Woman attacked by Babes in Wood killer wants to be heard

A woman who at age seven was abducted, sexually assaulted and left for dead by Brighton killer Russell Bishop has said she wants people to know the damage he did and that she remembers everything.

Rachael Watts survived the 1990 attack and her testimony put him behind bars.

Bishop had already killed two girls and walked free from court when he grabbed her.

After his death this year, she said: “I want to be heard. I want people to know how much damage he caused.”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour in her first broadcast interview, Ms Watts said it felt good to speak out.

The deaths of Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows, whose bodies were found in Wild Park in 1986, cast a shadow over the city for decades and became known as the Babes in the Wood murders.

A trial came in 1987, but Bishop walked free.

He abducted Ms Watts and drove her to local beauty spot Devil’s Dyke, where he attacked her. She later identified him and he was convicted in 1990 for attempted murder, kidnapping and indecent assault.

He was convicted for the murders of Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows in 2018, following a DNA breakthrough.

Now 40, Ms Watts said her family protected her anonymity for as long as possible, but she “wanted to finally come out with it and sort of release myself from the secret that I’ve been hiding for so long”.

Everybody had thought she was unconscious during the attack, she said, but she was only recently able to tell her parents she was not.

She said: “I was fully conscious when he did all those things.

“Of course everybody had hoped that I would never remember, but I do remember and I remember everything.

“So I’m hoping that one day I will be better, because I can’t see myself living like a prisoner for the rest of my life, which is essentially what I’ve become.”

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