Joan Collins recently divulged that she was raped as a teenager. She was just 17 years old, back in the 1950s, when Irish actor Maxwell Reed drugged her drink. She awoke to him sexually assaulting her on a sofa. The Dynasty star went on to marry her attacker.
Collins shared this painful information during an interview for the documentary Brave Miss World.
“The next thing I knew, I was out flat on the sofa in that living room and he was raping me. And what he had given me was a drug. He had drugged my drink,” she recalled. “It was what is called in those days a Mickey Finn. Which I think today would be Rohypnol. It felt so horrible, that I… that I’d done this thing.”
Joan Collins talked about the feelings of disgust and guilt.
Joan Collins finally speaks out: ‘I was raped when I was seventeen years old.’ http://t.co/Wy7ubJoSOM pic.twitter.com/WKOKcL2ZmY
— Marie Claire (@marieclaireuk) November 27, 2014
“It wasn’t my fault but I didn’t know, I went out with him, and maybe I shouldn’t have gone out with him. He was much older than me, and he was a famous star. And anyway the bottom line is that he called me, and I went out with him again, and after I’d been going out with him for a few months, he asked me to marry him,” she sad. “I thought, ‘Well I better because you know, he took my virginity’. I really hated him, but I was so filled with guilt, that he had done this thing to me.”
Joan Collins and Maxwell Reed divorced 1956. He died back in 1974.
The revelation shared by Joan Collins comes in the middle of many women claiming they were allegedly sexually assaulted by comedian Bill Cosby. One thing that needs to come from these revelations and accusations is that women have the right to say no to any kind of sexual advances. Men who don’t respect the word need to be charged and pay for their crimes.
Do you think revelations on behalf of people like Joan Collins will encourage others to speak out and share their stories, too?