Two sheets of paper, not shown to the jury but found during the Shannon Matthews investigation, offer a glimpse inside the strange world of Michael Donovan, Karen Matthews and her daughter.

On one, found screwed up and thrown into a bin at Donovan's flat, was a child's drawing that depicted an explicit sexual scene between two adults. Mummy and Mick, was Shannon's accompanying caption.

The other note was found in Shannon's bedroom at her mother's house. On it was a verbal exchange between the girl and her sibling, written before she went missing.

It seems likely to have been compiled while the pair huddled together after being banished upstairs in the dark. "Do you think we'll get any tea tonight?" asks one child.

"We may get a packet of crisps if we keep quiet," comes the reply.

"Don't say anything, though, 'cos we'll be beaten."

After her rescue, Shannon was asked by child psychologists whether she wanted to go home. The reply came immediately. No.

Her reluctance is unsurprising, given the tangled life of Karen Matthews.

The 31-year-old had seven children by five men. She had been living for three years with her 22-year-old boyfriend, Craig Meehan, who thought – wrongly, a DNA test would later establish – that he was the father of the youngest.

In September, Meehan was sentenced to 20 weeks in prison after being convicted of 11 counts of possessing child pornography. The offences came to light when his computer was seized by police during the search for Shannon.

The other significant adult in Shannon's story was Donovan, Meehan's uncle, a man described by his own barrister during the kidnap trial as "a pathetic inadequate...a loner, dysfunctional, strange, an oddball".

The youngest of nine children, he was bullied at his special school and explained to the jury at Leeds Crown Court that he had "all sorts of difficulties trying to understand things in life".

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