'Men just can't handle the fact that Fredand Rose West are my mum and dad...one was so scared he literally ran out of thehouse' HAUNTED TARA WEST TELLS FOR THE FIRST TIME OF HER DESPERATE SEARCH FOR LOVE AND A NEW LIFE...BUT ADMITS 'I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE THAT ROSE KILLED ANYBODY'.

LAST year Tara West went back to 25 Cromwell Street. The house had been demolished - there was only the garden left where she used to play with her brothers and sisters. But she still broke down and cried: "Why us? Why did it happen to us?"

Since her stepfather Fred West was found guilty of murdering 12 women - and her mother Rose was convicted of 10 murders - Tara West has triedto rebuild her life and to bring up her sons aged three and six.

She has moved out of the Gloucester area, changed her name and done her best to form relationships. But the flashbacks to a home where it was normal for the children to watch pornographic films with their father, to a home where herprostitute mother entertained her clients, have made it difficult for Tara to love anyone.

Dark-skinned and strikingly attractive, she has delicate features and wears her black hair piled high on top of her head.

She sits, clasping her hands to her chest, a gesture designed to keep a distance between her - and anybody else. "I hate showing my tender side to men," she says, talking publicly for the first time about her life as one of the West children.

"I think it is a weakness. I pretend I am hard. "I just can't say, 'I love you'. I fear rejectionbecause of my upbringing. I never said, 'I love you' to Mum, and the love I gave Dad was just used by him."

Not surprisingly her record with men has been disastrous. She has a string of broken relationships behind her. Her last boyfriend split with her two months ago. "A lot of men just can't handle the fact that my mum and dad are Fred and Rose West.

"I told one bloke, and he literally ran out of the house, he was so scared."

Tara has moved 10 times since 1994 to avoid the pointing fingers and the searching questions. "As soon as somebody gets too close I either drop them or move on," she says. "I have very few real friends outside the family. I panic when somebody asks me about my past."

Tara, 22, now lives in a neat semi- detached house in a quiet town in the North of England. Her sitting room is full of the normal children's clutter of toys and games - but there are no family photographs on the walls.Her home is her refuge.

"I close my front door and lock out the world. "I don't open the front door to anybody. And I don't let the children out to play. I am probably over- protective, but I fear them being taken by somebody like Dad. "If the children go to a party, I go. If they go out to play, I go. "I know what evil is out there. I lived with it for many years."

Tara was seven years old when she realised she was different from the other West children. It was this difference which was to save her from a childhood of even worse abuse. "You're darker, Tara," said her sister, and for the first time Tara wondered why.

It was years later that she was to find out the truth. Fred was not her real father. Her father was a black man who paid for a single sex session with Rose at Cromwell Street.

Despite this, Fred seemed to accept Tara as his own child. He would lie, saying: "You're a throwback. Your great-great-grandmother was black." Tara believes Rose felt guilty that her father was a client. "She often spoilt me," she says. "I was allowed to stay up late and was given treats." But even she felt her mother's cruelty.

"Mum used to hit me with a wooden spoon - I think she just had too many kids and couldn't cope." Tara clearly finds it hard to blame her mother - "it's not like we werehospitalised...she didn't break any of our bones. And Mum always made sure we went to the doctors, dentists and were smartly turned out. She wasn't all bad."

However, the beatings got worse as Tara got older. "She would end up throwing bits of the furniture at me." The violence and abuse had a brutalising effect on Tara. She became a bully at school in a desperate attempt at getting attention. "I was angry at the world," she explains. "It was a cry for help, but none of the teachers recognised it. They just thought I was a naughty girl."

Although she suffered at the hands of her mother, Tara was saved from the advances of her step-father. She became aware of her father's growing interest in her sisters. But it was only when she was 12 that she discovered the extent of his depravity.

One evening Louise, her 11-year-old sister, walked into the bedroom she shared with Tara, crying in pain. "All she said was, 'He's raped me'. She was hysterical. I couldn't get a word out of her."

Tara had been only 10 when Fred sat the family down to watch a porn film. "He called it sex education. I was a bit uncomfortable with it all."

But Tara and her siblings also had to get used to their parents having sex in front of them at any time of the day. "Dad would come into the kitchen and Mum would be cooking dinner. They would start having sex. We would just ignore them."

Then there were Rose's "clients". Tara says: "They had their own bell to ring. We didn't see many - but we heard quite a lot."

Fred would even listen to his wife having sex on speakers as the family watched children's TV. When Tara told her mother about Fred's treatment of Louise, "she just said, 'Are you sure? He's always messing around'. Dad was allowed to go on raping Louise." Tara herself escaped her father's attentions.

"I realise now that Dad was only interested in his naturaldaughters. He thought they were his property. Because I wasn't his daughter he left me alone."

From January 1992, Fred raped Louise with increasing frequency. After a particularly brutal assault the following June, Tara confided in a schoolfriend. She told her parents, who in turn informed police. In August 1992 social workers, backed by police, arrived at the house.

Tara says: "It was 7am and we had just got up. There was a loud knock on the front door and somebody shouted, 'Police, open up'.

"A few minutes later I heard Mum scream, 'You're not taking my kids.' The police drove her away in a van."

Five of the West children, including Tara, were put in the care of Gloucestershire County Council. But Louise refused to give evidence against Fred and sex abuse charges were dropped. However, the inquiry led to the discovery of bodies in Midlands Road, Gloucester, 25 Cromwell Street and the village of Much Marcle.

Builder Fred West admitted killing 12 women and girls. He committed suicide on New Year's Day 1995.

Rose West, now 46, was convicted by a Winchester Crown Court jury in November 1995 of 10 murders, including that of her 16-year-olddaughter Heather. But she insists she is innocent and is trying to get her convictions reconsidered at the Court of Appeal.

Once she was taken into care, Tara began to struggle with her sexual feelings. At 14 she lost her virginity to a 19-year- old - and instantly regretted it. "I hated every moment of it and criedall the way through. I only did it because I wanted a cuddle. It was horrible and dirty."

Two years later 16-year-old Tara and her then boyfriend, a 19-year-old shop worker, had a baby together.

"I deliberately got pregnant," admits Tara. "I justwanted something to love." The romance foundered, but two years on Tara began a relationship with a social worker twice her age. In 1996, she gave birth to a second boy.

But her relationship collapsed. Now she worries what kind of mother she is. "I was told by social workers that the abused becomes the abuser. And the family say I am very like my Mum in personality, so that worries me. "But I think that is because I am outgoing like Mum. I don't think I have her nasty streak.

"I have never hit the children and never would. I want them to have a better life than I did." Tara knows that one day she will have to stop running away. "The social workers and police keep telling me to face up tofacts, but I can't. I never refer to Dad as a murderer or killer. It's too painful. I just say he did some wicked things. "They also tell me to accept that Mum is guilty. But I don't believe it. I really believe Mum never killed anybody."

Tara visits Rose twice a year at Durham's Frankland Prison, and writes frequently. Tara, her elder brother Stephen, and her sister Mae, 27, often meet at a secret address to discuss their past.

"But we don't talk about the sad things. We try to remember the good times." Her relationship with Louise, who is asingle parent, is strained.

"Louise thinks it's her fault we were taken into care." Two other sisters, Rosemary junior and Luciana, who are not Fred's children, have started new lives. Tara occasionally sees Barry, the Wests' youngest son.

Anne Marie Davies, now 35, Fred's child, has been ostracised. She gave evidence against her stepmother. Tara says of her step-father: "I hate him for the murders, and feel so sorry for the victims' relatives.

"But I am too tired to be angry any more. Now I have the children to look after, I haven't time for anger."

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Title Annotation:	Features
Author:	Gardner, Andy
Publication:	Sunday Mirror (London, England)
Date:	Apr 9, 2000
Words:	1619
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