Moorside

Before BBC made Moorside my feelings towards Karen Matthews were not pleasant.

I felt no sorrow for her, I felt she should have locked up and never forgiven.

However, I now do have different opinions.

Am I angry at her? Yes!

Can I believe what she did? No!

Is it up to me or you to forgive her? Absolutely not.

The people that decide whether they forgive her are her family, friends, the community that got behind her, and of course her daughter Shannon.

Was Karen Matthews to blame? Yes!

Did she know when to stop? Possibly not.

We all know she's never really made great choices in her life, pretending that her daughter had been abducted was her worst decision of all.

Was Karen Matthews abused? By lots of people, and I do believe she was, and possibly still is, a weak willed person, probably every man she ever went with abused her in one way or another, she'd probably never made a decision for herself before.

I honestly believe that Mick Donovan probably was the brains behind it, not Karen, and being as weak as she is, Karen probably thought it would be OK.

Now some people might come back at me and say "other people have been abused and don't do this type of thing.'

You're right, but then again, some people who've had perfectly good lives go on to do worse things that what Karen did.

Peter Sutcliffe (The Yorkshire Ripper), Christopher Foster (killed his wife, daughter and their horses because of bankruptcy), Myra Hindley (took children off the streets so her lover Ian Brady could rape and kill them).

None of these people were "abused", none of them had, at least before, witnessed such horror, they look(ed) like ordinary people, you'd never have put them down as murderers, but they all are, mass murderers.

Do we forget about this case? No! Always learn from history, it could always happen again, and could have a lot worse outcome.

I hope Shannon and her siblings are happy, I hope they're living happy lives, getting to do things every normal teenager, and young person should be able to do.

Should people attack Karen Matthews? No, because you're lowering yourself to level she stooped to back in 2008.

If there is one thing this programme shows us, its that there are segments of people in our country and communities that are not helped, that are ignored, where doing something as diabolical as this seems like the only option left.

Things need to change, help needs to come, to prevent this from ever happening again.