Peter Vincent White, 73, pleads guilty at Melbourne County Court to horrific child sexual abuse

Victims of a disgusting Victorian child predator who sexually assaulted seven children in a small country town have given harrowing accounts of the lifelong trauma.

Peter White, pleaded guilty to child sexual offences in Melbourne County Court.

Victims of a disgusting Victorian child predator who sexually assaulted seven children in a small country town have given harrowing accounts of the lifelong trauma.

Peter White, 73, pleaded guilty in Melbourne County Court to 33 child sexual abuse offences after preying on seven boys and girls aged between four and 14 in a small central Victorian town and Sunbury between 1977 and 1988.

His victims described his pleas of guilty to be without remorse as he stared at the floor, refusing to make eye contact with his victims.

Peter Vincent White leaves Bendigo Court with a supporter on June 14, 2023. Picture: Julieanne Strachan

White, a professional woodfire heater installer, was aged between 26 and 38 when he raped and abused the children while living in a central Victorian town during the 1980s before relocating to Sunbury.

One of his victims told the court White was “idolised” in the community and many neighbourhood children and local parents would trust him to care for their children.

“Like most rock spiders, you’re everyone’s best friend and every parent’s worst nightmare,” the actress said.

“You deliberately sought out vulnerable kids with distracted or absent parents with your flash parties, the perfect family man.”

White abused the children in bizarre and cruel ways, manipulating their childish playful nature into performing the degrading sexual acts by telling the children they were “repugnant games”, coercing children to use toys and balloons on his penis, even forcing two little girls to “put sticks” into his penis.

Peter White sexually abused seven children in the 1970s and 1980s.

White groped children’s genitalia, penetrated children with his fingers, raped them with his penis, exposed himself to them on multiple occasions, even urinated on a small boy in a hotel room while on holiday with the boy’s family.

The victim White abused described a horrific incident of abuse in the 80s where he grabbed her head and forced his penis “so far down my six-year-old throat” she vomited.

“Your disgust and frustration terrified me,” she said.

The victim said her “life was a scar” after White “stripped” her childhood from her “again and again” over the six years of abuse she suffered at the hands of White starting when she was just four years old.

“My earliest recollections are of being marred by sore bleeding genitals,” she said.

“Ashamed when I told my grandmother about all the blood in the toilet the next day,” she told the court.

White’s victim’s described their lifelong trauma from his abuse.

She said the lifelong trauma from the childhood abuse left her feeling “trapped” in a body that felt like it was made of “razor blades and barbed wire”.

Another of White’s victims who would babysit his children recounted a disgusting incident that had scarred her for life.

She was aged between eight and 11 and was with another of White’s victims when he exposed his erect penis to two girls he was looking after in his home.

The offender turned the lights off, put a lit match in the eye of his penis and asked the girls to blow it out.

White pleaded guilty to 33 sexual offences against seven children.

“The match seemed to burn for an agonisingly long time,” she said.

She said she wanted to scream, but she knew his wife was deaf and it wouldn’t save her.

“I can still see that match burned in my head,” she said.

“I can see it whenever I see a birthday candle burning.”

She said she battled with guilt over not speaking up 35 years earlier because she might have been able to save another child from White’s abuse.

“You greatest weapon was my guilt and shame and silence,” she said.

She said the only cold comfort she could take was knowing that White would likely spend the rest of his life in a cold cell while she was with her children.

“Back then you may have claimed victory but now we hold the triumph,” she said.

“You’ll enjoy perpetual fear and loneliness and experience violation, anxiety, and I’ll revel in feeling proud, resilient and liberated.”

During police investigations in 2022, police put a wire on one of the victims who went to White’s Sunbury home and confronted him with the allegations.

White told the victim that he had no memory of sexually abusing the victim.

“I’m so sorry I can’t remember doing that,” White said.

“I’m very, very sorry if I did.”

White’s defence barrister told the court the early plea of guilt was the only “concrete” expression of remorse, by not forcing his victims to undergo brutal cross examination at trial and White will “most likely spend the rest of his life in prison.”