Ex-Runaway Cherie Currie has offered her eyewitness account of the hotel room incident at the centre of bandmate Jackie Fox’s rape recollection.
Fox said earlier this year that, when she was 16, impresario Kim Fowley had made roadies force-feed her drugs, then had sex with her while an entourage, including Currie and Joan Jett, watched and did nothing to help her.
Both have previously distanced themselves from Fox’s account of events. She’s called on fans not to make scapegoats of her former colleagues, who she says were also victims of Fowley’s machinations.
Now Currie tells Classic Rock’s Rob Hughes: “I was in the room that night. But what I saw was a giddy, high little woman who was telling Kim what to do to her, every step of the way.
“The sexual intercourse happened because she asked for it: ‘I want your cock!’ Then she was asking him to fuck her harder and harder.”
She continues: “I said: ‘This is fucking sick and I’m not watching.’ I walked out in protest – I thought it was disgusting that Kim was doing such a thing, and I felt equally disgusted that Jackie was participating.”
Currie says the incident took place because Fox was new to the band and felt insecure, adding: “I basically thought she was just doing it for attention. That’s the honest-to-God truth, on my son’s life. I have no animosity against Jackie, but she claims I did something she knows I did not do.
“The bottom line is I’m not a liar and I don’t like liars. I’m sorry, I might sound crass and cruel – but I just don’t buy any of it.”
Currie wrote an account of her kidnap and rape by a deranged fan in her book Neon Angel. She says: “Writing the book made me accept responsibility for so much of what happened in my life. I never play the victim card. Even with my kidnapping, I had to admit that I ignored the little voice in my head that said: ‘Do not get into this car with this man.’”
She left the band after the incident with Fox and Fowley. “It had become so toxic,” she recalls. “Jackie had just cut her arms up and left, and there was so much animosity.
“Kim would pit us against each other because he felt it gave us an edge on stage. But he didn’t realise that when you feed lies to different band members, it’s going to explode in the end. It had been two years of touring and recording and nobody trusted anyone any more.”
