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Babysitter Jareth Harries-Markham jailed for
repeated sexual abuse of children in his care
By Joanna Menagh
Posted 10:41pm Monday 26 Sep 2022
Jareth Harries-Markham says he has no memory of the offending. (Facebook: Jareth Harries-Markham )
An experienced Western Australia prosecutor has almost been brought to tears as he detailed the sexual abuse of 16 young girls, some of them just babies, by a man who was being paid to babysit them.
WARNING: This story contains details that some readers may find disturbing.
Jareth Harries-Markham, 24, faced the Supreme Court on Tuesday, where he pleaded guilty to more than 140 charges, including 35 counts of indecent dealing with a child under 13 and 94 counts of indecently recording a child.
The victims, some of them sisters, were aged between 8 months and 9 years, and were being babysat by Harries-Markham, after their families had responded to an advertisement he had posted online.
Please, please, please parents - never ever hire a man or boy to babysit your children. Too often there is something seriously wrong with a male who wants to look after someone else's children. It's not natural and it is dangerous as this story confirms.
Some of the families, who were present in court on Tuesday, hired Harries-Markham on a live-in basis and the court heard some of the offences happened as the children were sleeping.
Other victims were friends of the children who were abused while they were on play dates at their home.
Children filmed
Harries-Markham also used his mobile phone to take photos and videos of what he was doing, which were discovered stored on his electronic devices in various folders, some of them titled with the child's name.
At one point during the hearing, state prosecutor Brett Tooker struggled to contain his emotions as he detailed the abuse of a 23-month-old girl.
He paused and his voice quivered before he was able to regain his composure and continue.
The court heard Harries-Markham told a psychiatrist he had no memory of what he had done, and he did not know why he did what he did — with his lawyer Amir Murad submitting his client "did love these children".
There's a more accurate word than 'love' to describe his feelings.
"He did become attached to the children. It was never his intention to cause them distress and he can't reconcile what he did, with how he felt about the children," Mr Murad said. "He can't come to terms with what he has done."
Mr Murad suggested his client may not have been aware of the paedophilic disorder he had, and he submitted there was no evidence to suggest Harries-Markham had started working as a babysitter to gain access to children.
However, Justice Stephen Hall pointed out that Harries-Markham had continued to advertise his services even after he had started offending.
"He held himself out as someone who could be trusted with the care of a child when he knew what he had done," Justice Hall noted.
Mr Tooker said that was something that "tormented" the children's parents, many of whom had provided victim impact statements to the court.
'Enduring torment' of parents
Harries-Markham was sentenced to 18 years in jail.
Justice Hall said the victim impact statements from the parents made for "harrowing and heart-rending reading" and spoke of the "enduring torment" they felt.
"The trust they placed in you was grossly violated," Justice Hall told Harries-Markham.
Justice Hall said the number of victims and their ages were aggravating factors, particularly those offences against girls who were just babies.
He said the recording of the abuse and the "methodical" way Harries-Markham had then stored and catalogued the images and videos, also added to the seriousness of the offences.
Justice Hall gave the 24-year-old a discount for his pleas of guilty, noting that while the evidence against him was overwhelming, it had spared the victims and their families the trauma of having to go through a trial.
However, he said he could not accept that the Harries-Markham was remorseful, saying his claim he could not remember was not consistent with any show of remorse.
Harries-Markham will have to serve 16 years before he can be released on parole.
Lifetime restraining orders were also made to ban Harries-Markham from ever trying to contact or communicate with his victims.
If there was ever a paedophile who should be castrated, it is this man. This is how he treats children he loves - according to him. He should never be allowed to father children or even communicate with children.
I begged Babes in the Wood killer to spare my life…for £1 sweet money,
says brave survivor of brutal attack
Eileen Fairweather, Tom Wells
The Sun
21:29, 1 Oct 2022
A WOMAN today breaks her 32-year silence to tell how she begged Babes In The Wood killer Russell Bishop to spare her life – for £1 in sweet money.
Rachael Watts was just seven when she was snatched and bundled into Bishop’s car boot as she roller-skated near her home.
Rachael Watts was snatched off the street by Babes In The Wood killer Russell Bishop. Credit: Athena
Attack survivor Rachael bravely tells her story for the very first time. Credit: Dan Charity
Rachael was abducted and sexually attacked by paedophile Russell Bishop. Credit: PA:Press Association
She bartered with the monster to spare her, offering the pocket money her dad had given her earlier. But instead he drove her to an isolated beauty spot, where he launched a sickening sex attack.
Evil Bishop then throttled Rachael and left her for dead, naked, on downland near Hove, East Sussex.
'Downland' in southern England are basically hills of chalk.
Rachael’s evidence helped cage Bishop — but it would take 28 years for DNA advances to finally nail him for the killings in 1986 that became known as the Babes In The Wood murders. Next Sunday marks 36 years since the shocking crimes took place.
Bishop died behind bars — and today brave Rachael, now 40, waives her lifelong legal right to anonymity to give her only interview, to The Sun on Sunday.
Now a mum of four, she reveals: “Finally, I don’t need to worry he’ll come back one day to get me. I want to let go and stop being scared of people finding out. The shame is Bishop’s, not mine.”
32 years later she can finally begin to recover from the trauma of that day. This is not unusual for victims of child sexual abuse.
Rachael’s family had just moved home to Brighton’s Whitehawk estate when her life changed forever on Sunday, February 4, 1990.
On a sunny day, she had set out to see a friend. Fatefully, her pal was not in — and as Rachael roller-skated home she fell and hit a wall. Bruised and hurt, she went to her dad, who gave her £1 to buy sweets.
She recalled: “I don’t remember anything about my childhood before I was kidnapped. But every detail of that day is burned into my brain.
“My lovely dad still blames himself for what happened, but in those days people let their kids play outside.
“I skated to the shop but it was shut. Then I forgot the way home, so I asked someone for directions.”
Russell Bishop was finally convicted and sent to jail in 2018. Credit: PA
‘I KNEW I'D DIE IF I DIDN'T GET OUT OF THE COLD'
That person was jobless roofer Bishop — who had cheated justice three years earlier.
Terrible forensic blunders meant he walked free from court in 1987 after a jury cleared him of the murders of nine-year-old schoolgirls Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway.
Now the dangerous paedophile was lurking by the boot of his red Ford Cortina as Rachael approached.
Rachael never admitted to police that she asked Bishop for directions. She said: “I was worried I’d get into trouble for talking to a stranger.
“He had a moustache very similar to my dad, and was working on his car, and my dad was a car mechanic, so it didn’t occur to me that he was a danger.
“I asked for directions and he immediately swooped me up and dumped me in the back of his car."
As Bishop drove off at speed, Rachael did not panic. Plotting her escape, she took off her skates and began screaming.
She said: “He yelled at me to shut it or he’d kill me. I said, ‘I can give you money, I’ve got a pound’.”
He put his hands around my throat and he choked me. I tried to say, ‘I can’t breathe’. Then I passed out.
As Bishop drove off, Rachael felt around in the dark and found a hammer, banging it hard against the boot. The large indents she made later formed part of the prosecution’s case against him.
She also memorised every detail she could, later telling police about the chisel, spanner and orange pen in the boot and a can of WD40 oil, “like Mummy has in her car”.
The Devil’s Dyke beauty spot became a scene of horror where Rachael was attacked by Russell Bishop.
Credit: Alamy
After about 25 minutes the car stopped at Devil’s Dyke, a secluded beauty spot on the Sussex Downs.
Bishop lifted Rachael out of the boot and forced her on the back seat of the car before stripping her naked. After carrying out a horrific sexual assault, he tried to kill her.
Rachael went on: “He put his hands around my throat and he choked me. I tried to say, ‘I can’t breathe’. Then I passed out.”
Medics later estimated that she had been unconscious for several minutes and nearly died.
She recalled: “When I woke up, everything hurt. I was in mud underneath gorse bushes — he must have shoved me there to hide my body.
“I was naked, bleeding and freezing. It was February and pitch black. I got to my knees. I had to push the brambles out of the way and they shredded my hands and legs. It was a big gorse and bramble thicket but I managed to get out.”
Rachael was abducted four years after the murders of Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows
Rachael was stranded in 45 acres of downland, far from any houses — but she suddenly saw the headlights of a parked car.
She said: “I was terrified it was him, but I knew I’d die if I didn’t get out of the cold.
“I tried to call out but my throat was swollen from him strangling me. So I moved towards the lights.
“I fell over so I crawled again. I got up and staggered the last few yards.”
In the car were a Brighton couple drinking coffee after a day out. Horrified, they wrapped the seven-year-old in the wife’s jacket and assured her she was now safe.
Police were called and Rachael was taken to hospital, where her parents rushed to be by her side. Doctors marvelled at how she had escaped being left with brain damage.
Rachael later went home but the memory of Bishop haunted her. She recalled: “I became afraid to even go outside our house and pick grass from the verges for my rabbit. And I became scared Bishop was hiding in the rabbit hutch.”
In 1987, prosecution blunders had led to a jury at Lewes Crown Court acquitting Bishop of the Babes In The Wood murders.
'I HOPE THERE'S A PLACE IN HELL FOR HIM'
Yet police were convinced he was a killer — and arrested him on suspicion of Rachael’s abduction.
Tyre tracks at Devil’s Dyke matched those on his Cortina. Rachael said: “I told them about Bishop’s car and the dents and scratches I had made hammering on the lid of his boot. Mum told me they helped the police get him.”
Bishop, from Hollingdean, near Brighton, was arrested and Rachael was asked to return for an identity parade, just three days after he tried to kill her.
She recalled: “He had styled his hair differently. But I knew straight away it was him.”
At Bishop’s trial ten months later the then eight-year-old Rachael chose to give evidence in the courtroom, rather than TV link. She recalled: “The screen hiding Bishop from me was on my left.
“The defence tried to portray me as some immature little girl but I just sat there and answered all their questions very matter-of-factly. The only thing I wouldn’t do was use his name. Even at home, I just called him. ‘That man’.”
Bishop was convicted of kidnap, indecent assault and attempted murder in December 1990 and sentenced to a minimum of 13 years.
Cops dubbed Rachael “the bravest kid you could imagine” and gave her a teddy bear to thank her for her incredible efforts.
Cops gave Rachael a teddy for helping to crack the case against Bishop. Credit: Athena
It was a moment captured in a heartbreaking photo published for the first time today.
But bottling up the trauma led Rachael to drink in her teens to blot out the pain, angry at Bishop and terrified that he would be released.
Again, this is typical of child sex abuse survivors. They need counseling and a lot of it.
Rachael left school at 16 and wed her first husband two years later. The marriage lasted just 12 months. Her second marriage brought her three children but also ended.
Interpersonal relationships are very difficult for survivors. Divorce is a common occurrence.
In 2014 Rachael wed “my lovely third and final husband”, Justin. And she admits: “I’d spent so many years thinking brick walls were my best friend. When I met Justin, he broke down those walls.”
Bishop had murdered Karen Hadaway four years before abducting Rachael. Credit: Alamy
OMGosh, how sweet can you be?
A year later, DNA advances led police to believe Bishop might finally face justice for the Babes In The Woods murders. The news led to Rachael’s developing agoraphobia, an extreme fear of open or crowded spaces.
But as his 2018 trial came to an end, Bishop admitted for the first time he had attacked her. Rachael recalled: “He said he attacked me because people wrongly blamed him of killing the girls.
"He said he was suffering from ‘psychological trauma’ and wanted to ‘belittle and shame’ a little girl because he was innocent and ‘bloody angry at everyone. It was the most revolting defence ever. I felt suicidal and finally suffered a breakdown.”
Bishop was convicted in December 2018 at London’s Old Bailey of Karen and Nicola’s murders. He was jailed for life with a 36-year minimum tariff.
Last year The Sun revealed how Bishop was at death’s door as cancer took hold. He died at Durham’s HMP Frankland in January.
Rachael admits: “I didn’t celebrate when Bishop died. But I hope that there’s a place in Hell for him. I’m speaking up now because I can. When he died this year, I finally started to recover.”
Rachael suffers from post traumatic stress disorder and is raising funds to support her recovery. To donate, go to gofundme.com/rachael-russell-bishop-survivor.
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