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Bill Wyman and John Peel too :(

73 replies

bkgirl · 12/10/2012 01:16

Look at these
www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1266664/Mandy-Smith-I-DID-sleep-Bill-Wyman-I-14--man-life-God.html

m.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/1999/jan/23/weekend.julieburchill?cat=lifeandstyle&type=article

Why did the cops not take action after these stories? So confused!!!

OP posts:
PosieParker · 12/10/2012 14:15

Wild Child, Lolita.... all terms for victims of child abuse, except we don't want them to be so we make it all 'glamorous' with victim blaming slutty/sexy 'girls'.

Disgusting.

Frontpaw · 12/10/2012 14:55

There is quite a difference between someone getting married at 15 in the 1960s and some cretin groping any girl over the age of 12! The marriage age is, I suppose, generally accepted in the relevant countries and cultures.

simplesusan · 13/10/2012 11:23

I remember reading that BW married Mandy Smith so as to avoid prosecution.
I find it very telling that in most cases the older person seems to loose interest in the underage one as soon as they mature.
Not many stay together happily for life.

simplesusan · 13/10/2012 11:25

Also why would it be Mandy Smith's mums fault.
WTF can't an old man like Bill Wyman, who was surely around 50 at the time, be responsible for his own actions!!
I hate all this man are not responsible shit.

Animation · 13/10/2012 12:03

simplesusan - I agree!

And it didn't appear to be JP fault. He apparently didn't know the girl he was marrying was only 15. So can't be his fault then. The parents must get all the blame.

Poor men. Hmm

MrsjREwing · 13/10/2012 12:08

MS mum was a single parent, Mandy was the youngest. The Mum had an undiagnosed condition (not doubting her illnesd bty) and was disabled as a result, MS later suffered from similar symptoms.

Thoughts I had were Mum had no control of Mandy.

noblegiraffe · 13/10/2012 14:25

I wonder if Jonathan King would have gone to jail if it had been girls he abused. Would it have been made out to be their fault?

wintera · 13/10/2012 16:22

I think at the time it was implied that Mandy Smith's mum knew her underage daughter was going out clubbing etc so that's why people were up in arms about it back then if memory serves.

wintera · 13/10/2012 16:28

Another interesting twist in the Mandy smith - Bill Wyman tale was that Mandy Smith's mum went on to marry Bill's son! Talk about a complicated family tree.

lighthousekeeping · 13/10/2012 16:39

I remember that.

I agree with others that the JP thing is nothing like the JS abuse.

I know loads of couples my parents generation that gotartied when the girl turned 16. It wasn't unusual and my own mother had a full time factory job at 15 which paid for her to go out dancing every Friday night. Until she got up the duff and her life was ruined her words, not mine 15 year olds were treated like adults then, they were putting money on the table.

Ponders · 13/10/2012 16:41

John Peel, imo, is turning out to be a real creep, pursuing such young girls

all the pursuing involved was done by them, not by him. granted he didn't ask them their ages or turn them away, but neither did the rest of them - there was an awful lot of unfettered sex (aka "free love" Hmm) about in the late 60s, mostly because of the pill becoming so easily obtainable.

the then 15-yr-old, in the DM report, says:

"He [Peel] must have known I was still at school. But he didn?t ask and I didn?t tell him.
?At the time I was just so happy to be on his arm. I was young and he was famous. All I cared about was that I could make all my school friends jealous.
?I was insecure and impressionable. I suppose I used him for his fame and he used me for sex.? "

why 'must he have known'?

Ponders · 13/10/2012 16:46

& if he had asked her how old she was, I wonder what she would have said...?

FreedomToChoose · 14/10/2012 02:54

I wonder how many others there are going to be? The truth always comes out in the end.

ParsleyTheLioness · 14/10/2012 02:59

I recently started to read the John Peel auto biog. I expected to enjoy it, but the way he talks about women is a bit derogatory, in a way you can't quite put your finger on. This makes more sense now...

noddyholder · 14/10/2012 14:13

I would love Mandy Smith to pursue this. I saw them out together a few times in the 80s and she was literally a little girl playing dress up. She came to a restaurant i worked in with him and she was like a frightened looking doll

germyrabbit · 14/10/2012 14:21

blimey julie really didn't like him did she

Xenia · 14/10/2012 15:00

The late Alan Clark's wife was only 16 when he married her. he also in his diaries wrote about sleeping but not at the same time with a mother and both of her daughters.

I draw a distinction between sex with girls below puberty and those above but even those older men who target vulnerable girls who are 14+ need to be stopped. Obviously sometimes you fall in love at 15 and are happily married forever and we should not infantalise young girls but these cases where men are exploiting their position should be stopped.

I think keeping adults as children forced into university as kidlets into their 20s is not necessarily a good thing. Many of us can remember being 15 and we were probably quite grown up as are many girls that age. That does not mean it should be open season for under aged sex but some of these girls can be pretty grown up at that age. I do think it's wrong that a boy of 17 who thought a girl was 16 not 15 getting put on the sex offenders register as if he were a 50 year old who raped an 8 year old girls is wrong. They are different categories of offence.

lighthousekeeping · 14/10/2012 17:46

I've been thinking a lot about Roman Polanski lately. All those A list stars that supported him Sad

Xenia · 14/10/2012 17:47

There is hardly a shortage of men who want younger women ever. I wonder how many mumsnetters have an older husband.

WinkyWinkola · 14/10/2012 22:00

This is hardly a case of older man with younger woman, Xenia. These are cases of men with young girls/children.

There is no way a 13/14/15 year old girl is able to be on an equal footing with a man who is 6/7/8+ years her senior. She will not be as savvy or worldly as he and simply does not stand a chance.

I really think men who seek such relationships are only looking for control. It is very unfortunate and highly suspect that there is, as you say, no shortage of this type of man. How depressing that our daughters have to put up with this from men.

I'm surprised at your pov on this, Xenia, given that you often proffer the view that women should make efforts to be in control of their destinies. You cannot extend that view to children under 16 and make them responsible for men seeking to fulfil their abusive sexual desires.

MrsjREwing · 14/10/2012 23:58

DM have allegations DLT had wandering hands too.

KRITIQ · 15/10/2012 01:47

Jimmy Saville seems to have sexually assaulted hundreds of children under the age of consent, including children who were disabled and in the care system. It also appears senior management within the BBC colluded with the abuse. In those ways, his situation is different from that of John Peel and Bill Wyman.

However, I don't accept the fact that Mandy Smith or the girls John Peel had sexual contact may have said they wanted to have sex with them means it wasn't abuse. It was still abuse.

I do work with young people and with increasing frequency, encountering girls of 13 or 14 who are being sexually abused, but they don't always see what is happening as wrong. They've been "groomed" into it by older boyfriends or slightly older friends. They get phone credit, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and kudos from performing sex acts on groups of boys. They rarely see it as abuse, but then when you talk to them, even at a young age, they already believe that sex is something you have to do for boys to have a boyfriend/not get beaten/be accepted by your peers/etc. It doesn't occur to them that sex is for anything but a man's pleasure. For many girls, they believe being sexually available for men is about all they are good for.

In the Rochdale sexual abuse case, social workers were criticised for saying the girls were making a "lifestyle choice" by having sex with much older men. In a similar way, some folks say that because the girls Peel and Wyman had sex with said they wanted to have sex, that they, too, were making a lifestyle choice. Too often, girls having sex under the age of consent are seen to just be "streetwise," rather than victims of abuse. No, they won't necessarily invite help, but that doesn't mean that we should just assume all is okay and ignore them. We let them down in a BIG way if we do.

Xenia · 15/10/2012 15:41

WW, sorry I was not defending JS although I do think some 15 year old girls can fall in love say with an 18 year old boyfriend and they probably are on a par in terms of maturity, do know their own mind and may well be together forever. We have a long history of this kind of thing. In Victorian London there were child brothels.

My parents made us learn martial arts and I hope my children are all reasonably sensible and able to fight people off but what the psychologist on Radio 4 said this morning is right - that these men tend to target girls who won't be believed.

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