Ten years after being jailed for kidnapping daughter Shannon, Karen Matthews still finds it hard to shake off the tag of most despised mum.
But the 43-year-old has spoken out in a bid to convince the nation she is not evil and insist she knew nothing of the snatch plot that shocked the nation.
Matthews even offered to take a lie detector test about what happened to her daughter when she vanished in February 2008 before being found at an accomplice’s flat tethered to a bed.
Mum-of-seven Matthews said: “I’m not Britain’s worst mum. I didn’t kill anybody.
Baby P’s mum and Maxine Carr don’t get the abuse that I do.
None of it’s true. I’m on the edge. It makes me want to kill myself but I’d never do that. I’m scared I’ll die lonely and alone.
She said she was made a scapegoat and added: “From the start I didn’t know where she was. Others were involved. I didn’t have a clue.
You can’t kidnap your own child. I know the truth and I wasn’t involved in it. I still have nightmares thinking that it’s all going to happen again.
I want to take a lie detector test to prove my innocence. But she says she fears she won’t be forgiven.
Matthews and her then boyfriend Craig Meehan joined the hunt and she made several public appeals for help to find her daughter.
Shannon was found on March 14 at Michael Donovan’s flat in nearby Batley Carr. She had been drugged.
Donovan was also found guilty of kidnap, sentenced to eight years and released after four. But he was recalled to prison in 2012 after a bust-up in Leeds.
She said: “When I was first in jail I thought I was going to die. I panicked.
They were banging on my cell door saying, Come out here, you dirty nonce. Prison made me weaker. I don’t feel like the same person any more. I was beaten up inside because of who I was.
Once they threw a snowball with a rock in it at me and other times I was punched. I didn’t say anything, I was too scared.
But Matthews insisted she did make friends, including a transgender prisoner in Peterborough’s segregation unit. And she claimed she had admirers on the outside. She said: Men used to write to me with semi-naked pictures and ask if I fancied meeting up because everyone makes mistakes.
She said: I have standards. I’m very lonely and I found a friend who I thought I could trust. A true friend.
“He was just somebody to talk to because I’ve got nobody else. Somebody has blown our relationship out of context. He did give me money because he wanted to help me.
He got the money from some inheritance and said he wanted to help me out because I’m struggling.
He’s like a father figure to me, like an uncle. There’s no sex involved. I’ve known him for years. Eric takes me for coffee and KFC and tells me not to go with the nasty men I have met and not to be taken advantage of. I’ve sworn off men. I will never get married. I don’t trust them at all.
Matthews also denied claims she was selling sandwiches to the homeless that had been handed out free by Pret a Manger shops.
She said: I never sold them I gave them to the homeless.
This woman that’s a church person was handing them out.
It was getting dark earlier and I used to go to help pick them up and take them to the homeless around the station. Sometimes I’d take them to the Salvation Army. It makes me sick what was said, that’s not me. I was doing it out of the goodness of my heart.
I feel I’m not being judged when I’m there. I love my job and I love going in every time. They say I’m a good worker, one of their best and I could get a paid job in the future.
But Matthews revealed she has now stopped going to church.
She said: People found out who I was and I was getting grief there, people saying, Oh, do you know who that is?
She said she is still terribly lonely and added: I talk to Bob when I get home. I feed him from my hand.
I don’t want a man. I don’t trust them. It’s just me and the budgie now.
Because of her time behind bars Matthews said she is uncomfortable indoors. She added: I hate being trapped. I have to get out.
When she goes out she puts a head band on to cover up her roots as her natural ginger hair starts to appear.
She isn’t very well doctors said she has gallstones and she is on pills to ease the pain as she awaits surgery.
Matthews said: It scared me. I’ve lost six stone since because it was down to fatty foods. I used to eat lots of sweets but now I try to eat better.
Last year the BBC screened a drama, The Moorside, about Shannon’s kidnap. Gemma Whelan starred as Matthews, Sheridan Smith played her best pal Julie Bushby and Sian Brooke was neighbour Natalie Brown.
In the past, Matthews has spoken to the Mirror about how the only thing she missed in jail was sex and shopping. In another interview she claimed she knew where Shannon was after she had been snatched – contradicting her own story.
Karen Matthews has not been paid for this interview.