Mae, the daughter of Fred and Rose West, who terrorized all of England, got married and built a pretty comfortable life for herself. However, she will never be able to forget her childhood.
“There aren’t many support groups for children of serial killers,” quips Mae West. Now she is married, has two children, a cozy modern house in a prestigious area of a historic English city – it is hard to guess what her childhood was like. “Sometimes I think when dealing with criminals, people forget about their families. I often see cases like this in the news and wonder: what happened to the children? My mother is in prison for life. “She was convicted of murdering a child and nine young women, one of whom was my older sister Heather, and she’s protected in a way,” says Mae West.
Rose West has a degree in English and enjoys sports, sewing and cooking. She lives in her own bubble and her children can’t be themselves and have nowhere to hide from themselves.
“I worry about people knowing or finding out who I am. I am also worried about what my son will find out about his grandparents. My daughter has already grown up, knows everything and deals with it. She saw West’s name on her uncle’s credit card, so she Googled it and connected the ends, Mae West said.
She fears that her nine-year-old son will soon find out. There was a time when her husband planned to become a police officer but was not accepted because of Mae West’s parents. She tried to go to Australia, but she was not allowed due to her terrible past. “We were ignored by the authorities, even though my parents sexually and physically abused me as a child, and now that I’m an adult, they tell me: you come from an abusive family, we’re going to have to watch you,” laments Mae West.
Mae West recently wrote a book about her childhood. In it, she talks about how her parents were obsessed with sex, that when she was just five she was raped by Uncle John, Fred’s brother, and then terrorized by her father, who also molested her. Even after her imprisonment, the mother continued to manipulate her daughter, but it took her ten years to realize this.
The crimes of May’s parents, Fred and Rosemary West, were so horrific that they shocked and surprised the whole world. In 1994, police searched the family’s Gloucester Street home for the remains of the Wests’ eldest child, Heather.
The house at 25 Cromwell Street, where Rose worked as a prostitute, was divided into apartments for rent by Fred. This building became known as the “House of Horrors” after police officers found several decomposed bodies of women in the basement and buried in the yard.
Heather’s remains were among them. She was strangled seven years ago in 1987 when, aged 16, she tried to run away from home because of Fred’s molestation. Fred was found to have committed at least a dozen more murders over the past 14 years, most of them with his second wife, Rose.
The victims were women, some still teenagers – nannies, students, transvestites, refugees. These victims were also sexually abused by Fred and sometimes by Rose. Some of them were injured, most of them had their heads cut off.
Rose and Fred had eight children. May, 46, is the oldest surviving daughter. Neither of them had any idea that their home was harboring such terrible secrets until their parents were arrested and charged. It was revealed that Fred had committed at least two more murders alone, and that Rose had killed Fred’s stepdaughter Charmaine (from his first marriage to Rena, who was also one of Fred’s early victims).
Fred confessed to these heinous crimes, saying he acted alone. He committed suicide in 1995. January 1 in his cell in the Birmingham jail where he was being held. Rose has consistently maintained her innocence, but a jury in November of the same year did not believe her. She was found guilty of ten counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
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