The teenage popstars who watched a rape.

I can't believe how unsupportive some of the comments are. Of course I don't know either if what she is saying is correct, but if it is then I can understand why it has taken her so long to tell her story. You just didn't talk about these things years ago, because the stigma on the woman, of course judging from these comments there still is stigma on this woman.

Considering her replacement has backed her up though saying that Joan Jett etc used to talk about it makes me think that this really happened.

What I personally think probably happened is that the others didn't think of it as "true" rape. We all know that rape is having sex with someone without their consent, but you can intellectually know this and still think that "well it wasn't really rape", particularly from that time era when a lot of date rape type scenarios would have been thought of the guy was just being a bit forceful and hey she was stoned/drunk etc so what did she expect! Especially there was a lot of wild stuff going on in bands, still is. I have no doubt they knew she was not consenting, they may or may not have known that she was purposely drugged, though if she was normally sober then you would think they would have realised she may have been drugged, but they may have thought, yeah she has got herself totally stoned and well what does she expect obviously some guy is going to take advantage of her. They would have felt pretty uncomfortable and known deep down that what he was doing wrong but they would have just written it off as "he took advantage of her, but she was a bit of a slut anyway to get so stoned/take drugs etc."

You have to remember also, they quite likely had similar things happen to them, guys not taking no for an answer or they were off their face drunk and some guy has just landed on top of them at a party and done the deed. They wouldn't have thought of any of this as being rape. And it is not that they wouldn't have been traumatised by it, but the thing is society didn't view it as rape (even if legally it was), if they spoke up they would have been labelled sluts. It was probably much better for them mentally to pretend to "own it" and tell themselves that they are just a sexually liberated woman who likes to get stoned and get it on with guys, rather than face the traumatic reality of how all of them were most likely treated like dogs by guys in the industry who just wanted to have an excuse to do whatever they liked to young vulnerable girls.

When I look at their photos, every single one of those girls, as pretty as they were, have that hard look in their eyes, like they have seen too much and have cut off their feelings, because that's the only way they can cope with it. They may have been even grateful that Jackie was now experiencing the misery they had been through. I know this can happen, because a friend of mine, quite innocent, had her friend pretty much help stage manage her rape. My friend was a virgin, her friend was not, people compared them not favourably, like the latter was considered a bit slutty etc, and I'm sure that the latter was very grateful when my friend was raped so that she would no longer be considered the "good girl". Quite possibly this girl had had the same thing happen to her and so wanted my friend to go through it too.

The reason I know all this is because it was a different era, and I grew up not long after that and I know the attitudes people had about these things at the time.

The thing is with this band, these girls seemed that they were all very young. I really think if I had been 16 and some girl was stoned out of her mind on a bed and some guy started having sex with her at a party, I would have been pretty shocked (and I was quite sheltered, certainly not a seasoned rock chick) but I hate to say this I doubt I would have done anything either. In my heart I would have known it was wrong, but because everyone else would have considered her just a slut who deserved to get what was coming to her, because she had let herself get stoned (it wouldn't have ocurred to me that she had been drugged), I would have thought to myself, well it seems wrong but everyone else thinks she is to blame so what would I know. Because trust me the adults thought like that too. Too many times I heard of young women being raped at parties and then maybe I was in the company of adults at a BBQ or something and you would hear them saying, "yeah well she was off her face drunk/stoned and she already had the reputation as being the town bike, so yeah what does she expect, obviously young guys have hormones, fair enough they shouldn't have done it, but really she was to blame." It's not that they wouldn't have doubted the story that she was forced to have sex, they just wouldn't have thought it was rape, because she was a drunken slut. When you are a young woman and people say all these things, you think, well I am young and inexperienced, these people are middle aged and understand how the world works, so even if I don't feel comfortable with this I must be wrong. This is added to the fact that the same people would always say to me, I was a "nice girl", and give me veiled compliments about my innocence. So of course i could get to feel superior to these "sluts" also. It was very clear to me that you didn't put yourself in a situation where you got too drunk etc because you could either be a good girl (me) or a slut.

I would like to clarify that these are not my attitudes, but I am trying to explain what the attitudes were at the time. I felt uncomfortable with some of these attitudes but I didn't question it, because when most of society hold an opinion then it seems to a young unformed mind that probably they are right. I would like also to mention that my own parents didn't hold these attitudes, my mother was a feminist, but here is the thing too, is that anything sexual wasn't really discussed by adults with young people (you just overheard things when they talked to each other), and even amongst themselves their was a line they wouldn't have crossed in polite society, so my mother would not have discussed much of this in front of me, even though I know from the odd thing she said she didn't agree with it, but people were very prudish, including my parents so it would have been very difficult for my mum to have spoken indepth to me about such a shocking topic, or even to others. She would have spoken up for sure (because I overheard her the odd time) but the prudishness would have stopped her from talking about it at length, and also my mother like a lot of women was raised to be a polite good girl, so it wouldn't have been nice to have argued to much with people anyway, and in any case if she had protested too loudly they may have started questioning her virtue, (even though she was respectably married) because why would a nice woman be defending a slut?

These were all the attitudes of the time. But a lot of people did know in their hearts it was wrong, but they were too frightened of what others would think if they spoke up. You can even tell this because the roadie in this attack passed up the opportunity to have sex with her, he knew it was wrong, Also I know this too because occassionally I would hear of some girl I knew having something done to her, perhaps not rape, but some other similar degrading thing, and there would be some guy in our group of young friends who would be boasting and calling her a slut etc, and you could see that everyone else in the group, even all the young guys looked uncomfortable. I remember one particular incident like that, when I could just tell that the guys all thought that their friend was in the wrong when he was boasting about something he did with some girl, I felt horrible too, but none of us spoke up, but we all just had this look in our eyes of disgust. I didn't dare say anything and neither did they because being part of the group was more important to us then speaking up, and also we were so ingrained to believe that the girl secretly wanted it anyway, or deserved it.

I really don't blame Joan Jett and the others then if they did watch this because they probably didn't know any better, but I do wish that now with changing attitudes and the maturity of age they could speak about it and support her. Of course there is a chance that what she is telling is not correct, but what with her other band member backing her up, and apart from that I'm sure these things did go in, it just rings true to me.

Im wondering what her motive is after 40 years. It seems odd to go public with such trauma after such a long time. No usefull purpose to it unless shes just after publicity.