Mark Wignall

Some years ago I wrote a column about three women I met after my marriage, and I went off in different directions. The first woman had had a rape attempt made on her by a friend of one of her brothers. After pinning her on the bed and attempting to pry open her legs, the young woman had the presence of mind to reach across to a night table where an electric iron had been left. End of story for the would-be rapist.

The second woman had been raped by a taxi driver who was a friend of her mother's. She was only 16 and with her mother's consent, she went out with the man, the plan being to visit a nightclub. The man stopped at an abandoned marl pit, brandished a knife and raped the girl. To hide her shame, she said nothing to her mother. Weeks later, the man saw her walking on a lonely country road and chased her down with his car. He stopped only when the chase took them to a main-road crossing, saying to her as he drove off, "Mi can get it anytime mi want it."

Ironically, the young woman's mother was gang-raped many years before when she lived in an inner-city area of Kingston.

The third woman was raped when gunmen entered her rural hill house in the cool climate of St Andrew. She, her mother and her sister were raped. Months after, while she was seeking a drive off the hill one late evening, a man whom she knew (and who knew of the rapes) stopped and offered her a lift. He drove to a lonely area of the hill and attempted to "hold her down". She escaped and he chased her. She took to the bushes and hid as the car kept on patrolling the outskirts. Traumatised and fearful that any other man who saw her on the dark road would also want to rape her, she slept in the bushes that night.

Unknown to me, when she left her home the evening before, it was to visit me. When I came home that evening, she was seated on a bench in my backyard with her clothes tattered and torn and her mind in a similar state.

All three women had one thing in common. They were beautiful, probably too much so for the local men, and they all lived in rural settings. In all the cases, the perpetrators of the rapes/attempted rapes were known by the women.

After I wrote that column, a married friend of mine in her late 40s related to me her own horror which took place when she was 17 and a virgin. She too was raped by her "boyfriend" whom her mother knew and who would sometimes sit in their middle-class, uptown house and watch TV with them.

Her mother was an attorney-at-law. One day, when her mother was in Europe, her "boyfriend" held her down and had his way with her, in her mother's house. The rapist is a well-known media person.

In the book Marley and me written by Don Taylor, the late manager of Bob Marley, Rita Marley is portrayed as a woman faithful to Bob, but not necessarily loved too much by him. We cannot swear too much by Don Taylor, but we can recall how hard Rita Marley tried to stop the publication of the book. It is also a fact that Bob Marley showed little respect for his marriage by having numerous affairs, openly, with women whom most of us would consider desirable and beautiful. It must have been hard on Rita Marley then.

When Rita Marley, in a recent interview, revealed that she had been raped by Marley during their marriage, I was forced to believe her. I believed her because she just could not be so stupid as to sully Marley's name with so heinous an infamy if it did not actually take place. Second, Rita Marley must have been traumatised all of these long years by the act of the man while he was a living legend, and during the period after his death when he became an icon-for-life.

In its basic form, rape is considered forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion and physical abuse. Rape in a marriage is always a touchy subject. Women are built differently and they tend to need love and "feeling" if sex is to be enjoyed. With men it is different. Men are immediate creatures, programmed by the creative impulses to get their sperm cells as close as possible to women's eggs.

There is hardly anything known as bad sex for a man, although "great sex" is always sought after, if a woman possesses that chemical valency needed for the match.
Almost every married man high on libido, as Bob most likely was, will "steal some" if the wife is fast asleep at three in the morning. Nothing technical about that, but it is rape. The woman did not give her consent, especially if she slept "in the arms of Morpheus".

If we are to go by Rita Marley who attempted to soften when pressed, what was the nature of the rape? Did Bob say, give me some, then pull a knife and threaten her? In Don Taylor's book, he speaks of Bob and Rita in the same hotel but in different rooms. If we are to give him credit, would that not speak of Bob wanting to keep his sexual options open while he was on tour?

What appeared to be implied in the marriage was that Rita Marley had given Bob licence to gallivant with numerous beauties or, she knew the man's nature and allowed him free rein. Bob was this handsome mystic with the long dreadlocks and the slow, swivelling hips which women found irresistible.
I have always known that women love bad boys and to them, Bob with his lion mane, big-head spliff and strange, almost surreal "I" talk was the ultimate bad boy. And, of course, he had money.

So let us assume that Bob had all of these "assets", all of these lovely women going in and out of his room in his insatiable quest for more and more. Let us assume, too, that he probably smoked four ounces of "sensi" one day and he was as randy as a Negril gigolo. Why would he rape Rita?
Quite probably, because he could do it and get away with it?
If after so many years Rita Marley is still so traumatised that she has to get it off her chest now, we can only imagine how she felt when it happened. Why did she not leave him then? With all that money being spun by Bob, was she more mercenary than traumatised?

Rita Marley has not done too badly over the years since Bob died. She has not done too badly with his legacy. When Bob sang, Not one a my seed shall sit on the sidewalk and beg bread, he was being prophetic as any man ever was. I doubt whether he had rape on his mind then.

Only Rita and Bob Marley know the truth. Rita chose not to cry rape when Bob was alive and singing No Woman Nuh Cry but I can empathise with that for two reasons.

One could have been the wish to protect Bob's economic legacy for those who live after him. Or, it might just have been her desire to protect the name of the man whom Rita loved.

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