April 6, 2025 • 57 mins
Madeleine West has lived many lives— from Neighbours’ Dee Bliss to Underbelly’s Danielle McGuire, she’s been a fixture on Australian screens for decades.
Beyond acting, she’s also an advocate, a survivor, and now, at 47, she’s stepping into a surprising new chapter... motherhood for the seventh time.
What she first thought was menopause turned out to be an unexpected pregnancy, something that took time to embrace. But that’s not the only battle Madeleine has faced. Just a few years ago, she made the courageous decision to help police uncover a pedophile—the man who abused her as a child.
In this deeply personal and powerful conversation, Madeleine opens up about:
- How she came to terms with becoming a mother again at 47
- The media storm that forced her to announce her pregnancy before she was ready
- The darkness she had to push through to become the woman she is today
- The moment she wore a wire to confront her abuser
This is a story of survival, strength, and reclaiming your own narrative - no matter how impossible it may seem.
If you or anyone you know needs support, call Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.
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CREDITS:
Host: Kate Langbroek
Guest: Madeleine West
Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Senior Producer: Grace Rouvray
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hence why I feel so grateful to be precisely where
I am now, with this little miracle who was clearly,
spite all the odds, absolutely destined to be. I certainly
hope the majority of those demons that plagued me earlier
on are put to rest.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Waiting for a pregnancy test result can bring on a
whirlwind of emotions excitement, anxiety, anticipation, dread. But for Madeline West,
seeing a positive test at forty seven wasn't just surprising,
it was completely and utterly shocking, because at first she
(01:09):
thought that she was in perimenopause. She even asked her
doctor if a positive pregnancy test could be a symptom,
but no, she was in fact expecting her seventh child,
and when we spoke, she was just two weeks away
from giving birth. In this conversation, Madeleine is the epitome
of no filter. Unflinchingly honest and deeply reflective. She shares
(01:36):
how she's really feeling, how the media expects her to
feel about the poetically named geriatric pregnancy and why she's
choosing to embrace this unexpected twist in her story. But
more than that, Madeline West opens up about something far
more profound, her experience of childhood's sexual abuse, a secret
(01:59):
she had hidden from the world and from herself for
almost forty years. She speaks about the moment she knew
she was ready to confront her abuser, and the valiance
that it took to bring him to justice. Now, as
she prepares to welcome another baby, Madeleine describes her life
(02:19):
as a jigsaw puzzle, one that's been scattered, rebuilt, and
reshaped over time, and after years of healing and self discovery,
she finally feels like the last piece is falling into place.
But before we get there, I just want to let
you know that this conversation through necessity does include very
(02:43):
candid discussion of the abuse that Madeleine survived. So please
this and mindfully, and here is Madeline West, Madeline West,
beautiful of face, extraordinary of soul. We will get to
that later. Welcome to no filth.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I feel like, on the basis of that welcome, I
wish I was in the room with you. I've even
brought I've brought snacks, with me, because you just can't
come between a pregnant woman and a snack. So I
wish I was in the room.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Whist Kate, Well, so you are pregnant, the duff well,
and truly you really are barn in the oven all
of that. This needs a drum roll. Seventh child, you
are forty five.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
No, I'm forty seven.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Oh you're forty seven. It's are you laughing?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Because it's just getting worse. O.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
B Well, it's just I actually, I actually love it.
I love it. I'm happy it's not me. I'm thrilled.
I'm thrilled.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
It's so funny to say that, Kate. All my girlfriends
are saying the same thing. They're like, I can't wait
to hold a baby, just don't want to carry one
in one undercarriage, which is right now.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
All right. So I've just made a mistake that I
imagine is happening a lot. The first thing when someone's pregnant. Congratulations, congratulations, Madeline, congratulations.
But because it's so extraordinary, is that getting a little
(04:29):
bit lost in the mix, in the mix of the astonished,
or that the first reaction is always shocked.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
My first reaction was shocked, and disbelief, so I certainly
can't judge anyone else for having a similar reaction to it.
But what I will say, and what I have discovered,
is that I am far from alone. Statistically, teen pregnancies
are on a sharp decline. Pregnancies in their forties are
(05:01):
on the rise, and particularly over forty four, which is
quite surprising. It's quadrupled in the last twenty years. How
many women in their latter forties are now going on
to have babies, So I understand that there is it's
certainly not helped by the geriatric pregnancy label that you
(05:22):
get slapped with from thirty five. I'm like, should I
should I go babies fun thingson buy a pram or
should I go and get a zimmer Frame. I'm not
quite sure.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
They should do doubles in mission.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
I think they should just little package, our geriatric package.
But what I have discovered, and I was very slow
to I really didn't want to initially air where I
was and what was happening in my life. I've become
increasingly private as I've gotten older, and and You've moved
to Bayn and I moved to Byron, and it was
(05:56):
my hand was kind of forced because I was informed
by a media agency that there was awareness that I
was pregnant. And that came about not because I'd rocked
up to Melbourne Fashion Week or something in alycrate Frock.
It was because I was actually presenting at Parliament and
trying to push through legislation to amp up protections around
(06:17):
child's safety, and I was just spotted by a journalist
who of course went back to the office told everyone.
They told everyone they knew. I found out that I
was being followed by peraps trying to get that first photo.
So I thought, well, I'm gonna, as much as I
don't want to, I'm going to speak out about this
on my terms. And the most wonderful flow on effect
of that was I had over a thousand responses from
(06:41):
other women who had or were having babies in their
forties saying I thought I was the only one. I
thought I was the only one who was going to
rock up to play group and everyone would think I
was grandma. I thought I was the only one who
at first day of school i'd be mingling with mothers
and fathers who were half my age. But quite the
reverse is true, so it's really I'm actually quite gratified
(07:04):
to have illuminated or shown a spotlight on this particular
group of men and women who are delving into parenting
later in life and thought that they were alone.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And also I find it kind of hopeful because the
one thing that we know about nature is that nature
can be cruel, particularly when it comes to issues of fertility.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yes, it most definitely can.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And you thought that you were perimenopausal, and you thought
that's why you were having these strange cycles.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
See as soon as like that, oh hang on, my
monthly's disappeared. Oh wow, I must have just hot footed
it right through the perimenopause phase and I've gone straight
into menopause. But then I got a couple of other
symptoms that I recognized but did not quite fit with
the narrative around menopause, which thankfully is finally getting so
(08:00):
much traction in the media and just amongst society itself.
We're finally having meaningful conversations about perimenopause and menopause. But
my symptoms didn't quite correlate with any of that. I
wasn't getting hot flushes. I was certainly rageful, But I'm
a mum of six, and of course I'm rageful. When
(08:20):
am I not rageful? I did the little I just thought,
you know, oh, let's just let's just get this out
of the way, and let's just do a little weir
on a stick, and two lines popped up, And I'll
be honest with you, Kate. My first thought was, maybe
this is a symptom of many pause that no one's
heard about you. Maybe because all your hormones are going
(08:42):
all over them, maybe this is what happens. So I
had a little check up with the doctor and he said, no,
you are most definitely geriatrically up the dust and here
we are.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Okay. So because you now live in Byron, so this
would not have been the same doctor that you had
through your other six pregnancies.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Or are you are the tweens that I came went
and saw had a room full of dream catches and
healing crystals and well, I'm decrying me a good hard staging.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
No, but you have to explain yourself to a new ishtock.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yes, you have to go through everything. And and I am
someone who prides myself on keeping really healthy both mentally
and physically. That's become a priority for me, particularly in
the last five years because I've gone through quite a
few things, so that became an absolute priority to shore
up my physical and mental health, and that is what
(09:39):
I have been doing. So I'm not a frequent visitor
to a doctor's office, but I did.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I found I have got a lovely GP who went
and saw and his eyebrows went through the roof when
we got the positive result as well. But again he
reiterated that as much as this is inverted comma's higher risk,
it's also not uncommon. And that's what I discovered when
I opened up finally and starting having conversations with my
(10:07):
core beautiful group of friends, that many of them had
found myselves themselves in my shoes and had either decided
to proceed or not proceed. But this was not completely
I wasn't an anomaly.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Well, I also had babies in my fings and I
also had caesareans, and I know when I had to
go back to the doctor the fourth time that I
was accidentally pregnant. I love that these are two grown
up we have Actually it's a great title for a book, accidentally,
(10:42):
But they were like, they don't like to do caesareans
past three cesareans. I was going for four you're presumably
going to have. Yes, so I won't let you go natural, now,
will that?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
No? No? No, those have an American Emergency Caesar because I'm
quite small and my babies are generally quite big, so.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Bigger than bigger than you would like exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I do have a really lovely doctor who is allowing
me to go into labor. Yes, which is lovely because
it means that some of those issues that little ones
face when they are born by a cesarean section. That
could be some issues with lungs and issues with the
milk coming in. Sorry, too much information, but we're going
(11:27):
down that path. So let's deep dive deep obviated.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
It's no filter. Oh, that's right, said, it's no filtered.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I've got a wonderful obstetrician who will let me go
into labor and then we'll pop in and zip a
little one out.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Okay. So when you've seen your doctor, yep, you get
the news that you are pregnant.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
How long ago was this? By the way, how deep
are you in?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I've got about two and a half weeks al yes,
And this is officially the last thing I'm going to
do that requires my brain to function. I've just sat
like I drew a line in the sand. I said,
I'm going to have my chat to Kate and I'm
doing nothing else.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So when you get that news, who is the first
person that you take?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Um?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Right?
Speaker 1 (12:18):
What?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
And where is mask?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
So Mum's down in Victoria, so she's a little bit
of a distance and she's actually going to be my
birth partner, in which I love. I think that's a
very strong, almost tribal connection. Yes, and this is I'm
going on a tight segue, So please hold that question
in your head, Cake, because I know I'll go off
(12:40):
on a tangent and I'll completely forget, forget what we're
talking about. But I've just read the most amazing book
called Eve by Cat Bohannon. I'd recommend it to anyone
to read, and it explains how the female body has
driven evolution for the last two hundred million years, and
it gives the most precise scientific explanation for why we
(13:03):
enter menopause. We, apart from killer whales, are the only
creatures on the planet that experience menopause, and men certainly
don't experience it, so it's specific to the female body.
And it was a precise choice that we biologically, genealogically
made in our history of evolution as we branched off
(13:23):
from some of our primate predecessors to experience menopause so
that women could lead.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
And in part the wisdom is this week because I
have heard this, but I didn't know that was the genes.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
And it's absolutely brilliant, and it's been been quantified by
numerous scientific studies that demonstrate that, like killer whales, we
are the ones who say, this is what you do
in a drought, this is what you do in a famine.
You need to blanch those vegetables to get the toxins out.
And mothers are designed to birth their grandchildren. They've got
(13:59):
this wealth of knowledge. And Western society is very good
at dismissing how elderly as yes, somehow a little bit
decrepit us.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Actually we're out there in the.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Field now, just let them go and graze. But the
sheer wealth of instinctive knowledge that our older generations of
women have is mind boggling. So it feels very symbolic
and very right that it is my mum there who
will bring this new little one.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
What did she say? What did she say when you
told her you were on the phone, she dissuming, Oh.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And this is a very frequent response I've gotten it's
just going to be so hard.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And I paused, so she forgot to say congratulations exactly.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
And then of course it warms up to congratulations, and
over the weeks and the days and the weeks and
the months that follows, it becomes overwhelmingly positive the response.
But her first concern is it's going to be so
hard because you've already got so much going on. And
I stepped back for a moment and went, well, I
I think as I've grown older and hopefully wiser, I've
(15:15):
come to choose my heart because life is hard. Everything
about life is hard. We've got all got so many
pressures on our shoulders. And yes, there's so many things
I want to do with my life, but I don't
for a moment believe the presence of this precious little
miracle in my life is going to stop me doing
(15:37):
what I want to do. If anything, it's going to
push me harder to do what I want to do,
to make the world a better place, a safer place.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Coming up after the break, I asked Madeline how she
processed the news of her pregnancy at forty seven years old,
and whether she considered all the possible options stay with us.
Was there a moment where you thought maybe I won't
(16:14):
proceed with this.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
No, No, because initially I thought it was menopause. I
found out a little bit later that most do.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
And my.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Body knows this is number seven precisely where that little
cluster of cells is at every stage and from I
am all for everyone having everyone and everyone having choice
and facilities to exercise that choice. But for me, this
(16:52):
was a little This was a little human being who
was going to change the world from the moment that
I found out that I was pregnant, and that has
not changed.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
You know, you said life is hard, and I know
a lot of people say that as epithets. You know,
politicians love to talk about people doing it tough, as
though they've had nothing to do with the fact that
people do at that class.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
But do you know what I mean, I can't quite
join the dots.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, exactly right. But when you say life is hard,
you have a much more acute understanding of that than
most people.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
I do now because I can, I can actually look
back retrospectively as some of the things that I've experienced which,
to be honest, I for most of my life wasn't
prepared to do. I spent most of my life putting
masks on, pretending to be anyone other than myself because
(17:58):
I so despised myself, and that self that I despised
originated from a tiny little girl who had horrible things
happened to her that she absolutely was not to blame for.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
That little girl was Melanie that was used.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
See there you go. I even changed my name to
run as hard and fast away from her as I could.
So so much of my life has been wrapped up
in ignoring the bad things that happened. But and I
can speak from experience now because I've done all of
(18:35):
my training to become something of a trauma expert and
exploitation expert. So I work very closely with children. I
work in schools and educate them how to be safe
online just in life in general. And I also work
with a lot of historical victims who want to just
be empowered enough to say the words that this happened
(18:56):
to me and it was not my fault, and that
might result in them pursuing criminal or some kind of
civil remediation. But now I can spot all the red flags,
and I can spot all the triggers when someone has
had that experience. I spent my life trying to keep
that under wraps, which is why acting was a perfect profession.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Donning the mantle of somebody else. I'm someone else because
you couldn't bear to be yourself, Sackler.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I couldn't bear to be Melanie because she'd been told
for so long that she was to blame for everything
that had happened to her.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Now to get our listeners up to speed, who may
not know this, and this is just an event of
such cataclysmic proportions to happen in anybody's life that I
can't believe this is not a story known to everybody.
(19:53):
I was certainly not familiar as familiar with it. We've
kind of had been background noised.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
But that's I think you've described it so well that
this is a cataclysmic event, yet it's experienced by one
in three girls and one in five boys, and that's
just the reported cases. So just to qualify for anyone
who's listening and not familiar with my backstory, and I'm
so glad to be at a point in my life
(20:18):
where I'm stepping away from being the poster child of
trauma and achieving something beautiful and wonderful in the aftermath.
I was the victim of a pedophile from the ages
of four to eleven, and it was quite horrific what
he did. It was your neighbor, Yes, it was my
next door neighbor. And I was not alone. I was
(20:40):
not the only victim. And after many years of working
with therapists, with the police, with the federal police, in
December of twenty twenty four, we put him away in
prison for fifteen years. So he's now accountable.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Peter Vincent wife his name was Yes, So in your
little seemingly idyllic town of Voudeine that you grew up in,
this charming, you.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Know, little town, almost village, tiny, little bucolic, beautiful village
type town. And he chose the precisely perfect location, which
was an area peopled predominantly by low socioeconomic young families
with little kids. And his house was the most magnificent
(21:31):
house in the neighborhood with all the bits and pieces
that would attract children, and his wife was a frequent
babysitter for the neighborhood, so children were drawn to that
area and he was precisely the epitome of the rock
spider who, hidden in plain SIGHTE was able to access.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Young children trusted and adored by the name.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Absolutely, you know so many and so many people have said,
how did they not know? How did they not know?
And that's the cliche. Hidden in plain site, he was
right there, and no one would dream. This wonderful, generous
person who held fabulous parties and invited everyone in the
neighborhood who'd pop over, and he was a plumber by trade,
(22:17):
would fix your block toilet without batting an eye, was
using public, that very positive public facade to hide the
most horrific and as she said before, heinous, cataclysmic crime.
You can imagine, and it still bewilders me. But the reason,
as you said, you know, you can't believe that people
(22:38):
haven't heard about it, is precisely because people don't talk
about it. Our society fosters a conspiracy of silence around this, and.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
A lot of that is motivated by fear.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Absolutely and also shame that we don't attach, we really
don't appropriately attach a victim or survivor label to those
who've experienced that they are seen as deficit, as broken
and as somehow complicit. There's still some degree of question,
(23:11):
what we're wearing, what we're you're doing. Well, you must
have brought it on, You must have led him on.
How the hell does a five year old lead on
a forty year old man?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
How?
Speaker 1 (23:22):
And yet that seems to be the narrative we attached
to this crime. And that is why, to this day,
this crime which has one of the highest ratios of
victim per capita in our society, the highest ratio of
recidivus behavior by the perpetrators, yet the lowest sentencing, and
(23:42):
the majority of cases a perpetrator might get a slap
on a wrist or a community service order. Yet commit
tax fraud and you'll get ten years in prison.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
What was the point in your life at which you,
in the service of that little girl that you carried
around with you, that you decided to go to the
police and say, this is what happened to me. What
is the process for you?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
You reach a point in your life where the white
noise of what happened to you is so loud you
can't function anymore, where memories start to resurface and you
can't tuck them away or push them down anymore. And
I was on the cusp of a separation and questioning
(24:35):
so many things in my life. And what tip me
over was learning that he had grandchildren. And that was
when I went it stops with me, because I don't
care what anyone says. If you've experienced this, it will
manifest in your life in some way.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Of course, it.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Might be that you become an alcoholic, you have drug addiction,
you might dabble in petty crime. You might not be
able to function socially. You might not be able to
hold down a relationship or hold down a lot a job.
All these social what we call ills generally have. Even
the President, the high ratio of eating disorder sufferers have
(25:17):
a history of child abuse.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Was that how it manifested with you?
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Absolutely? Yeah, with horrific anorexia from what age? I started
exercising obsessively when I was twelve. Funnily enough, not long
after the abuse stopped, and that just got worse and worse,
and it led to lengthy hospitalizations when I was in
my late teens. At one point I'd been hospitalized and
(25:44):
I weighed less than thirty kilos, and I just that
was the and I'd really call out for anyone who
has experienced this particular illness that I esdated even to
call it an illness, because it's often a manifestation of
something deeper and darker. It's not about weight, it's too much,
(26:04):
it's too little to correlate it with images that we
see in popular magazine and in the media. It's about control.
That that little girl had had her body violated so vilely,
had no agency over her experience. So the one thing
I could control was what I put in my mouth.
(26:27):
And when I didn't put anything in my mouth, I
felt like I was in control. When I'd managed to
stave off the hunger pangs long enough that I didn't
feel hungry anymore, I was in control. And then you
reach a point when your be and my slips below sixteen,
where full blown body it's morphia kicks in where you
don't even see yourself as you are. You could literally
(26:49):
look in the mirror and your skin is hanging off
you because there's all your muscles of atrophied and there's
nobody fat, and you do think that you're obese.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
You were so clearly broken. You flagged it with your
parents at the time, because he was your neighbor was
not only raping you, he was raping other children in
the neighborhood, including one of your friends who was older
(27:20):
than yous, who was babysitting for his.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Childrens at a quite a young age and thus extremely exposed.
And I know it's very easy to cast a judgment
that how would these other parents let this happen? How
did they not know? And it might seem like a
broad jump, but in the same way that we frequently
(27:48):
don't know what our kids are looking at on their
devices and what messages they're sending, and the conversations they're having,
and the cyber bullying that they might be experiencing. That's
why it's been such an apt move that I now
work in this sphere where educate kids about how to
be safe online and what then educate their parents and
(28:08):
teaches about what the red flags are and what to
avoid and how best to manage it. Because we're all busy,
we're all doing the best that we can. And for
young parents in that neighborhood to have someone with a
lovely home with a professional career offer to help with
your kids for free was a gift.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
And that's the dream. I mean, that is the saying
it takes a valy.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Absolutely, and this was purely an extension of that. Let's
take advantage of this village, and yeah, this is why
it's such a social ill. It seems the only way
to combat it is for us to all be terribly
cynical and everyone, you know, keeping it suspicious of everyone
around us. We don't want that, but we need to
(28:56):
bring broader recognition as to why this happens. How does
it create in someone an aherent, abhorrent urge to engage
with the child sexually, to break and break them, to
manipulate them and take advantage of them.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
There's so many impediments to somebody coming forward, particularly with
historical offenses like this. There was like a thirty year yeah,
thirty or forty years in between, as you've already alluded to,
(29:34):
the shame, the atrophied nature of yourself, the wanting to
also not immerse yourself back into the world of that darkness.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
I had to and that was a really hard five
years because once you knock that scab off, because it's
always a festering wound, Once you knock that scab off
and you dig in there to that long, festering abscess
of trauma. Sorry, it's not a very attractive metaphor, but
(30:06):
it's true. It initially gets harder because you have to
allow yourself to fully remember what happened, and our brain
sets up so many guardposts to protect us from that.
And once you're back in there, it's we're talking about
(30:27):
crying in your wardrobe, in a puddle of tears on
a regular basis territory, that's where you go. But once
you hit that rock bottom, you're acutely aware that as
hard as this is, and this is what I told
myself every morning, my mantra while I was meditating, this
(30:47):
too shall pass, It can only get better. Once I
was actually able to say the words with complete detail,
describing the room, the curtains, the time of day, it
was so specific what my body had held on to
for so long. It was like the ultimate detox okate.
It was like a spiritual detox that it just out.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
It came like an exorcism.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Like an exorcism, and that would only be matched by
So when you go through these particular cases, and they
take a long time to get to court, and the
court process is onerous, but at the time of just
before sentencing, victims have an opportunity to speak not just
to the judge, but to the perpetrator who is in
(31:36):
the dock and express the impact this it's called a
victim's impact statement, and express the impact that this person
had on their life. And when it was my time
to get I elected that yes, I'd like to get
up and say my peace. But that moment of being
able to stand up in court and the request is
(32:00):
that you face the magistrate. And I said to the magistrate,
your honor, I appreciate that what I have to say
here is addressed to you, but really it's addressed to him.
And I turned around and I eyeballed him, and I
demanded that he look at me, said you look at me.
Don't you dare look away? You look at me? And
(32:20):
then I spelled out the imp Did he look at it?
Speaker 2 (32:23):
He did, and he was a man in his seventies.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
In his seventies. And I then spelled out everything he
had done and laid out for him in the court.
The jig saw puzzle of my life and how that one?
That to say one? But it was over numerous years,
his actions, the consequences for me as a mother, as
(32:47):
a partner, as a professional, just as a living, breathing
human being had for the rest of my life. And
that was the ultimate detox that for me was allowing
me to shrug off the cross of blame and shame
and depression and self hatred that I'd carried my entire
(33:09):
life life for the first time and I literally said,
I'm dropping this backpack of shame here and you can
take it back to yourself with you, where I hope
you rot and die. So harsh words but apt and
necessary and the ultimate sense of justice. And it's probably hey, yes,
(33:31):
I'm up here and Byron, and it sounds terribly woo woo,
but I could literally feel little Melanie by my side,
and I could feel thousands of women and thousands of
men who've never had an opportunity to say the words
to discharge that trauma. I could feel them behind me
(33:53):
in that moment, and I'll never forget it. It was
life changing.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
You said in your victim impact statement that you ran
away from that little girl as far and fast as
you could and to explain the true impact to him.
That was your intention, not just on that tiny girl,
(34:20):
but on the broken woman.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yes, that was you when you just you're like a
Babushka dole and the three internal dolls are being pulled
out and thrown away, that you're you're fragile. I feel
like I've lived so much of my life like a
glass vase that's been shattered to tiny shards but held
together with nice, glossy, sticky tape. So we're gonna look
(34:44):
at it and go it looks like a vase, and
it's shaped like a vase, and it's a beautiful vis
must be a vavas. But you try to hold any
substance or any amount of water for any amount of time,
and it's just going to leak out. And how could
it be any other way when a crucial component of myself,
Melanie who I am, was not there. And so from
(35:07):
that point of leaving the caught that day, I made
a determination that I will live the life that I
was destined to live, one of wholeness, one of love,
one of kindness, understanding, empathy, and appreciation. And I'm not
going to guild the lily. It's hard. I don't necessarily
(35:31):
believe in healing in inverted commons. I believe that you
learn to tolerate your trauma. I believe you learn to
navigate your life scars an awareness of yes, with an
awareness of the scar tissue, and you treat it kindly
so you don't extend your muscles too hard. If it's
going to pull and tug, you just very gently give
(35:52):
yourself a little massage and maybe put a bit of
balm on it or something like that. But it's about
for me, being well is making a monumental effort to
dip my cup into the well of things that I
do love about me and that I am so grateful
(36:12):
for having in my life.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
That's not all of my conversation with Madeline West after
this short break, she tells me how it felt when
she confronted her abuser.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
What are the things that you love about you that
I've been blessed with my beautiful children. I love that
I have a capacity not just for compassion and sympathy,
but actual empathy that comes from a shared learn experience.
I do love that. I do love that I have
(36:56):
a propensity to look on the bright side of life.
I love that I am a hard worker. Now I
know that my hard work has been its genesis has
been got to run, got to run, got to run,
got to run? So I stop I'm going to feel
I don't want to feel that. I love that I
am curious about people in the world and always have been,
(37:18):
and I do love that throughout my life I've done
my best to polish a turd.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
I really no matter what the.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
I'm the toilet freshener. Now that I don't for a
minute reflect on my life with regret. That the things
that have regretted is pointless. It's like guilt. Guilt is
just it's just a perfluous It's almost a luxury that
none of us can afford. You've just got to get
on with it. And I do believe that I've managed
(37:54):
to get on with it that yes I haven't been perfect,
Yes that I've hurt people along the way, certainly not
with an intention of hurting them, but it's simply not
really knowing how to best function in most situations. And
hence why I feel so grateful to be precisely where
(38:15):
I am now, with this little miracle who was clearly,
spite all the odds, absolutely destined to be.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And also, this is the first of your children who
will come into the.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
World, into this new world, yes, into your new world
in which you've divested yourself of that cloak of shame
and heaviness and fear.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Although obviously, like you said, it's not just a you know,
it's not a clear excision of those.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Lines but definitely blurred. But I certainly hope the majority
of those demons that plagued me earlier on are put
to rest.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Can I tell you something that I love about you?
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Oh, I'd love to hear that.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Obviously there's been your creative gift to the nation. But
the most extraordinary act of courage and a confluence of
your acting skills and your desire for justice and you're
(39:22):
advocating for that little girl who couldn't advocate for herself,
was when you went to the police and you told
them was this in twenty twenty eighteen. And I don't
know how this came about, but you met this incredible.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Detective Scott Tuttenham, my hero to this.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Day, and you are a hero to him because of
what you did. And this will be the subject of
a movie. Think about who's going to play you. Because
what you did was to make the case against this
predator stand up in court. They said that they needed
(40:00):
his confirmation of what he had done. You put on
a wire. You went back to that town, to that house.
He knocked on the door, who opened the door.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
To him and his wife? And we'd purposefully come very
early in the morning on a public holiday, knowing that
that gave us the greater chance of actually nabbing him
or him being home. And he and his wife opened
(40:38):
the door. And I had done a lot of It's
almost like researching a character, Kate. I'd done so much
research on the profile and the psychology of predators that
I knew, in the first glimpse, the first few seconds
(40:59):
of confrontation, a criminal will show their truth. And when
I opened that door, his wife, of course shocked. They
were both in their dressing gowns, went straight and said, oh, oh, oh, oh, Mel,
what are you doing here? And he was behind her
(41:19):
shoulder and his face dropped. And I knew in that moment,
I've got you. You've been waiting, You've been waiting so
long for one of us to rock up on your doorstep,
and here I am. And they invited me in, and
the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Did she go, the wife go to make a cup
of tea? Did you geek?
Speaker 1 (41:43):
They took me and brought me into the kitchen, said
let's have a cup of tea. And she then said, look,
I'm just gonna get changed into you know, I'm in
my dressing hown. I just get changed. I said sure,
and so Peter kept teas back to me and he
was making tea. I didn't say a word, and I
just said, look, Peter, it's really you that I've come
(42:04):
to see because you've played such an important, almost paternal
role in my life. And I knew from the research
that i'd done, if you approach a predator from a
place of understanding, that they're much more likely to open up.
(42:26):
And I said to him, I just wanted to take
this time to talk to you because we had such
a special relationship and I understand that people are sometimes
driven by needs and wants that not everyone understands, but
(42:46):
we understand. And I just I felt like I needed
to talk to you because some of what happened between
us has impacted me in a really big way in
my life, and I just feel like I need to
hear it acknowledged. I just like I feel like I need,
(43:07):
I need us to talk about that. And he said, oh,
I don't, I don't know what you mean. And I said, well,
when you. You touched me, Peter when you rate me.
And at that point she walked in and he was
just standing there with a cup and the tea bag
kind of frozen, and she said straight away, what's going on,
(43:34):
What's what's wrong? And I said, well, I just I
was just talking to Peter because well he used to
he used to touch me, Leslie, used to rate me.
And she kind of closed her card again and she went, oh,
I can't imagine. I can't imagine him doing anything like that,
and then grabbed my hands and said, but thank you
(43:56):
so much for coming and talking to us. And we
then sat down at the table and talked for forty
five minutes, small small talk, but also I kept coming
back to and he's react was very much, Oh, I
can't remember. I might I must have blanked out, But
(44:17):
I'm so sorry that I did that to you. And
so we just kept that was like on a reel.
It just kept rolling on, this conversation and his desperation.
He was in tears at times. I'm so sorry that
you felt that way, and thank you. Kept thanking me
for coming and talking to him, which I imagine was
(44:40):
his way of discharging the fear that I would go
and speak to someone else. I wrap it up with
a nice pretty bow. Right now, she won't go anywhere else,
completely unaware that I had a wire on and with
the police when in my ear, but they were listening,
and we continued to talk. We talked about my kids,
(45:02):
their kids, what everyone was doing, and then they were
inviting me to come back, let's all have dinner together.
So I wrapped it up and just by saying, look,
thank you for a for inviting me into your home,
but thank you for acknowledging that that makes so many
things fall into place and just made me feel so
(45:22):
much better. And that was just bye bye, And I
walked out the door and nearly collapsed and then got
to the car and Scott just said, thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
That is.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Extraordinary, finest piece of acting I've ever done. Maybe, well,
how's that?
Speaker 2 (45:42):
But you know, it's such a strange thing because if
you think about and I saw Amanda Lee in the
sixty minute story that you did about this, she couldn't
have done it. Those other kids couldn't do it. And
it's as though your life and the choices that you
made subsequent to that placed you perfectly with a dose
(46:08):
of credible as I said, courage to worry out. What
are the odds? I know? I mean you were talking
about the statistics of children that are sexually abused, and
part of what brought that home to you was in
(46:28):
the wake of you embarking on your own justice, how
many people approached you or contacted you.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
At its height, I was being approached by between five
to eight people in the street every day just to
share their experience. Ada, thank me for my bravery. I
feel there you go. It's almost like one to put
inverted commas because I'm too embarrass to own it. Thank
(46:59):
me for my bravery. But up to this date, since
first making my initial disclosure publicly, I've had in excess
of forty thousand, close to fifty thousand Australians who've emailed me,
messaged me, stop me in the street who have been
part of my inner outer circle, associates, work colleagues to
(47:22):
disclose that it happened to them. Now, I'm just one
person walking around on the planet. If I can be
a magnet for that degree of disclosures, then how big
is this issue? I tell you right now, it is
enormous and it does not get the traction that it deserves.
(47:46):
I'm going to take a little moment here to acknowledge
my therapist to name was Vada Shepherd, and she was
a victim of trauma herself, of quite horrific trauma, and
she taught me how to mitigate my trauma response. Now,
for those of you, it's become almost a hashtag trauma,
(48:08):
but for those who've suffered a significant trauma in their
formative years, it becomes enmeshed in who you are, becomes
part of You can't rationalize it. All. This thing happened
to me when I was a child, but that was then.
This is now. There's a clear distinction for someone who's
experienced that when they're triggered, you go straight back to
(48:29):
that place where you're under threat, someone's about to hurt you,
and you go one of two ways. There's the dorsal
vagel response, where your body starts goes to sleep, it's
like the animal rolling over and bearing, exposing its bally
awesome ye to the predator. Or you go into the
hypo arousal, where you go a bit nutty, where you're
(48:51):
in fight or flight. You're doing a million things at once, hyperventilation.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
And I guess which one can I get switch one you.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Are, I go into drop was in most of my
I spend most of my functional life in fight or flight.
All the time. You're mitigating something bad happening. But when
I'm actually confronted by confrontation or I'm scared or I'm
under threat, I go into dorsal vagel where I will
literally fall asleep. And I've been known to be having
an argument with someone and I will literally drive them batty,
(49:19):
but I will have literally dozed off. I'll just I'm confronted,
something bad's going to happen. I just shut down. She
taught me how to mitigate that. She taught me breathing techniques,
visualization techniques, physical exercises, almost like preparing to stroll onto
a stage. And we're talking about vocal warm ups earlier.
(49:40):
She taught me how to mitigate that. And so when
we were sitting in a car at five am before
I went in, I was going into dorsalvagel full, I
was starting to nod off. I was falling asleep, and
I said to Scott, I can't do this. I'm just
not here. I can't do this. And he grabbed my
hands and he said, Madeline, just act that's what you're
(50:04):
good at. Pretend that you're a woman who has been
horrifically wronged. You go in there and you seek justice.
And I went, oh, okay, I woke up and I
went I marched in there, and I did what I
had to do. But I wanted to touch on Varda because
she and this is quite I've never really spoken about this,
(50:28):
but she she developed secondary breast cancer whilst my case
was playing out in court, and she didn't tell anyone
that she was sick. She just started. She became close
friends with Scott and his beautiful partner. She was an
adored mentor to me, and yet suddenly she just sort
(50:51):
of disappeared off the scene. And she'd send us into
midten texts just checking on us and telling us how
much she loved us. And we found out from her daughter.
The last Varda was coming in out of consciousness and
Scott had metsage her phone to let her know that
(51:13):
Peter had pled guilty and was going to jail, and
she passed away the same day. She'd hold on till
that last minute, and that very last minute, to ensure
justice was served, and then she let go, and that
(51:34):
just breaks my heart. That she didn't tell me. That
I found out afterwards, and I understand why, but that
this woman have a fortitude to move through her own
traumas and assist me to seek justice on behalf of
so many, she said earlier, who don't have the agency,
(51:56):
who don't have the opportunity, for all the other victims
in this case, and all the cases across the centuries,
and for everyone right here now, living and breathing, who
has experienced this as a small, defenseless, vulnerable child, for
me to be able to get up there and get
justice on behalf of everyone. She waited to ensure justice
had been served before she let herself go. And for me,
(52:20):
that's the most important story, at part of.
Speaker 2 (52:22):
The whole story. I mean, it's all important. It's all important.
And also I imagine from her there was a degree
also of not wanting to add to what was already,
what you're already enduring, and what you had to good
your loin.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
And she knew me too well. She knew that I
would have cooked up a couple of casseroles and I
would have been on her doorstep, banging on the door,
demanding to be let in. And so she chose her path,
and that path was one of love and support to
her up right up until her final breath.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
Madeline West, what does the future hold beyond you holding
your newest baby in three weeks time? What do you
say for yourself now as you step into the future.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
I see myself living large, laughing loud, loving hard, with
none of the barriers that stopped me doing that in
the past. I see me continuing to do the work
(53:37):
that I do in assisting victims to become not just survivors,
but you heroes in their own life, to acknowledge that
you've really you've survived something phenomenal. My focus is very,
very firmly on being the best mum I can be
(53:59):
and being the best person I can be to continue
being a contributing global citizen. I like to feel, in
my own small way that what I've been through has
an me to leave a legacy and to act, yeah,
to continue that work and just being present, really just
(54:21):
smelling the roses and gosh to have come this far,
and I have lived a very big life to come
this far, but to really just be present and to
appreciate every moment for what it is and stop rushing
headlong into the future, to be right here, right now,
(54:45):
and to be so grateful to be right here, right now,
so to live gracefully and gratefully without apology.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Oh, Madeline West Melanie, and I embraced that name, that
little girl she's in Now, I feel like I'm a
bush godal that is being perfectly put together, and.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
The jigsaw puzzle that makes up my life is complete.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
I cannot thank you enough, not just for sharing your
story with no filter in our listeners, but also for
your valiance, proper, proper valiance.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
That is so beautiful. Thank you for that. I would
have never attached that word to myself and popping that
in my CV, because I love it. I suppose it's
a word I wouldn't have associated with myself because valiance
comes with a really strong image of being armored, you know, armor,
(56:02):
the white knight riding on his noble steed. And it's
only now that I've left my armor drop. For so
many For most of my life, my New Year's resolution
every year was to pull on the boxing gloves. And
this year, I'm going to fight. I'm going to fight.
I'm going to fight. I'm not going to fight anymore.
Speaker 2 (56:23):
Thanks Matt, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
Kay, it's been so gorgeous having a chat.
Speaker 2 (56:31):
This is one of the most astounding conversations that I've
ever had. I said this to Madeline after the interview,
that I just wanted to thank her for being so
honest with me and with you, our listeners, and the
fact that she has allowed so many people to find
the courage to speak out. She's proven herself to be
(56:53):
so resourceful, so resilient, and in a word that's bandied
around far too often, she is the definition of bravery.
The executive producer of No Filter is Naima Brown, Senior
producer is Grace U. Sound design is by Jacob Brown,
and I'm your host, Kate lane Brook. I'll be back
(57:14):
with you next week. And if this episode brings up
any hard feelings and you need to talk to someone,
We've put some links to resources in the show notes.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hence why I feel so grateful to be precisely where
I am now, with this little miracle who was clearly,
spite all the odds, absolutely destined to be. I certainly
hope the majority of those demons that plagued me earlier
on are put to rest.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Waiting for a pregnancy test result can bring on a
whirlwind of emotions excitement, anxiety, anticipation, dread. But for Madeline West,
seeing a positive test at forty seven wasn't just surprising,
it was completely and utterly shocking, because at first she
(01:09):
thought that she was in perimenopause. She even asked her
doctor if a positive pregnancy test could be a symptom,
but no, she was in fact expecting her seventh child,
and when we spoke, she was just two weeks away
from giving birth. In this conversation, Madeleine is the epitome
of no filter. Unflinchingly honest and deeply reflective. She shares
(01:36):
how she's really feeling, how the media expects her to
feel about the poetically named geriatric pregnancy and why she's
choosing to embrace this unexpected twist in her story. But
more than that, Madeline West opens up about something far
more profound, her experience of childhood's sexual abuse, a secret
(01:59):
she had hidden from the world and from herself for
almost forty years. She speaks about the moment she knew
she was ready to confront her abuser, and the valiance
that it took to bring him to justice. Now, as
she prepares to welcome another baby, Madeleine describes her life
(02:19):
as a jigsaw puzzle, one that's been scattered, rebuilt, and
reshaped over time, and after years of healing and self discovery,
she finally feels like the last piece is falling into place.
But before we get there, I just want to let
you know that this conversation through necessity does include very
(02:43):
candid discussion of the abuse that Madeleine survived. So please
this and mindfully, and here is Madeline West, Madeline West,
beautiful of face, extraordinary of soul. We will get to
that later. Welcome to no filth.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I feel like, on the basis of that welcome, I
wish I was in the room with you. I've even
brought I've brought snacks, with me, because you just can't
come between a pregnant woman and a snack. So I
wish I was in the room.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Whist Kate, Well, so you are pregnant, the duff well,
and truly you really are barn in the oven all
of that. This needs a drum roll. Seventh child, you
are forty five.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
No, I'm forty seven.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Oh you're forty seven. It's are you laughing?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Because it's just getting worse. O.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
B Well, it's just I actually, I actually love it.
I love it. I'm happy it's not me. I'm thrilled.
I'm thrilled.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
It's so funny to say that, Kate. All my girlfriends
are saying the same thing. They're like, I can't wait
to hold a baby, just don't want to carry one
in one undercarriage, which is right now.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
All right. So I've just made a mistake that I
imagine is happening a lot. The first thing when someone's pregnant. Congratulations, congratulations, Madeline, congratulations.
But because it's so extraordinary, is that getting a little
(04:29):
bit lost in the mix, in the mix of the astonished,
or that the first reaction is always shocked.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
My first reaction was shocked, and disbelief, so I certainly
can't judge anyone else for having a similar reaction to it.
But what I will say, and what I have discovered,
is that I am far from alone. Statistically, teen pregnancies
are on a sharp decline. Pregnancies in their forties are
(05:01):
on the rise, and particularly over forty four, which is
quite surprising. It's quadrupled in the last twenty years. How
many women in their latter forties are now going on
to have babies, So I understand that there is it's
certainly not helped by the geriatric pregnancy label that you
(05:22):
get slapped with from thirty five. I'm like, should I
should I go babies fun thingson buy a pram or
should I go and get a zimmer Frame. I'm not
quite sure.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
They should do doubles in mission.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
I think they should just little package, our geriatric package.
But what I have discovered, and I was very slow
to I really didn't want to initially air where I
was and what was happening in my life. I've become
increasingly private as I've gotten older, and and You've moved
to Bayn and I moved to Byron, and it was
(05:56):
my hand was kind of forced because I was informed
by a media agency that there was awareness that I
was pregnant. And that came about not because I'd rocked
up to Melbourne Fashion Week or something in alycrate Frock.
It was because I was actually presenting at Parliament and
trying to push through legislation to amp up protections around
(06:17):
child's safety, and I was just spotted by a journalist
who of course went back to the office told everyone.
They told everyone they knew. I found out that I
was being followed by peraps trying to get that first photo.
So I thought, well, I'm gonna, as much as I
don't want to, I'm going to speak out about this
on my terms. And the most wonderful flow on effect
of that was I had over a thousand responses from
(06:41):
other women who had or were having babies in their
forties saying I thought I was the only one. I
thought I was the only one who was going to
rock up to play group and everyone would think I
was grandma. I thought I was the only one who
at first day of school i'd be mingling with mothers
and fathers who were half my age. But quite the
reverse is true, so it's really I'm actually quite gratified
(07:04):
to have illuminated or shown a spotlight on this particular
group of men and women who are delving into parenting
later in life and thought that they were alone.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And also I find it kind of hopeful because the
one thing that we know about nature is that nature
can be cruel, particularly when it comes to issues of fertility.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yes, it most definitely can.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And you thought that you were perimenopausal, and you thought
that's why you were having these strange cycles.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
See as soon as like that, oh hang on, my
monthly's disappeared. Oh wow, I must have just hot footed
it right through the perimenopause phase and I've gone straight
into menopause. But then I got a couple of other
symptoms that I recognized but did not quite fit with
the narrative around menopause, which thankfully is finally getting so
(08:00):
much traction in the media and just amongst society itself.
We're finally having meaningful conversations about perimenopause and menopause. But
my symptoms didn't quite correlate with any of that. I
wasn't getting hot flushes. I was certainly rageful, But I'm
a mum of six, and of course I'm rageful. When
(08:20):
am I not rageful? I did the little I just thought,
you know, oh, let's just let's just get this out
of the way, and let's just do a little weir
on a stick, and two lines popped up, And I'll
be honest with you, Kate. My first thought was, maybe
this is a symptom of many pause that no one's
heard about you. Maybe because all your hormones are going
(08:42):
all over them, maybe this is what happens. So I
had a little check up with the doctor and he said, no,
you are most definitely geriatrically up the dust and here
we are.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Okay. So because you now live in Byron, so this
would not have been the same doctor that you had
through your other six pregnancies.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Or are you are the tweens that I came went
and saw had a room full of dream catches and
healing crystals and well, I'm decrying me a good hard staging.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
No, but you have to explain yourself to a new ishtock.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yes, you have to go through everything. And and I am
someone who prides myself on keeping really healthy both mentally
and physically. That's become a priority for me, particularly in
the last five years because I've gone through quite a
few things, so that became an absolute priority to shore
up my physical and mental health, and that is what
(09:39):
I have been doing. So I'm not a frequent visitor
to a doctor's office, but I did.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I found I have got a lovely GP who went
and saw and his eyebrows went through the roof when
we got the positive result as well. But again he
reiterated that as much as this is inverted comma's higher risk,
it's also not uncommon. And that's what I discovered when
I opened up finally and starting having conversations with my
(10:07):
core beautiful group of friends, that many of them had
found myselves themselves in my shoes and had either decided
to proceed or not proceed. But this was not completely
I wasn't an anomaly.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Well, I also had babies in my fings and I
also had caesareans, and I know when I had to
go back to the doctor the fourth time that I
was accidentally pregnant. I love that these are two grown
up we have Actually it's a great title for a book, accidentally,
(10:42):
But they were like, they don't like to do caesareans
past three cesareans. I was going for four you're presumably
going to have. Yes, so I won't let you go natural, now,
will that?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
No? No? No, those have an American Emergency Caesar because I'm
quite small and my babies are generally quite big, so.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Bigger than bigger than you would like exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I do have a really lovely doctor who is allowing
me to go into labor. Yes, which is lovely because
it means that some of those issues that little ones
face when they are born by a cesarean section. That
could be some issues with lungs and issues with the
milk coming in. Sorry, too much information, but we're going
(11:27):
down that path. So let's deep dive deep obviated.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
It's no filter. Oh, that's right, said, it's no filtered.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I've got a wonderful obstetrician who will let me go
into labor and then we'll pop in and zip a
little one out.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Okay. So when you've seen your doctor, yep, you get
the news that you are pregnant.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
How long ago was this? By the way, how deep
are you in?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I've got about two and a half weeks al yes,
And this is officially the last thing I'm going to
do that requires my brain to function. I've just sat
like I drew a line in the sand. I said,
I'm going to have my chat to Kate and I'm
doing nothing else.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So when you get that news, who is the first
person that you take?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Um?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Right?
Speaker 1 (12:18):
What?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
And where is mask?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
So Mum's down in Victoria, so she's a little bit
of a distance and she's actually going to be my
birth partner, in which I love. I think that's a
very strong, almost tribal connection. Yes, and this is I'm
going on a tight segue, So please hold that question
in your head, Cake, because I know I'll go off
(12:40):
on a tangent and I'll completely forget, forget what we're
talking about. But I've just read the most amazing book
called Eve by Cat Bohannon. I'd recommend it to anyone
to read, and it explains how the female body has
driven evolution for the last two hundred million years, and
it gives the most precise scientific explanation for why we
(13:03):
enter menopause. We, apart from killer whales, are the only
creatures on the planet that experience menopause, and men certainly
don't experience it, so it's specific to the female body.
And it was a precise choice that we biologically, genealogically
made in our history of evolution as we branched off
(13:23):
from some of our primate predecessors to experience menopause so
that women could lead.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
And in part the wisdom is this week because I
have heard this, but I didn't know that was the genes.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
And it's absolutely brilliant, and it's been been quantified by
numerous scientific studies that demonstrate that, like killer whales, we
are the ones who say, this is what you do
in a drought, this is what you do in a famine.
You need to blanch those vegetables to get the toxins out.
And mothers are designed to birth their grandchildren. They've got
(13:59):
this wealth of knowledge. And Western society is very good
at dismissing how elderly as yes, somehow a little bit
decrepit us.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Actually we're out there in the.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Field now, just let them go and graze. But the
sheer wealth of instinctive knowledge that our older generations of
women have is mind boggling. So it feels very symbolic
and very right that it is my mum there who
will bring this new little one.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
What did she say? What did she say when you
told her you were on the phone, she dissuming, Oh.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And this is a very frequent response I've gotten it's
just going to be so hard.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And I paused, so she forgot to say congratulations exactly.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
And then of course it warms up to congratulations, and
over the weeks and the days and the weeks and
the months that follows, it becomes overwhelmingly positive the response.
But her first concern is it's going to be so
hard because you've already got so much going on. And
I stepped back for a moment and went, well, I
I think as I've grown older and hopefully wiser, I've
(15:15):
come to choose my heart because life is hard. Everything
about life is hard. We've got all got so many
pressures on our shoulders. And yes, there's so many things
I want to do with my life, but I don't
for a moment believe the presence of this precious little
miracle in my life is going to stop me doing
(15:37):
what I want to do. If anything, it's going to
push me harder to do what I want to do,
to make the world a better place, a safer place.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Coming up after the break, I asked Madeline how she
processed the news of her pregnancy at forty seven years old,
and whether she considered all the possible options stay with us.
Was there a moment where you thought maybe I won't
(16:14):
proceed with this.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
No, No, because initially I thought it was menopause. I
found out a little bit later that most do.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
And my.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Body knows this is number seven precisely where that little
cluster of cells is at every stage and from I
am all for everyone having everyone and everyone having choice
and facilities to exercise that choice. But for me, this
(16:52):
was a little This was a little human being who
was going to change the world from the moment that
I found out that I was pregnant, and that has
not changed.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
You know, you said life is hard, and I know
a lot of people say that as epithets. You know,
politicians love to talk about people doing it tough, as
though they've had nothing to do with the fact that
people do at that class.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
But do you know what I mean, I can't quite
join the dots.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, exactly right. But when you say life is hard,
you have a much more acute understanding of that than
most people.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
I do now because I can, I can actually look
back retrospectively as some of the things that I've experienced which,
to be honest, I for most of my life wasn't
prepared to do. I spent most of my life putting
masks on, pretending to be anyone other than myself because
(17:58):
I so despised myself, and that self that I despised
originated from a tiny little girl who had horrible things
happened to her that she absolutely was not to blame for.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
That little girl was Melanie that was used.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
See there you go. I even changed my name to
run as hard and fast away from her as I could.
So so much of my life has been wrapped up
in ignoring the bad things that happened. But and I
can speak from experience now because I've done all of
(18:35):
my training to become something of a trauma expert and
exploitation expert. So I work very closely with children. I
work in schools and educate them how to be safe
online just in life in general. And I also work
with a lot of historical victims who want to just
be empowered enough to say the words that this happened
(18:56):
to me and it was not my fault, and that
might result in them pursuing criminal or some kind of
civil remediation. But now I can spot all the red flags,
and I can spot all the triggers when someone has
had that experience. I spent my life trying to keep
that under wraps, which is why acting was a perfect profession.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Donning the mantle of somebody else. I'm someone else because
you couldn't bear to be yourself, Sackler.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I couldn't bear to be Melanie because she'd been told
for so long that she was to blame for everything
that had happened to her.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Now to get our listeners up to speed, who may
not know this, and this is just an event of
such cataclysmic proportions to happen in anybody's life that I
can't believe this is not a story known to everybody.
(19:53):
I was certainly not familiar as familiar with it. We've
kind of had been background noised.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
But that's I think you've described it so well that
this is a cataclysmic event, yet it's experienced by one
in three girls and one in five boys, and that's
just the reported cases. So just to qualify for anyone
who's listening and not familiar with my backstory, and I'm
so glad to be at a point in my life
(20:18):
where I'm stepping away from being the poster child of
trauma and achieving something beautiful and wonderful in the aftermath.
I was the victim of a pedophile from the ages
of four to eleven, and it was quite horrific what
he did. It was your neighbor, Yes, it was my
next door neighbor. And I was not alone. I was
(20:40):
not the only victim. And after many years of working
with therapists, with the police, with the federal police, in
December of twenty twenty four, we put him away in
prison for fifteen years. So he's now accountable.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Peter Vincent wife his name was Yes, So in your
little seemingly idyllic town of Voudeine that you grew up in,
this charming, you.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Know, little town, almost village, tiny, little bucolic, beautiful village
type town. And he chose the precisely perfect location, which
was an area peopled predominantly by low socioeconomic young families
with little kids. And his house was the most magnificent
(21:31):
house in the neighborhood with all the bits and pieces
that would attract children, and his wife was a frequent
babysitter for the neighborhood, so children were drawn to that
area and he was precisely the epitome of the rock
spider who, hidden in plain SIGHTE was able to access.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Young children trusted and adored by the name.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Absolutely, you know so many and so many people have said,
how did they not know? How did they not know?
And that's the cliche. Hidden in plain site, he was
right there, and no one would dream. This wonderful, generous
person who held fabulous parties and invited everyone in the
neighborhood who'd pop over, and he was a plumber by trade,
(22:17):
would fix your block toilet without batting an eye, was
using public, that very positive public facade to hide the
most horrific and as she said before, heinous, cataclysmic crime.
You can imagine, and it still bewilders me. But the reason,
as you said, you know, you can't believe that people
(22:38):
haven't heard about it, is precisely because people don't talk
about it. Our society fosters a conspiracy of silence around this, and.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
A lot of that is motivated by fear.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Absolutely and also shame that we don't attach, we really
don't appropriately attach a victim or survivor label to those
who've experienced that they are seen as deficit, as broken
and as somehow complicit. There's still some degree of question,
(23:11):
what we're wearing, what we're you're doing. Well, you must
have brought it on, You must have led him on.
How the hell does a five year old lead on
a forty year old man?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
How?
Speaker 1 (23:22):
And yet that seems to be the narrative we attached
to this crime. And that is why, to this day,
this crime which has one of the highest ratios of
victim per capita in our society, the highest ratio of
recidivus behavior by the perpetrators, yet the lowest sentencing, and
(23:42):
the majority of cases a perpetrator might get a slap
on a wrist or a community service order. Yet commit
tax fraud and you'll get ten years in prison.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
What was the point in your life at which you,
in the service of that little girl that you carried
around with you, that you decided to go to the
police and say, this is what happened to me. What
is the process for you?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
You reach a point in your life where the white
noise of what happened to you is so loud you
can't function anymore, where memories start to resurface and you
can't tuck them away or push them down anymore. And
I was on the cusp of a separation and questioning
(24:35):
so many things in my life. And what tip me
over was learning that he had grandchildren. And that was
when I went it stops with me, because I don't
care what anyone says. If you've experienced this, it will
manifest in your life in some way.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Of course, it.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Might be that you become an alcoholic, you have drug addiction,
you might dabble in petty crime. You might not be
able to function socially. You might not be able to
hold down a relationship or hold down a lot a job.
All these social what we call ills generally have. Even
the President, the high ratio of eating disorder sufferers have
(25:17):
a history of child abuse.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Was that how it manifested with you?
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Absolutely? Yeah, with horrific anorexia from what age? I started
exercising obsessively when I was twelve. Funnily enough, not long
after the abuse stopped, and that just got worse and worse,
and it led to lengthy hospitalizations when I was in
my late teens. At one point I'd been hospitalized and
(25:44):
I weighed less than thirty kilos, and I just that
was the and I'd really call out for anyone who
has experienced this particular illness that I esdated even to
call it an illness, because it's often a manifestation of
something deeper and darker. It's not about weight, it's too much,
(26:04):
it's too little to correlate it with images that we
see in popular magazine and in the media. It's about control.
That that little girl had had her body violated so vilely,
had no agency over her experience. So the one thing
I could control was what I put in my mouth.
(26:27):
And when I didn't put anything in my mouth, I
felt like I was in control. When I'd managed to
stave off the hunger pangs long enough that I didn't
feel hungry anymore, I was in control. And then you
reach a point when your be and my slips below sixteen,
where full blown body it's morphia kicks in where you
don't even see yourself as you are. You could literally
(26:49):
look in the mirror and your skin is hanging off
you because there's all your muscles of atrophied and there's
nobody fat, and you do think that you're obese.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
You were so clearly broken. You flagged it with your
parents at the time, because he was your neighbor was
not only raping you, he was raping other children in
the neighborhood, including one of your friends who was older
(27:20):
than yous, who was babysitting for his.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Childrens at a quite a young age and thus extremely exposed.
And I know it's very easy to cast a judgment
that how would these other parents let this happen? How
did they not know? And it might seem like a
broad jump, but in the same way that we frequently
(27:48):
don't know what our kids are looking at on their
devices and what messages they're sending, and the conversations they're having,
and the cyber bullying that they might be experiencing. That's
why it's been such an apt move that I now
work in this sphere where educate kids about how to
be safe online and what then educate their parents and
(28:08):
teaches about what the red flags are and what to
avoid and how best to manage it. Because we're all busy,
we're all doing the best that we can. And for
young parents in that neighborhood to have someone with a
lovely home with a professional career offer to help with
your kids for free was a gift.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
And that's the dream. I mean, that is the saying
it takes a valy.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Absolutely, and this was purely an extension of that. Let's
take advantage of this village, and yeah, this is why
it's such a social ill. It seems the only way
to combat it is for us to all be terribly
cynical and everyone, you know, keeping it suspicious of everyone
around us. We don't want that, but we need to
(28:56):
bring broader recognition as to why this happens. How does
it create in someone an aherent, abhorrent urge to engage
with the child sexually, to break and break them, to
manipulate them and take advantage of them.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
There's so many impediments to somebody coming forward, particularly with
historical offenses like this. There was like a thirty year yeah,
thirty or forty years in between, as you've already alluded to,
(29:34):
the shame, the atrophied nature of yourself, the wanting to
also not immerse yourself back into the world of that darkness.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
I had to and that was a really hard five
years because once you knock that scab off, because it's
always a festering wound, Once you knock that scab off
and you dig in there to that long, festering abscess
of trauma. Sorry, it's not a very attractive metaphor, but
(30:06):
it's true. It initially gets harder because you have to
allow yourself to fully remember what happened, and our brain
sets up so many guardposts to protect us from that.
And once you're back in there, it's we're talking about
(30:27):
crying in your wardrobe, in a puddle of tears on
a regular basis territory, that's where you go. But once
you hit that rock bottom, you're acutely aware that as
hard as this is, and this is what I told
myself every morning, my mantra while I was meditating, this
(30:47):
too shall pass, It can only get better. Once I
was actually able to say the words with complete detail,
describing the room, the curtains, the time of day, it
was so specific what my body had held on to
for so long. It was like the ultimate detox okate.
It was like a spiritual detox that it just out.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
It came like an exorcism.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Like an exorcism, and that would only be matched by
So when you go through these particular cases, and they
take a long time to get to court, and the
court process is onerous, but at the time of just
before sentencing, victims have an opportunity to speak not just
to the judge, but to the perpetrator who is in
(31:36):
the dock and express the impact this it's called a
victim's impact statement, and express the impact that this person
had on their life. And when it was my time
to get I elected that yes, I'd like to get
up and say my peace. But that moment of being
able to stand up in court and the request is
(32:00):
that you face the magistrate. And I said to the magistrate,
your honor, I appreciate that what I have to say
here is addressed to you, but really it's addressed to him.
And I turned around and I eyeballed him, and I
demanded that he look at me, said you look at me.
Don't you dare look away? You look at me? And
(32:20):
then I spelled out the imp Did he look at it?
Speaker 2 (32:23):
He did, and he was a man in his seventies.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
In his seventies. And I then spelled out everything he
had done and laid out for him in the court.
The jig saw puzzle of my life and how that one?
That to say one? But it was over numerous years,
his actions, the consequences for me as a mother, as
(32:47):
a partner, as a professional, just as a living, breathing
human being had for the rest of my life. And
that was the ultimate detox that for me was allowing
me to shrug off the cross of blame and shame
and depression and self hatred that I'd carried my entire
(33:09):
life life for the first time and I literally said,
I'm dropping this backpack of shame here and you can
take it back to yourself with you, where I hope
you rot and die. So harsh words but apt and
necessary and the ultimate sense of justice. And it's probably hey, yes,
(33:31):
I'm up here and Byron, and it sounds terribly woo woo,
but I could literally feel little Melanie by my side,
and I could feel thousands of women and thousands of
men who've never had an opportunity to say the words
to discharge that trauma. I could feel them behind me
(33:53):
in that moment, and I'll never forget it. It was
life changing.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
You said in your victim impact statement that you ran
away from that little girl as far and fast as
you could and to explain the true impact to him.
That was your intention, not just on that tiny girl,
(34:20):
but on the broken woman.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yes, that was you when you just you're like a
Babushka dole and the three internal dolls are being pulled
out and thrown away, that you're you're fragile. I feel
like I've lived so much of my life like a
glass vase that's been shattered to tiny shards but held
together with nice, glossy, sticky tape. So we're gonna look
(34:44):
at it and go it looks like a vase, and
it's shaped like a vase, and it's a beautiful vis
must be a vavas. But you try to hold any
substance or any amount of water for any amount of time,
and it's just going to leak out. And how could
it be any other way when a crucial component of myself,
Melanie who I am, was not there. And so from
(35:07):
that point of leaving the caught that day, I made
a determination that I will live the life that I
was destined to live, one of wholeness, one of love,
one of kindness, understanding, empathy, and appreciation. And I'm not
going to guild the lily. It's hard. I don't necessarily
(35:31):
believe in healing in inverted commons. I believe that you
learn to tolerate your trauma. I believe you learn to
navigate your life scars an awareness of yes, with an
awareness of the scar tissue, and you treat it kindly
so you don't extend your muscles too hard. If it's
going to pull and tug, you just very gently give
(35:52):
yourself a little massage and maybe put a bit of
balm on it or something like that. But it's about
for me, being well is making a monumental effort to
dip my cup into the well of things that I
do love about me and that I am so grateful
(36:12):
for having in my life.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
That's not all of my conversation with Madeline West after
this short break, she tells me how it felt when
she confronted her abuser.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
What are the things that you love about you that
I've been blessed with my beautiful children. I love that
I have a capacity not just for compassion and sympathy,
but actual empathy that comes from a shared learn experience.
I do love that. I do love that I have
(36:56):
a propensity to look on the bright side of life.
I love that I am a hard worker. Now I
know that my hard work has been its genesis has
been got to run, got to run, got to run,
got to run? So I stop I'm going to feel
I don't want to feel that. I love that I
am curious about people in the world and always have been,
(37:18):
and I do love that throughout my life I've done
my best to polish a turd.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
I really no matter what the.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
I'm the toilet freshener. Now that I don't for a
minute reflect on my life with regret. That the things
that have regretted is pointless. It's like guilt. Guilt is
just it's just a perfluous It's almost a luxury that
none of us can afford. You've just got to get
on with it. And I do believe that I've managed
(37:54):
to get on with it that yes I haven't been perfect,
Yes that I've hurt people along the way, certainly not
with an intention of hurting them, but it's simply not
really knowing how to best function in most situations. And
hence why I feel so grateful to be precisely where
(38:15):
I am now, with this little miracle who was clearly,
spite all the odds, absolutely destined to be.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And also, this is the first of your children who
will come into the.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
World, into this new world, yes, into your new world
in which you've divested yourself of that cloak of shame
and heaviness and fear.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Although obviously, like you said, it's not just a you know,
it's not a clear excision of those.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Lines but definitely blurred. But I certainly hope the majority
of those demons that plagued me earlier on are put
to rest.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Can I tell you something that I love about you?
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Oh, I'd love to hear that.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Obviously there's been your creative gift to the nation. But
the most extraordinary act of courage and a confluence of
your acting skills and your desire for justice and you're
(39:22):
advocating for that little girl who couldn't advocate for herself,
was when you went to the police and you told
them was this in twenty twenty eighteen. And I don't
know how this came about, but you met this incredible.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Detective Scott Tuttenham, my hero to this.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Day, and you are a hero to him because of
what you did. And this will be the subject of
a movie. Think about who's going to play you. Because
what you did was to make the case against this
predator stand up in court. They said that they needed
(40:00):
his confirmation of what he had done. You put on
a wire. You went back to that town, to that house.
He knocked on the door, who opened the door.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
To him and his wife? And we'd purposefully come very
early in the morning on a public holiday, knowing that
that gave us the greater chance of actually nabbing him
or him being home. And he and his wife opened
(40:38):
the door. And I had done a lot of It's
almost like researching a character, Kate. I'd done so much
research on the profile and the psychology of predators that
I knew, in the first glimpse, the first few seconds
(40:59):
of confrontation, a criminal will show their truth. And when
I opened that door, his wife, of course shocked. They
were both in their dressing gowns, went straight and said, oh, oh, oh, oh, Mel,
what are you doing here? And he was behind her
(41:19):
shoulder and his face dropped. And I knew in that moment,
I've got you. You've been waiting, You've been waiting so
long for one of us to rock up on your doorstep,
and here I am. And they invited me in, and
the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Did she go, the wife go to make a cup
of tea? Did you geek?
Speaker 1 (41:43):
They took me and brought me into the kitchen, said
let's have a cup of tea. And she then said, look,
I'm just gonna get changed into you know, I'm in
my dressing hown. I just get changed. I said sure,
and so Peter kept teas back to me and he
was making tea. I didn't say a word, and I
just said, look, Peter, it's really you that I've come
(42:04):
to see because you've played such an important, almost paternal
role in my life. And I knew from the research
that i'd done, if you approach a predator from a
place of understanding, that they're much more likely to open up.
(42:26):
And I said to him, I just wanted to take
this time to talk to you because we had such
a special relationship and I understand that people are sometimes
driven by needs and wants that not everyone understands, but
(42:46):
we understand. And I just I felt like I needed
to talk to you because some of what happened between
us has impacted me in a really big way in
my life, and I just feel like I need to
hear it acknowledged. I just like I feel like I need,
(43:07):
I need us to talk about that. And he said, oh,
I don't, I don't know what you mean. And I said, well,
when you. You touched me, Peter when you rate me.
And at that point she walked in and he was
just standing there with a cup and the tea bag
kind of frozen, and she said straight away, what's going on,
(43:34):
What's what's wrong? And I said, well, I just I
was just talking to Peter because well he used to
he used to touch me, Leslie, used to rate me.
And she kind of closed her card again and she went, oh,
I can't imagine. I can't imagine him doing anything like that,
and then grabbed my hands and said, but thank you
(43:56):
so much for coming and talking to us. And we
then sat down at the table and talked for forty
five minutes, small small talk, but also I kept coming
back to and he's react was very much, Oh, I
can't remember. I might I must have blanked out, But
(44:17):
I'm so sorry that I did that to you. And
so we just kept that was like on a reel.
It just kept rolling on, this conversation and his desperation.
He was in tears at times. I'm so sorry that
you felt that way, and thank you. Kept thanking me
for coming and talking to him, which I imagine was
(44:40):
his way of discharging the fear that I would go
and speak to someone else. I wrap it up with
a nice pretty bow. Right now, she won't go anywhere else,
completely unaware that I had a wire on and with
the police when in my ear, but they were listening,
and we continued to talk. We talked about my kids,
(45:02):
their kids, what everyone was doing, and then they were
inviting me to come back, let's all have dinner together.
So I wrapped it up and just by saying, look,
thank you for a for inviting me into your home,
but thank you for acknowledging that that makes so many
things fall into place and just made me feel so
(45:22):
much better. And that was just bye bye, And I
walked out the door and nearly collapsed and then got
to the car and Scott just said, thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
That is.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Extraordinary, finest piece of acting I've ever done. Maybe, well,
how's that?
Speaker 2 (45:42):
But you know, it's such a strange thing because if
you think about and I saw Amanda Lee in the
sixty minute story that you did about this, she couldn't
have done it. Those other kids couldn't do it. And
it's as though your life and the choices that you
made subsequent to that placed you perfectly with a dose
(46:08):
of credible as I said, courage to worry out. What
are the odds? I know? I mean you were talking
about the statistics of children that are sexually abused, and
part of what brought that home to you was in
(46:28):
the wake of you embarking on your own justice, how
many people approached you or contacted you.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
At its height, I was being approached by between five
to eight people in the street every day just to
share their experience. Ada, thank me for my bravery. I
feel there you go. It's almost like one to put
inverted commas because I'm too embarrass to own it. Thank
(46:59):
me for my bravery. But up to this date, since
first making my initial disclosure publicly, I've had in excess
of forty thousand, close to fifty thousand Australians who've emailed me,
messaged me, stop me in the street who have been
part of my inner outer circle, associates, work colleagues to
(47:22):
disclose that it happened to them. Now, I'm just one
person walking around on the planet. If I can be
a magnet for that degree of disclosures, then how big
is this issue? I tell you right now, it is
enormous and it does not get the traction that it deserves.
(47:46):
I'm going to take a little moment here to acknowledge
my therapist to name was Vada Shepherd, and she was
a victim of trauma herself, of quite horrific trauma, and
she taught me how to mitigate my trauma response. Now,
for those of you, it's become almost a hashtag trauma,
(48:08):
but for those who've suffered a significant trauma in their
formative years, it becomes enmeshed in who you are, becomes
part of You can't rationalize it. All. This thing happened
to me when I was a child, but that was then.
This is now. There's a clear distinction for someone who's
experienced that when they're triggered, you go straight back to
(48:29):
that place where you're under threat, someone's about to hurt you,
and you go one of two ways. There's the dorsal
vagel response, where your body starts goes to sleep, it's
like the animal rolling over and bearing, exposing its bally
awesome ye to the predator. Or you go into the
hypo arousal, where you go a bit nutty, where you're
(48:51):
in fight or flight. You're doing a million things at once, hyperventilation.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
And I guess which one can I get switch one you.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Are, I go into drop was in most of my
I spend most of my functional life in fight or flight.
All the time. You're mitigating something bad happening. But when
I'm actually confronted by confrontation or I'm scared or I'm
under threat, I go into dorsal vagel where I will
literally fall asleep. And I've been known to be having
an argument with someone and I will literally drive them batty,
(49:19):
but I will have literally dozed off. I'll just I'm confronted,
something bad's going to happen. I just shut down. She
taught me how to mitigate that. She taught me breathing techniques,
visualization techniques, physical exercises, almost like preparing to stroll onto
a stage. And we're talking about vocal warm ups earlier.
(49:40):
She taught me how to mitigate that. And so when
we were sitting in a car at five am before
I went in, I was going into dorsalvagel full, I
was starting to nod off. I was falling asleep, and
I said to Scott, I can't do this. I'm just
not here. I can't do this. And he grabbed my
hands and he said, Madeline, just act that's what you're
(50:04):
good at. Pretend that you're a woman who has been
horrifically wronged. You go in there and you seek justice.
And I went, oh, okay, I woke up and I
went I marched in there, and I did what I
had to do. But I wanted to touch on Varda because
she and this is quite I've never really spoken about this,
(50:28):
but she she developed secondary breast cancer whilst my case
was playing out in court, and she didn't tell anyone
that she was sick. She just started. She became close
friends with Scott and his beautiful partner. She was an
adored mentor to me, and yet suddenly she just sort
(50:51):
of disappeared off the scene. And she'd send us into
midten texts just checking on us and telling us how
much she loved us. And we found out from her daughter.
The last Varda was coming in out of consciousness and
Scott had metsage her phone to let her know that
(51:13):
Peter had pled guilty and was going to jail, and
she passed away the same day. She'd hold on till
that last minute, and that very last minute, to ensure
justice was served, and then she let go, and that
(51:34):
just breaks my heart. That she didn't tell me. That
I found out afterwards, and I understand why, but that
this woman have a fortitude to move through her own
traumas and assist me to seek justice on behalf of
so many, she said earlier, who don't have the agency,
(51:56):
who don't have the opportunity, for all the other victims
in this case, and all the cases across the centuries,
and for everyone right here now, living and breathing, who
has experienced this as a small, defenseless, vulnerable child, for
me to be able to get up there and get
justice on behalf of everyone. She waited to ensure justice
had been served before she let herself go. And for me,
(52:20):
that's the most important story, at part of.
Speaker 2 (52:22):
The whole story. I mean, it's all important. It's all important.
And also I imagine from her there was a degree
also of not wanting to add to what was already,
what you're already enduring, and what you had to good
your loin.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
And she knew me too well. She knew that I
would have cooked up a couple of casseroles and I
would have been on her doorstep, banging on the door,
demanding to be let in. And so she chose her path,
and that path was one of love and support to
her up right up until her final breath.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
Madeline West, what does the future hold beyond you holding
your newest baby in three weeks time? What do you
say for yourself now as you step into the future.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
I see myself living large, laughing loud, loving hard, with
none of the barriers that stopped me doing that in
the past. I see me continuing to do the work
(53:37):
that I do in assisting victims to become not just survivors,
but you heroes in their own life, to acknowledge that
you've really you've survived something phenomenal. My focus is very,
very firmly on being the best mum I can be
(53:59):
and being the best person I can be to continue
being a contributing global citizen. I like to feel, in
my own small way that what I've been through has
an me to leave a legacy and to act, yeah,
to continue that work and just being present, really just
(54:21):
smelling the roses and gosh to have come this far,
and I have lived a very big life to come
this far, but to really just be present and to
appreciate every moment for what it is and stop rushing
headlong into the future, to be right here, right now,
(54:45):
and to be so grateful to be right here, right now,
so to live gracefully and gratefully without apology.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Oh, Madeline West Melanie, and I embraced that name, that
little girl she's in Now, I feel like I'm a
bush godal that is being perfectly put together, and.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
The jigsaw puzzle that makes up my life is complete.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
I cannot thank you enough, not just for sharing your
story with no filter in our listeners, but also for
your valiance, proper, proper valiance.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
That is so beautiful. Thank you for that. I would
have never attached that word to myself and popping that
in my CV, because I love it. I suppose it's
a word I wouldn't have associated with myself because valiance
comes with a really strong image of being armored, you know, armor,
(56:02):
the white knight riding on his noble steed. And it's
only now that I've left my armor drop. For so
many For most of my life, my New Year's resolution
every year was to pull on the boxing gloves. And
this year, I'm going to fight. I'm going to fight.
I'm going to fight. I'm not going to fight anymore.
Speaker 2 (56:23):
Thanks Matt, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
Kay, it's been so gorgeous having a chat.
Speaker 2 (56:31):
This is one of the most astounding conversations that I've
ever had. I said this to Madeline after the interview,
that I just wanted to thank her for being so
honest with me and with you, our listeners, and the
fact that she has allowed so many people to find
the courage to speak out. She's proven herself to be
(56:53):
so resourceful, so resilient, and in a word that's bandied
around far too often, she is the definition of bravery.
The executive producer of No Filter is Naima Brown, Senior
producer is Grace U. Sound design is by Jacob Brown,
and I'm your host, Kate lane Brook. I'll be back
(57:14):
with you next week. And if this episode brings up
any hard feelings and you need to talk to someone,
We've put some links to resources in the show notes.
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