Thus from the Go Fund Me page started on her behalf. It is good it has reached its target.
It seems very wrong that she has been refused disability benefits given her current physical and mental state.
^Rachael Watts’s enormous courage as a child helped imprison a paedophile
killer - but now she needs help with her recovery^.
Rachael has publicly revealed for the first time that she was the seven year old Brighton girl who miraculously survived being abducted, sexually assaulted and strangled by ‘Babes in the Woods’ killer Russell Bishop in 1990.
Rachael is a proud, stoical person and has found it hard to obtain the help she needs and deserves. Now 40, she has developed agoraphobia – a profound terror of the outdoors – and been diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, acute anxiety and agonising Fibromyalgia (sometimes linked to stress). But she has been turned down for disability benefits and received little therapeutic support.
Police dubbed Rachael ‘the bravest little girl in Britain’ after her clear, detailed evidence in court finally led to Bishop being imprisoned. He was acquitted in 1987, after a badly botched trial, of murdering two nine year old Brighton girls. This left him free to abduct Rachael while she was roller-skating near her home.
He left Rachael for dead in bramble bushes on the remote Sussex Downs on 4 February 1990 but she recovered consciousness and, although naked, freezing and bleeding, crawled out and found help.
For many years Rachael bravely held her life together. She worked, married, had children and told almost no one about her history. But in 2018 Russell Bishop was retried and convicted of the ‘Babes’ murders. His trial brought back the horror of what he did to her and provoked a complete breakdown.
She has been unable since to work. Now, she sees speaking out as part of her healing...and gardening. The therapeutic power of gardening is well known and, given she still cannot venture far from her home, she longs to build a summer house and make her outdoor space - currently just a concrete-paved yard - beautiful. She’d also love a mini outdoor gym, to help rebuild her shattered physical health, and provide fun for the children whom she cannot currently take to the park.
Her income is very small, so help for her healing garden dream would be hugely appreciated.
My daughter was at primary school with Rachael, and I have never forgotten her courage. To read Rachael's story in full, you can follow this link to my recent article in the Sun on Sunday.
My earlier interview with her parents in the Daily Mail in 2018, after her attacker was finally convicted of murdering the Brighton 'Babes', further explains why Rachael - then hiding under the alias 'Daisy' - so needs our help.