Jackie Fuchs, a former bass player for The Runaways, made waves earlier this month after publicizing the story of her alleged rape by band manager Kim Fowley at a New Years Party on the eve of 1976. After a bigger-than-expected response to her story, she joined HuffPost Live on Thursday to discuss the aftermath of going public.
As described in a piece for HuffPost Highline, Fuchs recalls the harrowing experience of being sexually assaulted at 14, in plain sight of numerous teenagers, with three adult males also present. While Joan Jett has said in a statement that she was "not aware of this incident," collective accounts of the event from others present at the time allege that Jett stood by as her bandmate was violated.
Speaking to HuffPost Live on Thursday, Fuchs refrained from refuting Jett's claim, instead affirming that "the important thing to focus on is that certainly the Joan of today would not stand by and watch a bandmate being assaulted in any way without doing something."
"But at the time of the incident, Joan, like most of the other people in the room, was a teenager," Fuchs continued. "And we all like to think that we are the type of people who would stop an assault in progress, because most of us are good moral people, but even good moral people have a hard time acting when they see an event of bullying or of sexual assault or anything similar. Especially when there are a lot of people around."
Fowley died in January 2015, and while Fuchs mentioned that the two stayed in touch to an extent after her assault, there is a conversation the 55-year-old wishes they'd had.
"Ideally, to hear him say, 'Look, I'm really sorry for what I did to you. I wronged you. Can you ever forgive me?' Because I would like to get to a place where I can forgive him," she explained. "I'm not there yet, but I want to be -- not for his sake, obviously, but for my own. Holding on to hate and anger doesn't do me any good. I'm working on it."
Watch more from Jackie Fuchs' conversation with HuffPost Live in the video above.
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