Karen Matthews ‘wants new relationship with her children’ after staging kidnap of her nine-year-old

Karen Matthews wants to beg her children for forgiveness after relationships with all seven broke down over her staged kidnapping of daughter Shannon.

The 44-year-old became known as Britain’s worst mother when she was jailed in 2008 for faking the disappearance of her own child in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.

But she claims that she’s desperate to reconnect with all of her children, who she had with five different men.

A source told Sun Online that Matthews is lonely as she lives under a new name in the south of England after serving half of her eight-year sentence.  

‘She has missed so much of their lives through her foolishness and greed that she’ll do anything to be able to see them again,’ the source said. ‘She wants to write to them all.’

Shannon was found stashed under a bed 24 days after her mother reported that she’d vanished. 

Matthews pleaded for the return of her daughter as she played the victim for the whole nation to see.

But her child was found alive and well at the home of Michael Donovan, the uncle of Matthews’ then-boyfriend.  

The mother-of-seven (pictured on July 7 near her home in the south of England) fake the disappearance of her own daughter in the hopes of netting a £50,000 reward 

Both had plotted kidnapping con in the hope of claiming a £50,000 reward and police found that the youngster was even drugged during the scam.

Shannon lives with a new identity and in April 2012 her mother came out of prison. Last year the defiant convict told journalists: ‘I’m not Britain’s worst mum. I didn’t kill anybody.’