Life was hell after I stabbed my dad Fred West with a screwdriver - but it was mum I was scared of

Daily Record

6 days ago

WARNING - DISTRESSING CONTENT: Howard Sounes, the Mirror reporter who first broke the story of Fred and Rose West in 1994, has gained access to more than 100 hours of Fred West's unheard police interviews for his new book
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 beneath the patio.
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The remains of West's eight year old stepdaughter Charmaine were found under their previous residence, her body kneecapped and dissected. Two of West's pregnant lovers were discovered in unofficial graves, both just weeks away from full term.
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West's former wife Rena was found in a nearby field, while a runaway was buried under what used to be a paddling pool. Another woman was found beneath the bathroom floor and five more were discovered in the cellar - where the youngest West children slept.
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However, those who survived life at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester didn't consider themselves much luckier. Howard Sounes, an author who first reported on the West case for the Mirror in 1994, recently gained access to over 100 hours of previously unheard police interviews with Fred West.
Now, in the first instalment 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book The Fred West Tapes: Secrets of the Fred and Rose West Murder Investigation, he shares his chilling, previously unpublished interview with West's son Barry, revealing the true horrors of growing up in Britain's infamous House of Horrors...., reports the Mirror.
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Anna-Marie West was a mere eight years old when she was first raped by her father and stepmother. From then on, rape became a horrifyingly regular occurrence. She was bound to metal torture devices that her father, builder Fred West, constructed at work - all the while being told this was normal.
Some of the West children were subjected to sexual abuse not only by Fred and Rose. On one occasion, a few were permitted to attend their parents' party - only to be molested by inebriated men, seemingly with their parents' approval, according to one child's account.
Incest was ingrained in Fred's DNA, and child abuse was as commonplace as meals at 25 Cromwell Street. Strangely enough, it wasn't always their father who instilled the most fear amongst the West children. It was Rose.
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The mother and stepmother has consistently denied all accusations against her for three decades. However, in November 1995, she was convicted on 10 counts of murder committed between 1971 and 1987. During the trial, the court was presented with ample evidence of her perpetrating severe sexual and physical assaults on children.
She subsequently became only the second woman - following Myra Hindley - to receive a Whole Life Order, ensuring she will never be released. Many of her children, like her son Barry, were handed a life sentence of their own - unable to recover from the trauma inflicted by the Wests.
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Barry grappled with mental health issues and drug use. Tragically, he passed away two years after recounting to me the full extent of the horrors endured within the House of Horrors.
It is only now that I can share the details of that interview for the first time. Barry confided in me, saying: "My dad was a solid monster," and added about his mother, "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 the West children were young, they endured nights locked in the cellar, sometimes even strapped to their beds. Rose took on the role of jailer to her own children, with the keys to the cellar hanging around her neck.
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The slightest provocation would trigger Rose's violent outbursts, which included not just hitting and slapping but also stabbing and strangling her children. She even used a novelty giant wooden spoon as a weapon.
Barry recounted the physical abuse he suffered, stating: "My nose is on a slant because of the amount of times she broke it," and "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 sorts of stuff. She had intense enjoyment in beating the s**t out of me... "
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These horrific acts form Barry's earliest memories. He shared further: "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 recounted a particularly unpleasant experience with his mother's brussel sprouts. "I put them in a tissue and then hid them in the back of a chair," he confessed. Days later, Rose discovered the decomposing vegetables. "She put them on the table, and she made me eat them," he continued. "[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 devoid of happiness for the children. Rose insisted on sending her daughters to school with cropped hair, dressed in boys' shoes for their durability. She would have them wash their hair with dish soap instead of shampoo and forbade the use of deodorant, leading to mockery from their peers.
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The West boys were not spared; they attended school in their sisters' cast-offs, allowing their hair to grow out. Many developed squints and speech impediments, often signs of child mistreatment.
"When we was young, we all had speech impediments," Barry revealed, "I got my face punched in every day I went to school....[I was] scared to go to school, scared to go home."
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Home was no sanctuary, with both parents presenting a threat. The children once pooled their money to buy a £12 Zippo lighter for Father's Day, even having it engraved. "He threw it across the room," Barry remembered. "That was the kind of man he was." And that was only part of their ordeal.
West incessantly discussed sexual matters in the presence of his children, expressing a desire to take his daughters' virginity, boasting about the family's history of incest, and even engaging in bestiality. His deranged aspiration was to witness his daughter Rose being copulated with by a bull.
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"[Dad] was such a disgusting man, he was vile," Barry confided. Fred West harboured intentions to sexually initiate his daughters, and Barry alleged that he was coerced into sexual acts with his own mother at the tender age of "eight or nine".
The children were often tasked with managing phone appointments for 'Mandy', the pseudonym their mother used while working as a sex worker. It wasn't long before Barry found himself being presented to clients as an additional service.
Barry recounted one particular incident where Rose, dressed in her nightgown, instructed him to accompany her to her bedroom. "She said, 'There's a man in here and I want you to do exactly what he tells you to do, no matter what'," Barry remembered. "[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."
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That evening marked the beginning of Barry's ordeal; he was raped by a regular visitor who continued to abuse him and engage in sexual relations with Rose. The mother maintained a peculiar system for her clientele, storing individual pairs of underwear for each regular in separately labelled jars.
Moreover, West demanded that all contraceptives be retained after use, with the twisted aim of "artificially inseminating" their offspring. Barry also disclosed that they were forced to watch homemade pornographic videos featuring their mother.
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Within the family, there were whispers that Barry might not have been West's biological son but rather a result of the incestuous relationship between Rose and her father, Bill Letts. It was alleged that Bill had been sexually abusing Rose since her childhood, and as per notes written by West while in prison, Bill was a frequent visitor to Cromwell Street.
West claimed that one of his daughters once came downstairs and complained, "Grampy [is] going to sleep with me." He recounted that Rose's response was chilling: "He is not going to eat you, he is only going to f**k you. You'll probably love it." (Rose has consistently denied any wrongdoing, even after being convicted of multiple murders).
In addition to the physical violence and sexual abuse, young women were lured to the house where they were assaulted and murdered, often dismembered by West in the family bathroom. The victims were found missing fingers, toes, and other body parts, which led a psychologist to speculate on a possible cannibalistic aspect to the crimes.
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Anna-Marie, the eldest surviving child, was nearly nine years old when Lynda Gough, aged 19, became the first victim of the Cromwell Street murders in 1973. Over the following six years, eight more women, including some lodgers, vanished without a trace.
The remains of West's first wife Rena, his pregnant lover Anne McFall, and his stepdaughter Charmaine were buried at different locations.
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Most of the children insisted they were oblivious to the horrors unfolding around them. However, years on, one of the children (who shall remain unnamed) disclosed that there were instances when they were confined to a cupboard under the stairs, overhearing shouting and screaming. Upon emerging, they would notice fresh concrete in the cellar.
"Why didn't we all run away?" pondered Barry, who subsequently endured a prolonged struggle with mental health issues. "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."
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Barry even considered murdering his father as a means to cease their suffering. "I tried stabbing him when I was eleven with a screwdriver. He just laughed at me," he recounted. The younger siblings did manage to exact some form of retribution against Rose. Barry alleged that just before they were taken into care amid the police investigation, Rose attacked them with a wooden spoon, prompting them to collectively retaliate.
"I remember all my sisters jumping on top [of her], and we all sort of stood up [to her] and she was tired," he recalled. "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..."
Generally speaking though, the youngsters understood not to misbehave - or breach the West family's code of silence. Barry's elder sister Heather served as their cautionary tale. She disappeared at 16 in 1987 after expressing her desire to escape the household. The kids were informed she'd relocated and severed all ties. Yet it evolved into a household 'gag': cross Fred and Rose, and you'd end up like Heather - beneath the patio, three slabs up and nine along.
Barry subsequently 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 that 'gag' reached police ears, the excavators arrived. And the Wests' decades of depravity would remain concealed no longer....