Published at 11:07, Thursday, 28 June 2012

A PRISONER has admitted murdering a child rapist who was disembowelled in his cell at a top security jail.

Mitchell Harrison, 23, who used to live in Whitehaven, was serving a sentence at Frankland Prison, Durham, for raping a 13-year-old girl in Cumbria when he was killed last October.

Michael Parr, 32, pleaded guilty to murder during a brief hearing at Newcastle Crown Court via videolink from prison. He will be sentenced on July 12.

Nathan Mann, 23, is also charged with Harrison’s murder but he did not appear before the court.

Harrison, who had lived in both the Cockermouth and Whitehaven areas, was jailed in January 2010 for raping the girl the year before.

He was sentenced at Carlisle Crown Court and put on the Sex Offenders’ Register for life.

Harrison was serving an indeterminate sentence of at least four-and-a-half years at the time of his death.

After living in the west of the county, Harrison moved to south Cumbria. It was in Kendal that he carried out the attack. It was third time he had been in trouble for sexual assaults on girls.

When he was 13, Harrison was given a formal warning for indecently assaulting a seven-year-old.

The court was told at his sentencing that when he was 15 he was taken to court for threatening to rape a teenager whose breasts he grabbed.

After his murder, Harrison’s family released a statement saying: “Although we never condoned his past actions, he was serving his time and was by all accounts a model, trusted prisoner who did not deserve to die in this horrific way.”

Harrison was originally from Wolverhampton.

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk