'Fred West was a monster, but Rose did something even worse to us kids'

Irish Daily Mirror

7 days ago

Few could be worse parents than Fred and Rose West. Their 16 year old daughter Heather was strangled, dismembered in the family bath (using a kitchen knife to avoid scratching the enamel) and buried under the patio.
Fred West's eight year old stepdaughter Charmaine was found kneecapped and dissected under their previous residence. Not one, but two of West's pregnant mistresses were discovered in unofficial graves, both just a few weeks away from full term.
West's ex-wife Rena was found in a nearby field, a runaway was buried under what used to be a paddling pool. Another woman was found under the bathroom floor and five more were in the cellar - where the youngest West children slept.
However, those who survived life at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester didn't consider themselves much luckier. Author Howard Sounes, who helped break the West story as a Mirror reporter in 1994 and is now the leading expert on the case, recently gained access to over 100 hours of Fred West's unheard police interviews.
Now, in Day One of our serialisation of his new book The Fred West Tapes: Secrets of the Fred and Rose West Murder Investigation, he shares his chilling previously-unpublished interview with West's son Barry, revealing what it was truly like growing up in Britain's House of Horrors, reports the Mirror. Barry's sisters, Mae West and Heather West, daughters of Fred and Rose West. (Image: Collect) Fred and Rose West's 10 victims (Image: Rex Features)
Anna-Marie West was a mere eight years old when her father and stepmother first violated her. From then on, violation became a regular occurrence. She was bound to metal torture devices that builder Fred West crafted at work - and was told it was perfectly normal.
Some, but not all, of the West children were exploited for sexual gratification not only by Fred and Rose. On occasion, a few of them were permitted to attend their parents' party - only, according to one child, to be abused by inebriated men with their parents' endorsement.
Incest was ingrained in Fred's DNA, and child abuse was as commonplace as meal times at 25 Cromwell Street. But, oddly enough, it wasn't always their father who instilled the most fear amongst the West children. It was Rose.
The mother and stepmother has refuted all allegations against her for 30 years. However, in November 1995, she was convicted of 10 counts of murder between 1971 and 1987. During the trial, the court heard copious evidence of her committing severe sexual and physical assaults against children.
She later became only the second woman - after Myra Hindley - to be given a Whole Life Order, meaning she'll never be released. Many of her children, like her son Barry, received a life sentence of their own - never recovering from the trauma the Wests inflicted. Fred and Rose West 25 Cromwell Street. (Image: SWNS.com)
He battled with his mental health and had been using drugs. He tragically passed away two years after meeting me to recount the full horror of life inside the House of Horrors.
In a heart-wrenching interview, Barry revealed: "My dad was a solid monster," but he added, "But she [Rose] was a complete psycho. That's what people don't know: My mum was, child abuse-wise, the main person. My mum was completely sick in the head. She beat me way more than my dad did, and enjoyed it, absolutely enjoyed it."
When they were children, the West siblings were forced to sleep in the cellar, often locked in there at night, sometimes strapped to their beds. Rose was the jailer of her own children, wearing the keys to the cellar around her neck.
The slightest provocation would trigger Rose, resulting in violent outbursts: not just hitting and slapping but stabbing and strangling her children. She also used a novelty giant wooden spoon as a weapon.
"My nose is on a slant because of the amount of times she broke it," Barry confessed. "She would use [the spoon] as a baseball bat to beat us. I've got massive scars on the back of my head from the amount of times she split my head open with it. She broke my arm, all sorta stuff. She had intense enjoyment in beating the s**t out of me... " Inside 25 Cromwell Street where bodies were hidden just below where the children slept (Image: mirrorpix) TV Producer Howard Sounes covered the case for the Mirror in 1994 and is Senior Producer of Netflix's Fred & Rose: A British Horror Story. His new book, serialised in the Mirror, features a never-before-seen photo of Fred West in prison on the cover
Tragically, these are Barry's earliest memories. He said: "She was just as sick as him. Her moods didn't change. She used to hit us even on Christmas Day. She used to smack you straight in the mouth."
One Christmas, Barry made the mistake of not liking his mum's Brussels sprouts. "I put them in a tissue and then hid them in the back of a chair," he said. Days later Rose discovered them, rotting away. "She put them on the table, and she made me eat them," he added. "[Then] she put her hand over my mouth and made me swallow my own sick. That's the sort of s**t I had growing up. I don't remember any present opening."
Life at Cromwell Street was utterly without joy. Rose dispatched her daughters to school with cropped hair, like lads, wearing boys' footwear because it was more durable. She forced her girls to wash their hair with washing-up liquid instead of proper shampoo and refused to buy deodorant, leaving them open to mockery from classmates.
The West lads attended school dressed in their sisters' cast-offs, their hair allowed to grow long like girls. Several developed squints and speech problems, which can be signs of child abuse. Police bring out the grim evidence during the search of 25 Cromwell Street in 1994. This November will be 30 years since Rose West's conviction (Image: mirrorpix) Fred and Rose West (Image: PA)
"When we was young, we all had speech impediments," says Barry, "I got my face punched in every day I went to school....[I was] scared to go to school, scared to go home."
It wasn't just Rose awaiting him at home. His father was there too. The youngsters once pooled their money to buy him a £12 Zippo lighter for Father's Day. They even had it engraved. "He threw it across the room," Barry recalled. "That was the kind of man he was." That wasn't even the beginning of it. West spoke about sex constantly in front of the children, about wanting to take his daughters' virginity, about the family tradition of incest, even sex with animals. His declared ambition – the very notion is mad – was to see Rose mounted by a bull.
"[Dad] was such a revolting man, he was vile," Barry told me. Fred wanted to deflower his daughters, and Barry claimed he was coerced into sexual situations with his mother at just "eight or nine".
The children frequently had to take phone bookings for 'Mandy', their mum's pseudonym when she was working as a prostitute. Barry began being offered up to clients as an extra, as such. Barry West, believed to be aged eight. He was given a new identity when his parents were arrested and kept his adult appearance secret Rose West, aged six. (Image: SWNSSWNS.comSWNS.com)
According to him, one evening, Rose came downstairs in her nightdress and told Barry to follow her to her room. "She said, 'There's a man in here and I want you to do exactly what he tells you to do, no matter what'," recalled Barry. "[I] was just confused. I didn't know what she was talking about. I walk in and there was a giant man in front of me."
The man raped Barry. This was just the beginning. His abuser continued to visit the house to molest him and have sex with Rose. The mum had a dedicated pair of underwear for each regular, kept in separate labelled jars.
West also insisted she kept all used contraceptives in order to "artificially inseminate" their children. Barry claimed they were even made to watch homemade porn featuring their mother. It was occasionally suggested within the family that Barry might not have been West's biological child at all, but rather the result of the incestuous relationship between Rose and her father, Bill Letts. Bill had reportedly been sexually abusing Rose since childhood and, according to notes made in prison by West, was a frequent visitor to Cromwell Street.
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West claimed one of his daughters once came downstairs complaining: "Grampy [is] going to sleep with me." According to West, Rose responded: "He is not going to eat you, he is only going to f**k you. You'll probably love it." (Rose consistently denies all wrongdoing despite her murder convictions).
Alongside the violence and abuse, young women were being lured to the house where they were assaulted, killed, and often dismembered by West (in the family bathroom). All victims were discovered with fingers, toes and other body parts missing, prompting one psychologist to suggest there may have been a cannibalistic aspect to the murders.
The eldest surviving child Anna-Marie was approaching nine when 19 year old Lynda Gough was murdered in 1973, marking the first of the nine Cromwell Street killings. Eight more women, some of them lodgers, vanished over the following six years.
The remains of West's first wife Rena, pregnant mistress Anne McFall and stepdaughter Charmaine were interred elsewhere. Most of the children insisted they were oblivious to what was happening. However, years later, one child (who will remain unnamed) alleged that there were days when they were locked in a cupboard under the stairs amidst shouting and screaming. Upon emerging, they noticed fresh concrete had been poured in the cellar. Fred and Rose in the early days of the relationship. Rose was found guilty of 10 counts of murder, while Fred hanged himself before trial (Image: Netflix: Fred & Rose West: A British Horror Story)
"Why didn't we all run away?" Barry, who later grappled with severe psychological issues, questioned me. "I suppose that's the hold he had, the power. My dad was like God. You couldn't beat him. You couldn't run away. He would find you."
Barry considered ending their torment by killing his father. "I tried stabbing him when I was 11 with a screwdriver. He just laughed at me," he alleged. The younger siblings did manage some retaliation against Rose, however. Just before they were taken into care during the police investigation, Barry claimed Rose attacked them with a wooden spoon and they all united to confront her.
"I remember all my sisters piling on top [of her], and we all sort of stood up [to her] and she was exhausted," he alleged. "She was knackered. She hit us until [she] couldn't hit us anymore. And that's when she broke down. And I saw the weakness of her, and she was crying her eyes out."
However, the children were well aware not to cross any boundaries - or break the West's code of silence. Heather, Barry's older sister, served as their warning. She disappeared at the age of 16 in 1987 after expressing a desire to leave home. The children were informed that she had moved away and severed contact. But it became a family 'joke': if you crossed Fred and Rose, you'd end up like Heather - beneath the patio, three paving stones up and nine across.
Barry later revealed: "That was what was going to happen to all of us when we got old enough. If we didn't turn out like him, we was against him. And if we was against him, we would have to go in the garden – under the patio. He made us understand that."
When this 'joke' reached the police, the diggers were brought in. And the Wests' decades of degradation could no longer remain hidden.
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