‘Every parent’s worst nightmare’: What Aussie star Madeleine West said to her abuser
Former Neighbours star Madeleine West has revealed what she told the “monster” who sexually abused her for years. Read her victim impact statement.
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EXCLUSIVE: Former Neighbours star Madeleine West has revealed what she told the monster who sexually abused her for years when she came face-to-face with him.
The actor gave News Corp exclusive permission to publish sections of her victim impact statement which she read out directly to serial pedophile Peter White, 73, during his sentencing in the Victorian County Court in December.
He was jailed for 15 years after pleading guilty to 33 sex offence charges involving multiple children in the small Victorian country town, an hour north of Melbourne, where West grew up.
In an extraordinary twist, which can now be revealed, the mum-of-six went to his house wearing a wire as part of a daring police sting, in a bid to get him to confess.
West – along with other victims who were abused between the aged of 4 and 14 – spoke in court about how his evil actions had affected their lives.
Her victim impact statement was so confronting White tried to turn away at one point – but she demanded he look at her.
“I will draw great satisfaction knowing that because we finally found the courage to reclaim our history and fight for justice, that is how the world will remember you,” West said in her impact statement.
“Not as the friendly plumber, the best mate, the kind husband, the loving father and grandfather. No, the world will remember you as Peter Vincent White: The Monster who sexually abused little children.”
She described how White groomed parents to think he was “everyone’s best friend”, but that he was actually “every parent’s worst nightmare”.
She told him as a result of the abuse her life had been an “open sore refusing to heal”.
“Between the ages of four and 10, life should be magical, playful,” West said to White in court.
“But you took that from me. Filled my dreams with monsters, with shadows that didn’t retreat upon waking. You violated me, in the worst possible way.”
West told White how she spent her whole life hating her skin so much she starved herself and wished herself dead.
“Can you imagine what it’s like to spend your entire life hating your skin so much you would happily starve yourself into invisibility rather than go on living in it?” West said to him.
She told White how 40 years on and that she was still in therapy, “still striving to understand, still striving to like myself let alone love myself” and that her children had been left with a traumatised mother.
West told News Corp being able to tell her abuser how she felt had allowed her to reclaim power over him.
“I was very candid about recounting what he had done to me and the impact it had, how it had insidiously infiltrated and permeated my entire life,” she said.
“He would frequently look down and I demanded he meet my eyes, just for once in his pathetic, grotty life take accountability and listen to what he did and absorb it and look me in the eye – and he did.
“I said to him: ‘Put yourself in my mother’s shoes, imagine seeing your daughter in her late teens, early 20s, weighing little more than 25 kilos; the merry-go-round of psych wards and being sectioned and institutionalised because the only control I had over my body was to refuse to feed it’.”
West said the impact statement was the “end note of 40 years’ of trauma and the end of the story that began when she was four years old”.
While she had been “extremely nervous facing off against this monster”, the fear disappeared the moment she stood up to deliver her statement.
Some of the details in her impact statement are too graphic to publish. To read an edited version go online.
WARNING: Sensitive content related to child sexual abuse.
This is an edited version of Madeleine West’s victim impact statement. Some of the details are too graphic for publication.
“In a perfect world I wouldn’t have to stand here, saying these uncomfortable words. Because in a perfect world someone would have stopped you. Someone would have saved me. But no one stood up for the little girl I was.
So today I’m standing up for her. For myself. In a perfect world my life wouldn’t have become an open sore refusing to heal. I’d be more than just a scar, an uncomfortable reminder to all who look at me of what you did. In a perfect world you would have sought help, seen your desires for what they are, a sickness, you would never have acted on them. In a perfect world you would have seen me for what I was: Not your plaything, just a tiny little vulnerable girl.
This world will never be perfect while the likes of you, Peter Vincent White, walk the streets freely. Putting YOU behind bars will be MY legacy. Because maybe just Maybe, with you gone, this world WILL be just a little more perfect.
I’ve spent most of my life pretending to be the person I would have become if I’d never met you. Now I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to reclaim her. Trying to rewrite those precious formative years. Between the ages of 4 and 10, life should be magical, playful. A time when beliefs and values are formed, when dreams seem possible and imagination rules. But you took that from me. Filled my dreams with monsters, with shadows that didn’t retreat upon waking. You violated me, in the worst possible way.
Childhood is sacred, innocence a gift you stole not just once, but stripped from me over and over again year after year. Only the blessing of a geographical move stopped you, because the opportunity dried up, not because you suddenly realised what you were doing was so vile and wrong … you never felt remorse.
You are just sorry you got caught. Because you absolutely ruined my life … You knew what you were doing Peter, deliberately seeking out the most vulnerable. Kids with distracted or absent parents. Parents easily distracted by your generosity, your flash parties, your perfect family-man image. Kids wowed by your fancy house, your fancy things … kids with no hope of defending themselves. Kids less likely to talk, or less likely to be believed. Peter White? No, not Peter! Like most rock spiders You’re everyone’s best friend. Every parents worst nightmare.
Clearly you cannot empathise with me, your persistent violation of my little body across six years clearly suggests you can’t, but perhaps put yourself in my mother’s shoes.
Imagine yourself holding a teenaged (name of White’s daughter) just 25 kilos of skin and bone hell bent on starving herself into extinction. The merry go round of doctors, specialists, psych wards. everyday begging her to eat, to live! Imagine spending your every waking hour in that hell. And then imagine how it would feel to know the man responsible for pushing your little girl into the depths of an endless pit of self-loathing was walking free, going about his business, taking overseas holidays, watching his own kids grow strong, all the while grooming his next victim.
The wake of destruction left behind by your callous acts of abuse has proven inescapable. All these years later, I feel like I’ve returned, walking wounded from a bloody battle I never signed up for, my relationship with trauma, with pain, is the most important relationship in my life, normalized, so I actively seek it. The bitterest pill is that in so doing I inadvertently hurt others … those who mean the most to me. Only now as I heal my wounds, can I strive to heal the wounds of those around me … I can only try.
Physically, I’m trapped in a body that I still feel betrayed me, that I despised and regularly punished. My body feels like an ill-fitting suit made of barbed wire, razor blades, its pockets full of fire ants. Can you imagine what it’s like to spend your entire life hating your skin so much you would happily starve yourself into invisibility rather than go on living in it? To think your sole value is someone else’s sexual pleasure? To wish yourself dead? To be divorced from yourself?
Standing here I cannot believe that 40 years later I’m still cleaning up the aftermath of what YOU did. Still in therapy, still striving to understand, still striving to like myself let alone love myself.
The bitterest pill is that the one thing in this world I love above all else, my children, have also been impacted by what you did to me. My little ones are too young to hear what you have done but they are at the coalface of dealing with a traumatised mother whose unrelenting fear, whose struggles to understand, to surrender, to find safety, security and peace despite her best efforts have left them feeling adrift at times. This is what multi-generational trauma looks like.
The simplest purest joys in life have been sullied and shattered.
This is what you have done.
How dare you …
HOW DARE YOU?
How could it be any other way? When from the age of four my world ceased making sense. What hope did I have?
I don’t wish you ill, Peter. I don’t need to. Because You have to wake each morning and see Peter Vincent White in the mirror. That’s a life sentence right there. I am a victim but I was never to blame. You chose to do what you did and inflict the damage you did. Your need to violate the bodies of innocent children is no longer (the name of the town’s) dirty little secret, Peter. It’s your legacy. Mine will be putting you behind bars. I don’t need to be remembered for it, I don’t need sympathy. I just need to know you will never devastate the innocence and destroy the future of a another child ever again. And I will draw great satisfaction knowing that because we finally found the courage to reclaim our history and fight for justice that THAT is how the world will remember you. Not as the friendly plumber, the best mate, the kind husband, the loving father and grandfather. No, the world will remember you as Peter Vincent White: The Monster who sexually abused little children.”
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