Runaways Bassist: I Was Raped as Joan Jett Watched

The allegations of sexual assault plaguing Bill Cosby have inspired a former member of the all-girl rock band the Runaways to come forward with her own story of rape. Bassist Jackie Fuchs, aka Jackie Fox, says male band manager Kim Fowley raped her at a motel party in 1975 when she was just 16. Now 55 and a lawyer, Fuchs says an apparent roadie told her to take a Quaalude "no questions asked" after the Runaways performed a New Year's Eve show in Orange County, Calif., reports the Huffington Post in a lengthy profile of the band. Witnesses share their recollection of the moment with HuffPo: As Fuchs lay unconscious on a bed in a crowded room, Fowley took off her clothes, raped her with the handle of a hairbrush, and then had sex with her.

"I remember opening my eyes, Kim Fowley was raping me," Fuchs says. She recalls seeing bandmates Joan Jett and Cherie Currie watching. "Jackie was dead, dead, dead drunk—like corpse drunk. She was just laying down on her back, sound asleep, out of it," says Runaways co-founder Kari Krome, who was 14 at the time, adding Fowley sexually assaulted her several times when she was a young, aspiring songwriter. Fowley, who died of cancer in January, maintained he had no inappropriate sexual dealings with the bandmates, reports the Guardian. A rep for Jett says she denies "witnessing the event as it has been described." However, a witness says Jett told him he "needed to deny being in the motel room that night" in case Fuchs tried to sue when she left the band in 1977. Fuchs says the assault was behind her departure, per the New York Daily News. Read "The Lost Girls" in full. (More The Runaways stories.)