Overview
- Kathleen Richards says she was 17 when the Wests groomed and sexually abused her while she lived in their Gloucester home.
- She describes fleeing in February 1979 after Fred insisted she watch a “special video,” slipping out the front door in her pyjamas and reaching a bus station.
- Richards recounts a childhood of poverty and sexual abuse by a caretaker and her grandfather, and says her mother expelled her after she disclosed it.
- She recalls Shirley Robinson living in the house and saying she was pregnant by Fred West; investigators later found Robinson buried with her infant in the garden.
- Richards says the ordeal left her with lasting psychological harm, including a breakup, an abortion, and a suicide attempt at 19, and she later learned of Fred West’s 1994 arrest before his 1995 death by suicide; she has since documented her story in a book and a Guardian interview.