The Runaways’ Cherie Currie Responds to Jackie Fox Rape Allegation Against Kim Fowley

Jackie Fuchs, who played bass for the Runaways from 1975 to 1977 under the name Jackie Fox, recently spoke out for the first time about a rape by band manager and producer Kim Fowley she says took place at a party on New Year’s Eve 1975-1976. (Fowley passed away in January.) Fuchs told the Huffington Post’s Jason Cherkis that the rape was witnessed by her Runaways bandmates Joan Jett and Cherie Currie.

Joan Jett issued a statement on Friday about the claims, saying “anyone who truly knows me understands that if I was aware of a friend or bandmate being violated, I would not stand by while it happened.” 

According to Cherkis, Currie “claims that she spoke up and stormed out of the room.” She said the rape was never discussed by the rest of the band. “You forget it and you move on,” she said. “I pushed it out of my mind the best I could.”

Cherkis reported that Currie had intended to write about the rape in a planned memoir:

Jackie’s trauma intensified after learning in 2000 that Currie wanted to write about the rape for a memoir. Currie depicted the incident in lurid detail, but instead of Jackie, the victim was a fictionalized groupie who encouraged her rapist. Jackie was merely a bystander, and an indifferent one at that. Jackie threatened legal action over this account, at which point Currie collected affidavits from two witnesses. The publisher ultimately decided to pull the book, and Jackie continued to stay silent about what had happened to her. She wasn’t ready to come out as the true victim.

A footnote adds: “Eleven years later, another publisher released a book containing Currie’s account. It doesn’t mention Jackie in relation to the rape.”

Now, Currie has released her own comments about Fuchs’ accusations, on her Facebook page.

She wrote, “All I can say is if Joan, Sandy and I saw an unconscious girl being brutally raped in front of us, we would have hit him over the head with a chair.”

She then responded to various Facebook comments, before adding:

I have been accused of a crime. Of looking into the dead yet pleading eyes of a girl, unable to move while she was brutally raped and doing nothing. I have never been one to deny my mistakes in life and I wouldn’t start now. If I were guilty, I would admit it. There are so many excuses I could make being only one month into my sixteenth year at the time that people would understand but I am innocent. When I return from Sweden I will seek a qualified polygraph examiner to put to rest any and all allegations. I will make public the questions, answers and results of that test. I am a proud person but for this, I may need to open a Fund Me account since I do not know how much this will cost. I am not a rich person but a carver. I wouldn’t ask for funding for my new album because I am proud. I will prove I am telling the truth. I will not allow anyone to throw me under the bus and accuse me of such a foul act. I will fight for myself. It is the only thing I can do and I’m glad to do it.

Currie then pointed to a blog post from Fuchs from 2009, in which she addresses the issue of Currie’s memoir. In that blog post, Fuchs wrote, “Were our managers abusive and did they take advantage of us? Absolutely. I’ve written accounts in here of verbal and emotional abuse and financial mismanagement, all of which happened. Did they ever drug us or force anyone to have sex with them? Not that I ever saw.”

In 2009, Fuchs also wrote, “We should respect one another, as people, as musicians, and most of all as humans. Sordid sex tales don’t do that and aren’t very interesting anyway. They should be left where they belong — in Cherie’s imagination.”

Currie also links to a statement from Evelyn McDonnell, author of the 2013 book on the Runaways, Queens of Noise. McDonnell defends Fuchs, Jett, and Currie, but takes issue with Cherkis’ report. She calls out “the story’s sometimes sensationalist tone, the reporter’s methods, and some of the response to it online – particularly the way other women tangential to this story (including Joan Jett and myself) are also being targeted and blamed, by men.”

Read the Huffington Post’s full story here. Read our interview with Cherkis here.

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