008 at 9:29 am
It’s Fiona MacKeown
There’s a Madeleine McCann story coming up - ooer
March 16th, 2008 at 9:28 am
maybe we should begin cross posting all our comments to every thread. just. in. case.
in triplicate.
:p
March 16th, 2008 at 9:27 am
mmmm charlotte rampling…
and wearing braces