TIMELINE - The disappearance of Shannon Matthews

LONDON - Nine-year-old Shannon Matthews disappeared for over three weeks earlier this year and was eventually found at a house less than a mile from her home in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Several members of her extended family have since been arrested in connection with her disappearance.

Here is a timeline of how sympathy turned to outrage:

* February 19 - Shannon was last seen outside the gates of her school after returning from a swimming trip.

* Feb 20 - Police launch what is to become one of the biggest manhunts in Britain which at its height involved 200 police officers and 60 detectives -- equivalent to around 10 percent of West Yorkshire Police's operational strength.

Shannon's mother, Karen Matthews, 32, makes an impassioned appeal for her return. Posters are put up around the neighbourhood on the tough Dewsbury Moor estate and dozens of neighbours join the search in freezing conditions.

* February 26 - Police say they fear the girl may have "fallen into the wrong hands."

* March 14 - Twenty-four days after she vanished, Shannon is found alive and well, hidden in the base of a divan bed at a house in Batley Carr. She is taken into care by Kirklees Family Services while 39-year-old Michael Donovan, the uncle of her mother's boyfriend, is charged with kidnapping and false imprisonment.

* April 2 - The boyfriend, Craig Meehan, a 22-year-old supermarket fishmonger, is charged with possessing child pornography.

* April 3 - Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik praises police for their thorough investigation, but urges people on the Dewsbury Moor estate to stay calm in the light of the arrests.