The Go-Go’s Jane Wiedlin Claims She Was Sexually Abused By A Famous DJ

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our years earlier than she co-founded the beloved New Wave group the Go-Go’s, guitarist Jane Wiedlin was about 15 years previous residing together with her dad and mom in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. It was round 1974, and she or he was enamored with glam-rock titans like David Bowie and Marc Bolan. Looking to get as near the music as doable, she went to the most popular membership in L.A.: Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco.

The membership — which opened its doorways in 1972 — had constructed a repute as a well known hang-out for Bowie, Bolan, Iggy Pop, Keith Moon, the New York Dolls, Led Zeppelin, and even Elvis Presley, and it popularized England’s glam rock motion within the United States. But the Disco arguably grew to become as identified for its underage feminine clientele, who got here there to bop, hearken to music, and meet rock stars. It was right here the place a number of of rock’s most well-known groupies just like the GTOs, Sable Starr, and Lori Mattix would maintain court docket. 

Wiedlin and several other different highschool pals  — amongst those that christened themselves the “Hollywooders”  — hung on the market often, sneaking out of their dad and mom’ houses to drive to West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip and turning into their membership outfits behind the Disco outdoors. One night time, Wiedlin alleges, the membership’s eponymous proprietor — the famed former KROQ DJ and rock-star liaison Rodney Bingenheimer — approached her, remoted her in one of many membership’s again rooms, and sexually assaulted her.

“I remember [the room] being very dark and cold,” Wiedlin tells Rolling Stone. “I was a virgin. I didn’t have much experience with boys; boys tended to ignore me…. He picked me out that night. I didn’t know what was going to happen before, but he started rubbing against me with his crotch against my crotch. I didn’t know what to do; I was pretty much frozen. I didn’t say anything; I didn’t try to stop him.”

Wiedlin alleges that Bingenheimer, who would have been round 27, instructed her to take away her belt because it was “getting in the way,” at which level she claims he continued to rub his crotch towards her earlier than he ejaculated on her garments. (Wiedlin wrote in regards to the expertise throughout a chapter of X vocalist John Doe’s 2016 ebook, Under the Big Black Sun. Bingenheimer wasn’t named on the time, although Wiedlin confirms to Rolling Stone she was writing in regards to the DJ.) 

“I wasn’t entirely sure what had gone down until we went back out. He disappeared [into the crowd], I went back to my friends, and my satin pants were a big mess,” she says. “It was bizarre; it by no means occurred to me that that had been a criminal offense. I didn’t know what to assume. It wasn’t till the #MeToo motion began once I realized I used to be sexually assaulted by [an adult] once I was 15.

“I was this sweet, sensitive, artistic little girl, and I really wanted to be an adult,” she provides. “I was intrigued by the sexuality of Bowie and these other people. And I wanted it, but I was also scared and I didn’t want it, and I didn’t know how it was going to happen. And I certainly didn’t think this kind of creepy little man was something I would’ve chosen.” (Bingenheimer didn’t reply to an in depth checklist of questions surrounding the allegations.)

Four different ladies — all of whom say they have been minors on the time – detailed alleged comparable experiences with Bingenheimer to Rolling Stone. One of the ladies alleges he molested her when she was a pre-teen. The allegations come almost eight months after a sixth lady —Runaways songwriter Kari Krome — sued Bingenheimer for sexual assault when she was a minor within the Seventies. (Krome additionally sued the property of producer Kim Fowley for sexual assault in her swimsuit. Fowley died in 2015.)

In her swimsuit, Krome alleged that she met Bingenheimer when she was 13 and claims he instantly began grooming her. Krome alleged that she “felt reassured because Defendant Bingenheimer often had numerous young girls around him, especially at the nightclub, and she had stayed at his apartment numerous times without any attempts at physical contact with her,” in response to the swimsuit. “Defendant Bingenheimer groomed Plaintiff to believe they were becoming friends and that she could trust him.” (Bingenheimer failed to seem at a latest listening to relating to Krome’s swimsuit, and Krome and her staff are pursuing a default judgment within the case.) 

Krome says Bingenheimer assaulted her one night time at his condo. “It was through his position of authority as an adult that Defendant Bingenheimer, a 28-year-old man, well-connected in the music scene, [and] the owner of the nightclub ‘Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco’ on Sunset Strip, groomed and exploited Plaintiff, a minor, and perpetrated his sexual assaults upon her,” the swimsuit alleges. “Plaintiff is informed and thereon alleges that all the sexually abusive and harassing conduct alleged herein was done to satisfy Defendant Bingenheimer’s own prurient sexual desires.”

 “It wasn’t until the #MeToo movement started when I realized I was sexually assaulted by [an adult] when I was 15.”

Jane Wiedlin

“All the women who lived this look at the nostalgia of that time period. But the legacy he has is built off the abuse of these women,” Krome’s lawyer, Karen Menzies, says. “He used that as his currency to get access to rock stars. He gets to live a legacy with a false impression of how he got there while the victims have to live with childhood sexual assault and how that effects their lives. And now [the women] want to correct the record.”

FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS, Bingenheimer was identified within the music trade as one of the vital influential DJs within the nation, internet hosting his present Rodney on the Roq on Los Angeles’ KROQ from 1976 to 2017. Before then, Bingenheimer was ubiquitous throughout the heyday of Los Angeles’ debauched rock scene of the Seventies, incomes him the moniker “the Mayor of the Sunset Strip.” (The nickname doubled because the title of an acclaimed 2003 documentary on his life.)

Before opening the Disco in 1972, Bingenheimer had circled across the Hollywood music scene, most notably as a double for the Monkees’ Davy Jones of their hit Nineteen Sixties TV present. According to a 1983 cowl story within the commerce publication Music Connection Magazine — which known as him radio’s “new music messiah” — Bingenheimer was additionally a columnist for Go! journal and contributor to Phonograph Record, the place he wrote about L.A.’s membership scene and nascent bands just like the Doors and the Byrds. 

In a Rolling Stone 1969 cowl story on groupies, the journal described Bingenheimer as each a groupie himself — “in the sense that he hangs out with every group that hits town, then tells everybody about hanging out with the group” — and gatekeeper between the teenage women and the rock stars who he glommed onto. “I’ll let you ball Ringo Starr — but you have to ball me first,” Bingenheimer as soon as instructed a crowd whereas dressed as Santa Claus at a Christmas present on the Shrine Auditorium.

“His proximity to the scene is such — and his esteem high enough — that Rodney pulls his share of groupies (groupie chicks, that is) and worries enough about the consequences that he goes to the health clinic on San Vincente regularly to be certain he hasn’t picked up a dose,” Rolling Stone wrote in 1969. 

As Bingenheimer mentioned within the piece: “There’s clap because the groupies catch it from the guys who stand out on the street selling downers. They don’t have any money for downers so they ball the guys. And then they give it to the musicians.”

In The Mayor of the Sunset Strip documentary, actor-singer Michael Des Barres recalled Bingenheimer because the middleman between the ladies on the scene and different males. “It’s almost like a drug dealer, except Rodney was dealing girls,” he mentioned. “Not in the sense of a pimp or anything, but the power that a dealer has; how everybody is your friend because you’re holding the coke. It was the same with Rodney. He just had access to these beautiful, beautiful little nubile girls with stars in their faces. Coupled with his enthusiasm for the acts’ genuine musical ability, and style and glamor, he also had this extraordinary posse of pussy.”

As Bingenheimer himself mentioned within the documentary: “I’m the designated driver between the famous and the not-so-famous.” Bowie and Mick Jagger have been amongst dozens of celebrities who spoke about Bingenheimer within the documentary. (Jagger himself known as Bingenheimer “a famous groupie, now probably respectable.”)

A 12 months after the English Disco closed, in 1976, Bingenheimer started his KROQ radio present. With Rodney on the Roq, he constructed a repute for breaking artists and was the primary to air music from would-be famend acts like Blondie, the Ramones, Sex Pistols, the Smiths, Duran Duran, Van Halen, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Nirvana, amongst a whole bunch of different bands. 

In 2007, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the place the Bangles and Brian Wilson have been in attendance to honor him. “You getting a star is the high point of the season. We are all delighted for you,” Bowie wrote to Bingenheimer on the time. 

Bingenheimer presently hosts a weekly radio present on SiriusXM’s Underground Garage channel, a gig he’s had for greater than six years starting proper after his KROQ dismissal. After Krome filed her preliminary swimsuit, the community didn’t remark past telling Variety {that a} extra detailed response would come the week after, although no response was issued. (A rep for SiriusXM didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.) 

“I still have these feelings of self-loathing, guilt, and shame … It’s good to have someone listen to me and not roll their eyes at me and they’re not telling me to let it go.” 

Kari Krome

BINGENHEIMER WOULD BECOME an early advocate for the Go-Go’s, taking part in the band on KROQ earlier than they’d damaged out as stars. Wiedlin says she and Bingenheimer by no means spoke in regards to the alleged incident, whilst she would go on his radio present or see him at concert events and trade occasions. Wiedlin mentioned she was not sure if Bingenheimer had even remembered it. 

Bingenheimer’s function in championing the band, who would enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, solely additional difficult her emotions on his conduct and whether or not or to not communicate out. “I have these huge mixed emotions. The guy’s a fucking monster, but then he also helped us … the Go-Go’s got our first exposure because of Rodney,” Wiedlin says, including that for years she blamed herself for his alleged actions. “I should have said no [the night of the alleged assault], but I didn’t. It wasn’t anything I asked for, but at the same time I wanted to be a sexy young adult or whatever. It’s very tangly in my mind. At this stage, I think, ‘Fuck that guy.’ That was wrong. Even if I had asked him to do something, which I didn’t, it wouldn’t have been right. It was illegal and immoral.”

Wiedlin saved her expertise nearly completely to herself till a number of years in the past after the #MeToo motion erupted. She says she didn’t inform her Go-Go’s bandmates till a long time after the incident and says they’ve been supportive since. Wiedlin additionally confided in one in all her previous “Hollywooder” highschool pals Rachel (who’s utilizing a pseudonym over privateness considerations) in 2019, who instructed Wiedlin that Bingenheimer had additionally allegedly sexually assaulted her and one other good friend. It made Wiedlin notice for the primary time that she wasn’t alone together with her allegations.

“I was fucking shocked that I didn’t know,” Wiedlin says. “It turned out he molested everybody, and nobody talked to each other about it. I think he just made his way through every girl that he could.”

Wiedlin had beforehand been hesitant to talk out, however she got here ahead after Krome filed her lawsuit, telling Rolling Stone that she needed to assist her and ensure the general public is aware of Krome isn’t alone together with her claims. “I hadn’t known Kari well, but I remember meeting her when I was 14, and she was this amazing force,” Wiedlin says. “When she came out, I just felt like I had to support her. I didn’t want her to go to one of those things where people don’t believe the woman.”

“I’m grateful to everyone,” Krome tells Rolling Stone of Wiedlin and the opposite ladies coming ahead with their very own tales. “I still have these feelings of self-loathing, guilt, and shame. And that goes from being manageable and unmanageable, but that’s starting to lift. It’s good to have someone listen to me and not roll their eyes at me and they’re not telling me to let it go.” 

Rachel claims to Rolling Stone that in 1974, Bingenheimer fondled her in a back-office room on the membership when she was round 15 years previous. “The only thing I remember about it was being in this weird room, which didn’t look anything like the rest of the club,” Rachel says. “And him fondling me, I don’t think he kissed me. He didn’t really talk … He was sort of chatty for a minute, and then he started touching me. It didn’t go farther than that. I was completely uninterested. He became really creepy to me at that moment. He was no longer sort of a joke.”

Rachel says that she doesn’t recall pondering she was taken benefit of on the time, equating the incident to extra of a “rite of passage” that got here with being part of that scene. But looking back, Rachel says, it was violating. “We were young and innocent. All the things that we were seeing were sort of theoretical for us,” she tells Rolling Stone. “Once we noticed women who have been 16 and 17 hanging out with these guys who have been a lot older, all of it appeared so regular that the concept that Rodney would attempt to get to know all of those teenage women didn’t appear bizarre on the time.

“Years later when I thought about it, I was fucking infuriated,” she continues. “He was a monster who was taking advantage of all these teenage girls who were not there to be with him, but to be with each other and dance and dress up however we wanted, to have fun and meet guys our own age and meet rock stars.”

A second Hollywooder good friend, Limor Godwin, says she had a number of run-ins with Bingenheimer as an adolescent over the course of greater than a 12 months that the chums went to the Disco. In one occasion when she was 15 years previous, she claims Bingenheimer took her to a again room earlier than he began kissing her, rubbing his crotch towards her and placing his fingers up her vagina. 

“I was truly a virgin; I’d never been kissed before or anything else. He was kissing me, the worst breath ever,” she says, claiming that she noticed a stain of his semen on his pink satin pants after he rubbed towards her. “As far as manhandling me or sexually abusing me, you can say it was ‘consensual’ because what the hell did I know? I was 15, and he was 10 years older than I was. I certainly didn’t enjoy it.”

“He was a monster who was taking advantage of all these teenage girls who were not there to be with him”

“Rachel”

Godwin says not one of the women had totally understood their experiences for years as a result of they felt that kind of conduct was so normalized round them. “I just figured it was just part of growing up,” Godwin says. “There was a lot of wild stuff; we grew up in the Seventies in the Valley. Until Jane mentioned it, I hadn’t thought about it in years.”

Outside of individuals in Wiedlin’s orbit, one other lady named Kourtney Kaye additionally got here ahead to Rolling Stone following Krome’s swimsuit. She says that round 1974, when she was about 11 years previous, Bingenheimer kissed her on her lips, caught his tongue in her mouth, and “fumblingly groped” her at her Beverly Hills dwelling. Kaye says she was too younger to go to the membership, however her older brother Randy would go. One night time, Randy got here again dwelling with a number of pals, together with Bingenheimer, whereas Kaye was in her room sleeping. 

As Kaye remembers, one other good friend of her brother’s got here into Kaye’s room and requested her if she had any “cute, sexy nightgowns to wear.” Kaye says the good friend instructed her to placed on one of many two negligee robes she had and brushed her hair. Soon after, Kaye remembers, Bingenheimer, who was round 28 on the time, got here into her bed room after the good friend left. 

“I was half asleep, quite young, and really confused,” Kaye says. “I remember that these were the older kids and they were cool, and I wanted to be a cool older kid. I didn’t really know what was going on.” Kaye claims Bingenheimer apologized after kissing her, “like it was some kind of accident. And then he did it again.”

Another lady who spoke with Rolling Stone, utilizing the pseudonym Amanda to guard her household’s privateness, says she was in an inappropriate relationship with Bingenheimer when she was 17 and he was 38. She met Bingenheimer throughout her highschool winter break in December 1985 when Bingenheimer was a long-established KROQ DJ.

Amanda alleges that she would see Bingenheimer usually from January till simply over six months later in June 1986. She says she met Bingenheimer at Pennyfeathers, a then-popular L.A. restaurant. Bingenheimer took to her shortly, she alleges, and he impressed her early on as he instructed tales about musicians he knew. She later gave him her cellphone quantity. Soon after, she’d see Bingenheimer usually, she claims, going with him to Hollywood events and bars to satisfy his movie star pals, the place she claims she was often one of many youngest individuals there.

She says that the connection turned sexual shortly, with Amanda recalling that she slept over at his dwelling early on after assembly him. She alleged that, one night time, he confirmed her {a magazine} article of a young-looking lady “talking about what they like sexually.” “And then he showed me another magazine like that,” Amanda mentioned, including that she felt it was a “way to try to normalize that kind of thing.” She alleges that all through their relationship, Bingenheimer fondled her on his sofa and carried out oral intercourse on her. She additionally claimed he pressured her to make use of a vibrator on her and {photograph} her bare, each of which she says she refused. 

Amanda says she bought extra uncomfortable all through her time with Bingenheimer, noting that pals of hers have been involved and needed her to cease. “I started becoming more and more uncomfortable hanging out with him and going places with him because I felt like people were looking at me like I was disgusting,” she says, recalling film premieres and Hollywood events the place she noticed few individuals her age. 

“I think it hit me pretty quickly [that it wasn’t OK],” Amanda says. “At the time when I was with him, I did feel a lot of shame and confusion. His world was nothing that I knew about. I had a lot of shame about it for years.”

“I was half asleep, quite young, and really confused … These were the older kids and they were cool, and I wanted to be a cool older kid. I didn’t really know what was going on.” 

Kourtney Kaye

Amanda, who at present is a therapist working with ladies who’ve skilled trauma, stopped talking to Bingenheimer by June 1986 after she moved out of L.A. To at the present time, she says her alleged expertise with Bingenheimer was “isolating.” “It’s hard to talk about with other people, even family or really close friends,” she says. ”People get freaked out and may’t cope with it.”

In 2018, she says she went to the LAPD to file a police report. Rolling Stone reviewed e mail correspondences between her and an LAPD officer confirming that she’d spoken with the police about Bingenheimer. However, no costs have been ever filed towards him. 

“The case was sent to the District Attorney’s office for review. The case was thoroughly reviewed including your most recent memory. The deputy district attorney determined that charges will not be filed against Mr. Bingenheimer,” an officer wrote in an e mail to her.

Prior to that discover from the LAPD, Amanda instructed the police within the e mail that she didn’t need to press costs herself. As she tells Rolling Stone: “All I wanted was for people to know about him.” (A rep for the LAPD mentioned to situation a CPRA request and mentioned there was no additional assertion.)

“It’s amazing that he got away with it,” Wiedlin says. “The factor is, it was good for him. And then it was good for enterprise as a result of all these rock stars would get to come back in there and meet all these women. 

“It’s hard for me to reconcile my heroes being flawed that way,” she continues. “I’ve got to be honest and say that if David Bowie showed up at that club, I might’ve been too shy to do it, but in my brain, I would have been thinking ‘throw yourself at him, throw yourself at him,’” Wiedlin says with a lightweight chuckle. “That’s what makes all this so tangled and complicated…. I was not interested in Rodney Bingenheimer.” 

In an e mail despatched hours after talking with Rolling Stone, Rachel additional specified her considerations with the best way the conduct was so normalized, in addition to how a lot potential harm it did to the ladies who skilled it. “The more I think about it now, the angrier I get,” she wrote. “That the membership was used as a strategy to groom younger women for rock stars is nauseating…. The entire concept of rock stars as gods, and that try to be grateful if you happen to have been one of many chosen, is so repulsive. I can’t even fathom that that was one thing all of us thought was regular. 

“Looking back on it, I’m horrified,” Rachel continued. “In a way, I feel guilty because I was having what I thought was pretty innocent fun, while Kari — and probably others — were being injured and permanently damaged at the same time. I was a child. I didn’t understand what they were really doing. Fifteen-year-olds CANNOT GIVE CONSENT. Rodney and Kim were monsters. Criminals.”