The Huffington Post recently published an account of a rape so callous, it was hard to read.
What made the story even more shocking was that it happened to former Runaways bassist Jackie Fuchs in front of her bandmates, the feminist icon Joan Jett and lead singer Cherie Currie.
In fact, Fuchs says she was raped by Kim Fowley, the band’s manager and producer, in front of a hotel room full of people at an after-gig party, while Jett and Currie watched, snickering, in a corner.
It was 1975 and she was 16 years old.
The Bill Cosby, Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile sex-abuse stories need no elaboration. Back in the 1970s, when these men were at the peak of their powers, they used their clout to take advantage of girls and young women – and no one said anything about it.
This same silence surrounded the shocking behaviour of Kim Fowley.
The piece by Jason Cherkis, called The Lost Girls, describes how Fowley conceived of the idea of an all-girl rock band (unheard of at the time) and actively recruited the members, grooming the girls and sometimes their parents to allow them to play in the Runaways and tour overseas with him as their sole guardian.
Fowley was a songwriter and producer, a band-manager and hustler who managed to get his name on the liner notes of hundreds of albums from Helen Reddy to hair-metal. His last appearance, in a wheelchair, was in Beyonce’s video for Haunted.
He was openly interested in teenaged girls, and what he called “young c*nt” or “dirty pussy”.
A friend of Fowley told Cherkis the two of them used to drive to high schools to try and pick up teenagers.
Fowley’s behaviour was predatory and he relished the power he wielded over vulnerable young girls.
In September 1975, Audrey Pavia, who had just turned 18, ended up backstage at an early Runaways show, when the band was just a trio. Without warning, Fowley ran at her from across the room.
“He threw me up against the wall and he put his arm across my neck,” Pavia remembers. “Then he hammered his knee between my legs.” Fowley lifted her up off the ground and licked her face. He bit and sucked on her ear. She says she struggled to get away, but he pinned her to the wall for five minutes, telling her all the things he was going to do to her.
“I was terrified. I was embarrassed,” Pavia says. “This is the part that’s most embarrassing for me. … I was a virgin. This was the most physical contact I’d had with a man.” Afterward, she noticed that her hair was matted with his spit.
Kari Krome was a 13-year-old aspiring singer/songwriter when she encountered Fowley. He got her to sign a music contract with him and groomed her for months before sexually assaulting her at the Dog Palace.
When Krome asked what was going on, he said something like, “It’s time for dog worship” and told her if she didn’t give in to his sexual demands, she’d have to go back to Long Beach. Krome thought about leaving, calling someone for a ride. But her family was poor and didn’t have a telephone. She had nowhere to go. That night, Fowley masturbated on her.
“I didn’t know how to say, ‘I don’t want you to do this,’” Krome says. “I did not have that voice. … I was also scared of him. He could be really scary.”
The rape of Jackie Fuchs happened in a hotel room in Orange County. The Runaways had played a New Year’s Eve gig there at a tiny club called Wild Man Sam’s and Fowley had invited a group of people to celebrate back in their dingy hotel room.
Fuchs was feeling elated after this gig – she finally felt part of the band.
At the hotel, a man who she thinks was a roadie approached her with a Quaalude and told her she was to take it, no questions asked. She did. A witness, Brent Williams, says she was given up to five or six Quaaludes that night.
“It was a date rape situation,” he told Cherkis.
Fuchs never discussed what happened that night until now, 40 years later.
Friends of Fuchs at the party were concerned by how out of it she was. Fuchs wasn’t a drinker and never took drugs, preferring to be in control.
She eventually had to go and lay down, unable to remain on her feet. That’s when Fowley offered up her body for sex to a roadie, who declined the offer.
Fowley began undressing Fuchs, unbuttoning her blouse and pulling off her pants. Fuchs’ friends, unable to bear it a moment longer but too intimidated by Fowley to stop him, left the party.
He began having sex with her, while others crowded in to watch.
On the bed, Fowley played to the crowd, gnashing his teeth and growling like a dog as he raped Jackie. He got up at one point to strut around the room before returning to Jackie’s body.
Fuchs’ last memory of that night is looking up and seeing Joan Jett and Cherie Curry staring at her.
Kari Krome was there, and recalls the scene.
She remembers Jett and Currie snickering. She didn’t know what to do, so she went into another room and began drinking. Krome was 14 years old.
The Runaways… post continues after gallery.
DEBRIEF DAILY