The former bassist in the all-female teenage rock group has described being drugged and raped at an aftershow party in 1975 
 
 Jackie Fuchs, formerly the bassist in all-female rock band the Runaways, has spoken for the first time about an incident in which she was allegedly raped by the group’s then manager, Kim Fowley. 
 
 In a report published in the Huffington Post titled The Lost Girls, Fuchs describes a New Year’s Eve gig in Orange County, California, in 1975, when she was aged 16. 
 
 According to the bassist, who performed under the name Jackie Fox, Fowley took the band to a hotel near the club after the show, where they started celebrating with friends. Witnesses claim she was given a number of Quaalude sedatives, before Fowley allegedly asked if one of the roadies at the party would like to have sex with Fuchs. 
 
 “You don’t know what terror is until you realise something bad is about to happen to you and you can’t move a muscle,” Fuchs is reported as saying. “I can’t move. I can’t speak. All I can do is look him in the eye and do the best I can do to communicate: please say no ... I don’t know what it looked like from the outside. But I know what was going on inside and it was horror”. 
 
 The roadie declined Fowley’s offer, but Fuchs says she then started to slip in and out of consciousness. 
 
 “I remember opening my eyes, Kim Fowley was raping me, and there were people watching me,” said Fuchs. 
 
 According to the article, Fuchs said she was unwilling to make her alleged rape public until the recent number of high-profile sexual assault cases involving prominent individuals such as Bill Cosby and Kesha’s producer Dr Luke. Kesha has accused Dr Luke of drugging and assaulting her, while he has countersued, accusing her of lying to get out of her contract. Meanwhile, it emerged on 6 July that Cosby obtained Quaaludes with the intent of giving them to young women he wanted to have sex with. 
 
 Fowley, who died in January, had previously denied any sexual impropriety with members of the band. The Huffington Post cites a passage in the Runaways’ 2013 band biography: “They can talk about it until the cows come home but, in my mind, I didn’t make love to anybody in the Runaways nor did they make love to me.” 
 
 Fuchs left the group in 1977. In the same year, Fowley and the group parted ways amid disagreements about money. ||||| Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Jackie Fox, real name Jackie Fuchs, signs albums at a Runaways event in Los Angeles in 1977. Enlarge Robert Knight Archive/Redferns Accused rapist Kim Fowley passed away in January at age 75 of bladder cancer. Enlarge 
 
 A former member of the Runaways has made stunning allegations about her victimization at the hands of the band’s manager. 
 
 Jackie Fuchs, the bassist for the seminal all-female rock group that launched Joan Jett into stardom, said the band’s founder and manager, Kim Fowley, drugged and raped her when she was 16 years old. 
 
 In an interview with The Huffington Post, Fuchs, whose stage name was Jackie Fox, alleged the assault took place at a party following the Runaways’ New Year’s Eve show in Orange County, Calif., in 1975. 
 
 Fuchs, 55, said a man she believed was a roadie told her to take Quaaludes “no questions asked,” a claim backed up by witnesses at the party, with one describing it as a “date-rape type situation.” 
 
 In her first time publicly recounting the alleged incident, Fuchs said she slipped in and out of consciousness as Fowley raped her, “gnashing his teeth and growling like a dog.” 
 
 “I remember opening my eyes, Kim Fowley was raping me, and there were people watching me,” Fuchs said, referring to bandmates Jett and Cherie Currie. She said seeing her Runaways bandmates staring at her was her “last memory of the night.” 
 
 Gems/Redferns From left, Lita Ford, Joan Jett, Jackie Fox (real name Fuchs), Sandy West and Cherie Currie made up all-girl rock group the Runaways. Michael Ochs Archives The Runaways pose for a portrait with their producer Kim Fowley (seated) in Los Angeles in November 1975, prior to Jackie Fuchs joining the group. Donaldson Collection/Getty Images Jackie Fuchs (second from r.), stage name Jackie Fox, poses with her bandmates in 1977. Previous Next 
 
 
 
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 When asked to comment on the allegations, Jett was said to have “denied witnessing the event as described here.” Currie, for her part, said that she “spoke up and stormed out of the room.” 
 
 Fuchs exited the Runaways two years later, and cited the assault as why she chose to leave. Forty years after the incident, the bassist-turned-lawyer said she decided to speak out publicly about what happened to her after reading similar allegations against Bill Cosby and music producer Dr. Luke. 
 
 Besides Fuchs, two other women in the article said they were sexually assaulted by the Runaways’ manager when they were teenagers. 
 
 Fowley, who died in January from bladder cancer, always denied that he any improper sexual contact with members of the band. 
 
 A 2010 biopic about the band called “The Runaways” starred Kristen Stewart as Jett, Dakota Fanning as Currie and Michael Shannon as Fowley — but Fuchs refused to allow herself to be portrayed. ||||| The Runaways 
 
 March 17, 2010 
 
 An all-girl rock band is named and trained by a rock manager of dubious sexuality, goes on the road, hits the charts, has a lesbian member and another who becomes a sex symbol, but crashes from drugs. This is the plot of a 1970 film named "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," which inadvertently anticipated the saga of the Runaways five years later. Life follows art. 
 
 "The Runaways" tells the story of a hard-rock girl band that was created more or less out of thin air by a manager named Kim Fowley. His luck is that he started more or less accidentally with performers who were actually talented. Guitarists Joan Jett and Lita Ford are popular to this day, long after the expiration of their sell-by dates as jailbait. The lead singer, Cherie Currie, co-starred in the very good "Foxes" (1980) with Jodie Foster, had drug problems, rehabbed, and "today is a chain-saw artist living in the San Fernando Valley." The ideal art form for any retired hard rocker. 
 
 
 
 The movie centers on the characters of Jett (Kristen Stewart), Currie (Dakota Fanning) and the manager Fowley (Michael Shannon). Jett was the original driving force, a Bowie fan who dreamed of forming her own band. Fowley, known in the music clubs of Sunset Strip as a manager on the prowl for young, cheap talent, told her to give it a shot, and paired her with Currie, whose essential quality is apparently that she was 15. That fit Fowley's concept of a jailbait band who would appeal because they seemed so young and so tough. He rehearses them in a derelict trailer in the Valley, writing their early hit "Cherry Bomb" on the spot. 
 
 
 
 Shannon is an actor of uncanny power. Oscar nominated for a role as an odd dinner guest in "Revolutionary Road" (2008), he was searing as he turned paranoid in William Friedkin's "Bug" (2006). Here he's an evil Svengali, who teaches rock 'n' roll as an assault on the audience; the girls must batter their fans into submission or admit they're losers. He's like a Marine drill sergeant: "Give me the girl. I'll give you back the man." He converts Cherie, who begins by singing passively, into a snarling tigress. 
 
 
 
 The performance abilities of the Runaways won respect. The rest was promotion and publicity. The film covers the process with visuals over a great deal of music, which helps cover an underwritten script and many questions about the characters. We learn next to nothing about anyone's home life, except for Currie, who is provided with a runaway mother (Tatum O'Neal), a loyal but resentful sister (Riley Keough) and a dying, alcoholic father (Brett Cullen). Although this man's health is important in the plot, I don't recall us ever seeing him standing up or getting a clear look at his face. 
 
 
 
 So this isn't an in-depth biopic, even though it's based on Currie's 1989 autobiography. It's more of a quick overview of the creation, rise and fall of the Runaways, with slim character development, no extended dialogue scenes, and a whole lot of rock 'n' roll. Its interest comes from Shannon's fierce and sadistic training scenes as Kim Fowley, and from the intrinsic qualities of the performances by Stewart and Fanning, who bring more to their characters than the script provides. 
 
 
 
 Another new movie this week, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" from Sweden, has a role for a young, hostile computer hacker. Stewart has been mentioned for the inevitable Hollywood remake. Reviewing that movie, I doubted she could handle such a tough-as-nails character. Having seen her as Joan Jett, I think she possibly could. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Note: Many years ago, while I was standing at a luggage carousel at Heathrow Airport, I was approached by a friendly young woman. "I'm Joan Jett," she told me. "I liked 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.'" 
 
 
 
 Just sayin'.
– 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.