The elaborate lies told by fugitive paedophile Charles Batham as he lived a double life in Europe have been revealed by an ABC investigation, which has also uncovered fresh abuse allegations from multiple women in New South Wales.
The tall, eccentric Englishman fled Australia in 2011 after being charged with child sex offences in the tropical town of Broome, and spent nine years on the run.
He was eventually captured and extradited from Italy, and was last year sentenced to more than nine years in jail.
Readers are advised this story has references to sexual assault.
NSW Police have issued warrants for his arrest in relation to further child abuse allegations dating back to the 1970s and 80s, a Background Briefing investigation has revealed.
However, in the latest twist in a lengthy saga it appears the women who have come forward may not get their day in court, due to the patchwork of police jurisdictions in Australia.
WA Police have also revealed the behind-the-scenes dramas in their long hunt for Batham, as he evaded capture in Europe.
Hunt for Batham resumes
In the first few months after Batham's escape from Australia, detectives Wayne Davies and Bruce Bowers worked late into the night in their office in Broome trying to track him.
Early on, Batham was spooked by an approach from police in England, who provided Australian police with details of his vehicle and fake name, but were unable to arrest him due to complex international policing laws.
"A lot was being done behind the scenes to find him and try to get resolution for the victims," Detective Sergeant Wayne Davies says.
"It is complex and it is time consuming … and you've got to remember Europe's got open borders, so basically the whole of Europe was open to him."
Batham moved quickly, crossing into France and arriving in Turkey to look for work.
'He was like a Mick Jagger'
The chatty Englishman soon secured work flying ultralight aircraft on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.
The ABC has spoken with several people who lived alongside him during this time. They all swear they did not know he was a fugitive on the run from Australian authorities.
One of them is Turkish-Australian businessman Jay Kahya.
He worked alongside Batham for several years at an aviation company in the coastal city of Fethiye.
"When I first met him … he was quite eccentric, but very interesting and helpful," Mr Kahya says.
"He talked about his background being English and from a family which is aristocratic, or a bit posh.
"The town got to know him quickly, not only because he was new in town but he was some sort of a character.
Just like he had in Broome, Batham set up accommodation on the edge of the airport runway, this time building a shed to shelter his Fiat campervan.
Photographs from this time show him cheerfully socialising at a local bar.
"His habits and his lifestyle were very simple," Mr Kahya explains.
"He was at the airfield most of the time, and in the evenings he went out to the local pubs and met up with people."
But what Batham couldn't have known was that WA Police were closing in.
Detectives Wayne Davies and Bruce Bowers had pinpointed Batham's location in Turkey, via a bank account he opened under his new alias: Charles Edwin Shannon.
Soon, they had an informant feeding back information about Batham's movements, allowing them to progress an international arrest warrant and extradition application.
Another arrest, and escape
It took a year of paperwork and negotiations, but in 2013 Turkish police pounced.
"We got the call that Batham was arrested in Turkey, so we thought, 'Great!'" says Detective Sergeant Davies.
"But each country has its own laws and he's arrested under Turkish law, and the court there releases him on bail."
It was the worst kind of deja vu.
Just as happened in Australia, Batham was arrested, released on bail and fled.
"It was so frustrating," Detective Sergeant Bruce Bowers says.
The international agreement guiding the arrest meant WA Police could make requests and recommendations, but had no control over the bail decision.
Batham quickly ducked into hiding.
He had done such a good job creating a convincing double life in Turkey that his new friends didn't suspect a thing.
Businessman Jay Kahya, who had become friendly with Batham over the years, remembers when the police came knocking.
"He was hiding in some person's house for five weeks — I didn't know where.
"The rumour was that he'd chatted with local police and insulted the President of Turkey, and he thinks because of that, the police are after him."
So according to Jay, Batham had locals convinced he was being unfairly persecuted by Turkish police.
The cover story explained his sudden departure, and allowed him to slip away once more.
Jay didn't discover his eccentric friend was an accused child molester until years later, when he came across the ABC investigation published in 2020.
He says he was appalled, and contacted the Australian authorities with the information he had.
"I had no idea – there was nothing that indicated he was a creep, or that he had a dark side.
"Allegations like this are very serious, and I did what I could to assist," he says.
Police operation in the US
There would be one more showdown in 2014 before the trail went cold.
WA Police had had a breakthrough — Batham had booked a flight from France to Mexico under his new alias.
And he would have a stopover in Washington, DC.
WA Police organised for a team of law enforcement officers to be ready and waiting to arrest him.
But Detective Sergeant Davies says it wasn't to be.
"I still don't know why, but Batham never actually got on that plane," he says.
The 'quest'
After that, the trail went cold. There were no more flight bookings and no more sightings of the ginger-haired fugitive.
Detective Sergeant Davies says he and colleague Bruce Bowers took the file with them when they were transferred out of Broome, updating the Interpol Red Notice and checking in with ultralight flying groups across Europe.
"By this stage it really was a quest to find Batham," he reflects.
"We wanted to get him back, not only for us, but especially for the victims."
Victim goes public
By late 2019, one of Batham's victims was growing impatient.
Sherrie was sexually assaulted by Batham in Broome when she was nine years old, and was determined that he be brought back to face justice.
By now, more distressing evidence had come to light of the scale of his offending, with a stash of videos and images found by chance on a USB stick in a sandpit at Batham's abandoned property in Broome.
Among them were dozens of sickening images of him sexually assaulting a second girl, aged eight.
When police informed Sherrie that Batham was still on the run with a new British passport under a new name, she posted the information online in frustration.
It was the catalyst for ABC coverage in February 2020 that would result in Batham's capture. Tip-offs flowed in from around the world, and within weeks the 75-year-old was arrested in Italy.
During the peak of COVID-19 chaos, detectives Wayne Davies and Bruce Bowers flew to Milan to extradite Batham to Australia.
He is now serving a nine-year, two-month jail term in Perth, with the sentencing judge describing his offending as sustained and aggravated.
NSW arrest warrants revealed
Charles Batham may be imprisoned, but Background Briefing's investigation has revealed the case is far from closed.
A separate New South Wales investigation is underway into allegations Batham sexually molested children in the 1970s and 80s.
It is understood three women have come forward and made statements to police.
When the ABC sent detailed questions to NSW Police it responded with a brief statement.
However, the women who say they were abused may never get their day in court.
The Australian legal system means NSW police cannot prosecute Batham until he has finished his jail term in Western Australia.
The earliest he can be released is May 2027, by which time he would be 83 years old.
Complicating things further, sources close to the case say he will first have to be deported to the United Kingdom where he has citizenship, to comply with the terms of his extradition.
NSW authorities will then need to start the extradition process from scratch to have him brought back to Sydney to face the charges.
Sydney woman speaks out
One of the women alleging historical child sexual abuse by Batham in NSW has spoken to the ABC using the pseudonym Katie to protect her family's privacy.
Katie says she was sexually abused by Charles Batham over a period of about six months in 1990, when she was 13 years old.
At the time Batham ran a rose-selling business out of his townhouse in inner-west Sydney, hiring a dozen or so teenage girls to sell flowers at pubs and restaurants.
"The uniform that you wore when you sold roses was this white, thin cotton dress with a little red cape," she says.
At the time, Katie was vulnerable.
Her mother was a single parent and at times they'd been homeless.
She says she was embarrassed by her dyslexia, and eager to please this charming older man who promised money to help support the family.
One night, she says, Batham plied her with alcohol and grabbed her.
"He sat on the couch in the loungeroom and he pulled me between his legs.
"There were other adults around, drinking and socialising, and he wrapped his arms and legs around me.
Katie says Batham made her have sex with him regularly and framed their relationship as a romantic partnership.
"For so many hours of my life, for many months of my life … just the full horror of the multiple and varied and extreme offences that he committed on my body were extreme," she says.
"Looking back, he had honed his craft. He knew exactly what he was doing … he was very manipulative, he had coercive control."
After about six months, Katie's stepfather intervened to get her away from Batham.
Her account has been corroborated by two schoolfriends and her stepfather.
NSW allegations may not go to court
It wasn't until she was an adult that Katie comprehended the severity of what had happened.
When she was 29, she went to a police station in Sydney and made a statement, triggering a NSW Police investigation.
Witnesses were interviewed but no charges were laid.
By then, Batham was living in Broome in WA, where a separate police investigation into abuse allegations would get underway.
Not long after, Batham fled Australia, triggering the nine-year disappearance that has likely torpedoed any chance of his being held to account in relation to the NSW allegations.
Katie believes Batham was abusing children long before they met.
"I believe he has a long and repetitive history of sexually abusing young girls," she says.
"He told me about multiple young girls he had sex with before me … and he has gone on to do exactly the same thing after me.
"His patterns of behaviour clearly demonstrate that he knew exactly what to do, and how to isolate, manipulate and have access to vulnerable [people] like me to sexually abuse."
Charles Batham did not respond to a written request for comment.
Part 2 of the Background Briefing investigation How to Catch a Fugitive is available now.
You can listen to Part 1 here.
