Agree that it’s important to discuss and create opportunities to reflect, on the past, to help prevent such cruel destruction of the human spirit from happening now. But I am not sure that we are so much more advanced as a society in dealing with things that are happening now.
I wonder what decades from now people will say about the 2010s, where are our blind spots? What are the things we should recognise now, just thinking…
Your arguments sound so reasonable it would be easy to agree, but the problem I have is that they come from a place of privilege. Instead of focusing on the fact that when an (expensive at the time) international phone call was made, within a day the parent was on a trans-oceanic flight (also expensive at the time)…why not focus on the fact that a young teen was without family support for years, making her vulnerable to all sorts of things? If the family could afford such luxuries, why weren’t they spending money on making sure the girl was properly cared for?
Many posters in this thread have explained already how social pressures and prejudices, plus fear and inexperience and the confusion of drug abuse, all add up to explain how other young victims caught in the same web would not necessarily know (how) to run to the authorities, even many years later. Your posts seem to suggest that everything that happened is the fault of the other victims, or the primary victim in this case…anyone but the parents. Yet at the same time you suggest that it is possible for a parent to teach their children how to stand up for themselves and get help. So which is it? Did the parents of all the victims in this case not teach their children well, and not support them well, or did they do everything right and so the blame must fall on each of the other teens, the non-family-members who were also caught in that horrible situation?
tl;dr…Why were these young girls alone with predators for so long, despite being in view of and in communication with their families and the rest of the outside world? And why blame them for not handling their abuse the way you think they should have?
This is the biggest thing, the KIDS were out on their own most likely because this was a big financial ticket out for them and their families. And no matter how much you train a 14 year old (heck even as an adult) when things go sideways your brain does not always process things right when in panic mode. Add in being an ocean away where phone calls and travel are very expensive, instant fame which is a hell of a drug all on it’s own. Yeah I got no blame to place on the kids here only the sleazebag manager.
We’ve come a long ways and still have a long ways to go. I don’t ever see humanity being perfect, but I like to think there is some course correction every generation.
You insist on missing my key point, which is not to apportion blame, but to try to understand the dynamics of the situation. I didn’t in any of my posts use the terms ‘fault’ or ‘blame’ on a single occasion. They are not categories I find helpful when trying to understand and learn from such situations and experiences. Situations which occur today, just as they did in the past. In the UK the most recent such stories are child grooming scandals in Rochdale and Oxford, which are ongoing and which have effected and are effecting 1000s of girls. And, no I don’t blame the girls or their parents.
The question is, how can we change the dynamics of such situations, situations where people can perpetrate horrendous crimes against the weak and still die in honour and adoration 40 years later, as in the case of Fowley. In Fowley’s case, it seems an entire industry, who were pretty clued up to what was going on, colluded to sustain the myth, which with an ounce of truth would have been unsustainable. And yes, the witnesses were young girls at the scene of the crime, but they were grown women 20 / 30 years later, none the less they helped sustain his myth…
It is with this in mind, in thinking about how the dynamics of such situation can be effected, that I don’t find the term ‘victim’, for those who witnessed the crime and consequently decided to sustain the myth, helpful. It denies them agency, the ability to effect and change the situation in the long run, we are talking decades here.
It basically sais, there is nothing that could have been done (aside from a miracle by which either no young girls ever came in contact with Fowler, or somehow the Police raided his party and gathered evidence, based on some heavenly intuition?), it was just inevitable that Fowley would die a hero.
For anyone who has been in a situation where they felt that the truth and reality they recognise is far from the official truth being peddled to them, this is a crucial, fundamental question. It is the question that powers social change: who is in charge of the story. Whose version of the truth will be told, maintained and promoted.
The “freedom to narrate” i.e. tell your story is a term used by Homi K Bhabha and is at the core of Toni Morrison’s books. Telling your story is a powerful way to change the dynamics of an oppressive situation. By insisting that 30 /40 years later these grown women should be defined by their teenage victimhood, rather than their adult decision to sustain a myth which probably contributed to other teenagers becoming victims, I find unhelpful. Insisting on their victimhood denies them the freedom to narrate their story and further empowers the perpetrators in seeming perpetuity.
Enough pontificating for a weekend. This story is at its core about powerlessness, power and its abuse. And I am still shocked by the extent to which people were prepared to collude with such destructive power in the land of the free, it makes certain parts of the Hollywood music industry appear like a Military Dictatorship–which no one could escape alive. In the old East Block we called this “die Mauer in den Köpfen” the wall in the mind…
Thanks for posting this, it sheds light on the scale of the denial…
Just in case no one’s posted this here yet, and if someone has, well, it seems to need repeating. A quote from the original HuffPo piece:
One of the things I’ve tried to do with every bystander is let them know it’s not their fault. I also have to not blame myself for what happened to them. We are all victims of what Kim did.
–Jackie Fuchs (aka Jackie Fox)
As I’ve pointed out before, that’s already been covered extensively by many other posters.
It is diffcult to respond without adapting your patronising tone, pretending it’s all so clear cut, but I will try:
Please point me to the posts which explain why 40 years later, i.e. today, here and now, (with the perpetrator dead and presumably their teenage rock careers well over), other band members “don’t give a shit” or suggest that Jackie, the underage victim of a rape, was a willing participant in her own brutalisation?
The whole thing is a bloody mess, and far from clear cut, and I will continue to argue that some of those who witnessed the crime have made bad choices in the wake of it, and they continue to make very bad decisions–not giving a shit is one of those bad decisions.
Jackie Fuchs seems an incredibly wise and generous person, but that doesn’t in any way justify the awful behaviour of some of the witnesses, who also had sufficient time to grow wiser. We are no longer talking about teenage girls, but grandmothers here, and this is what Jason Cherkis, who wrote the story has to say about them, now.
Pitchfork: Were you surprised at all by the reactions of other Runaways, when you asked them for comment?
JC: They have such a complicated history. I wish they’d resolved their differences a long time ago, because I think the resentments are still there, and still at play. I wish Lita Ford gave a shit because she doesn’t and doesn’t care at all. I brought it up to her, and she says, “I heard about it, obviously, but I don’t have a comment. You can talk to Jackie.” You could tell she had to force herself to say, five minutes later, “Oh, and rape is bad. It’s a bad thing.” But she didn’t care to talk about what happened with Jackie. She just wasn’t interested. At all. And Joan doesn’t wanna talk about it at all. It wasn’t a total surprise that she didn’t. I think that she…I think the story speaks for itself in terms of what we say about her in the story.
Joan very much believes in that rock myth Fowley [perpetuated]. In the L.A. Weekly she said, “These girls, they wanted to make him out to be this bad guy, but they’re just blaming him for their own failure.” That was the gist. “Was there abuse? If there was, why did we take it then?” So she was sort of defending him in this story. I think it was the one about Sandy West.
I would love to stop responding, but the article you linked to requires a response.
It is a perfect example of why people don’t feel safe coming forward. The condescension and judgment are palpable.
Since I currently have a broken arm, I’ll use it for an imperfect analogy: while friends and loved ones have asked how I’m doing and offered to help – and gotten the story behind the break as part of that process – at work related situations I’ve gotten the “what did you do?”, “you must be some sort of klutz”, etc. Fortunately I haven’t had any actual physical attack, as in “playfully” punching or hitting me in the cast to emphasize their questions, but it’s still not the sort of treatment that makes me want to tell my story.
Why the hell would anyone tell that Pitchfork writer anything about such a painful and sensitive part of one’s youth? I wouldn’t.
Articles like that are one of the many examples of why people don’t feel safe to come forward and face what happened.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
I really hope your arm recovers soon. That must suck big time.
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