Our view: More aftermath of the Rolling Stone rape story

This isn’t about that, though.

This is about rape.

A few Jett fans may already know how we’re getting from the singer of “I Love Rock and Roll” to sexual assault. For the rest of you, it goes like this:

Before Jett made a name for herself as a solo star, she was in a famous ’70s all-girl band called the Runaways. And by all-girl, we do mean girls — they were teenagers at the time. Underage teenagers.

A few weeks ago, the Huffington Post published an interview with one of those former Runaways — bass player Jackie Fuchs, who performed as Jackie Fox. In that story, Fuchs — now an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles — said she was drugged and raped by the band’s manager, Kim Foley, in a California motel room in 1975.

And that others witnessed the assault and did nothing about it.

“I remember opening my eyes, Kim Fowley was raping me, and there were people watching me,” Jackie says. She looked out from the bed and noticed [people] staring at her.

Now, the last time a national publication wrote a story about rape and a subject named “Jackie,” things didn’t turn out so well, although it was that Rolling Stone magazine fiasco about a supposed gang rape at the University of Virginia that helped inspire Fuchs to come forward.

She told me she never thought she’d go public with her rape, but last fall, she started seeing similar stories everywhere. More than a dozen women had come forward against Bill Cosby. Kesha filed a lawsuit alleging that she had been drugged and assaulted by her producer, Dr. Luke. And there were so many undergraduate women who were finally speaking up about sexual assault. “I realized, ‘Oh my God, this is what’s happening on college campuses,’ ” she said.

Unlike the Rolling Stone article, which did not try to corroborate the account by its “Jackie,” the Huffington Post quotes multiple witnesses who confirmed this Jackie’s story — witnesses who allowed their names to be used, such as bandmate Cherie Currie and songwriter Kari Krome.

Krome escaped to the adjoining room and began drinking. She was confused why nobody did anything to end the attack. She recalls that [others] were sitting off to the side of the room for part of the time, snickering. “I didn’t know what to do,” she says. “Like what was I going to do? Go outside and drive and find a pay phone and call the police? I didn’t want to call the police on anyone, but at the same time I knew what was happening was wrong.” Krome was 14.

The alleged rapist here — a key figure in the entertainment business — is now dead, so there’s no justice to be had. Instead, much of the response to the story has focused on this Watergate-style question for the band’s most famous member: What did Jett know and when did she know it?

Jett, in a statement on Facebook, says she did not know about any of this. “Anyone who truly knows me understands that if I was aware of a friend or bandmate being violated, I would not stand by while it happened,” Jett says.

Here’s why all this matters, even if you’re not a rock rock ’n’ roll fan.

First, Virginia just went through a wrenching discussion about rape as a result of the Rolling Stone story. While the central character in that story has been discredited, it’s easy to overlook the fact that the story also quoted other rape victims, whose names weren’t made up, and whose stories haven’t been disputed. Rape does happen, and not just on college campuses, or in motel rooms with partying musicians and lecherous band managers.

We also know this: The presence of witnesses doesn’t always deter rape. You’d think that would be the reverse, but it’s not. A 2014 study commissioned by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children chillingly found that witnesses are more likely to report the theft of an iPod than they are a sexual assault.

In fact, other studies have found that the more witnesses there are, the less likely it is that anyone will help. This is the so-called “bystander effect.” So you wind up with situations like the one the Huffington Post described where a party raged on while a teenage girl was being assaulted and nobody did anything.

Currie claims that she spoke up and stormed out of the room. All witnesses say they felt intimidated . . . Currie says the girls, who were then all 16 and 17, never talked about how to handle the rape. There was no decision or strategy. The unspoken rule was simply, “you forget it and you move on,” Currie explains. “I pushed it out of my mind the best I could.”

Among the many considerations swirling through their teen-age minds: They worried that saying something about their manager would jeopardize their careers. That’s a factor that surely, and sadly, deters lots of others from reporting sexual assault or sexual harassment today, as well — so maybe it’s unfair to ask the 56-year-old Jett what the 16-year-old Jett knew.

There’s one thing that came out of the Rolling Stone story that hasn’t gotten much attention: Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., got through a law that would encourage (though not mandate) schools to teach “safe relationship behavior.” Or, in plain language, teach what sexual assault is and how to prevent it.

Kaine said he got the idea after meeting with University of Virginia students in December. “I was struck by how many of them expressed concern over the lack of high school education on consent and healthy relationships. Educating students about these crimes that disproportionately impact young people, both on and off our college campuses, can help raise awareness and prevent violence.”

It would be nice if such a law weren’t necessary. But apparently it is.