For decades, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have occupied a peculiar position in popular culture, their music providing the soundtrack to everything from teenage rebellion to mainstream radio. Kiedis, meanwhile, has become one of alternative rock’s most recognisable frontmen, celebrated for his charisma, longevity and remarkable survival story. Yet behind that familiar image lies a series of incidents that raise uncomfortable questions about the behaviour the music industry has historically been willing to overlook. Some of the most troubling details are not buried in forgotten court documents or whispered accusations among industry insiders. They were openly acknowledged by Kiedis himself.
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In 1986, Kiedis began a relationship with Ione Skye, the daughter of Donovan, who was just 16 when they started dating, meaning she was a minor in the state of California. At the time, Kiedis was around 24, and the two stayed together for several years. Furthermore, Kiedis even included a nude picture of the couple in his autobiography.
Kiedis also documented another troubling encounter in Scar Tissue, one that would inspire the Red Hot Chili Peppers song ‘Catholic School Girls Rule’. According to his autobiography, he met a young fan backstage at a concert in Louisiana and began a sexual relationship with her. He subsequently discovered that she was just 14 years old.
“The next day we drove to Baton Rouge, and of course, she came with us,” Kiedis wrote. “After we got offstage, she came up to me and said, ‘I have something to tell you. My father’s the chief of police and the entire state of Louisiana is looking for me because I’ve gone missing. Oh, and besides that, I’m only 14’.”
Kiedis continued: “I wasn’t incredibly scared, because, in my somewhat deluded mind, I knew that if she told the chief of police she was in love with me, he wasn’t going to have me taken out to a field and shot, but I did want to get her the hell back home right away. So we had sex one more time.”
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this admission is the circumstances in which it became public knowledge. Kiedis was not confronted with an accusation during a police investigation, nor was he forced to disclose the relationship under questioning. He voluntarily included the account in Scar Tissue, his best-selling autobiography, published in 2004. By then, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were one of the world’s biggest bands, and their singer was reflecting on his past for an enormous audience. That he chose to recount having sex with a 14-year-old after learning her age, apparently without anticipating the seriousness with which such an admission might be received, says something troubling about the culture in which these stories were once treated as acceptable rock ‘n’ roll anecdotes.
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In a separate incident in April 1989, Kiedis was accused of sexual battery and indecent exposure following a Red Hot Chili Peppers performance at George Mason University in Virginia. According to contemporary reports, a female student alleged that the singer had exposed himself and made unwanted sexual contact with her backstage. Kiedis denied the allegation.
In April 1990, a Virginia jury found Kiedis guilty of sexual battery and indecent exposure, recommending fines of $1,000 for each misdemeanour. Unlike the incident described in his autobiography, this case resulted in criminal proceedings and a conviction. It was not simply another controversial story from the band’s notoriously chaotic early years, but an incident that had been examined in court and resulted in a guilty verdict.
It was overlooked because “if you’re a star, they let you do it”, which rightfully pissed everyone off, was simply the truth. Kedis was a star and everyone let him do it.
Personally, as someone who remembers this time, I knew it was illegal, but there are many things that are “illegal” wink wink, and if you don’t play along you will get got. Because they are only illegal as a show.
As an anecdote, in the 90s there was a trove of publicly accessable CSAM stored legally at every university in America, for the express purposes of sexual gratification. This went on for at least twenty years that I know of, but probably more. I’m not being hyperbolic. The worst imagery you can imagine. This is what finally sent me over the edge into “my god people, how much do we take?” territory.
Because I can’t express this enough, everyone overtly seemed to be very against pedophilia. Even though in my own experience as a minor, and the experience of others, it was common and completely acceptable as long as the perpetrator didn’t talk about it openly. Stars ofc being the exception.
Well, I barely escaped trying to ring the alarm bell on that university CSAM. Everyone, and I’m telling you literally everyone, not just officials responsible for the storage of it, or those responsible for the prosecution of criminals, jumped on me for pointing it out. I had to stop, at risk of grave harm. I’m telling you, no one was an ally.
It was terrifying. To this day I personally believe that there is like 10% of us who don’t find children sexually attractive. The rest of the population is lying. Though I think most of those can totally help themselves and see it as a “choice” that they don’t indulge.
Your last point is something I’ve always wondered also. 4 out of 5 of my siblings were molested by family members, friends, or even just neighbors. Nearly a third of the people I’ve met in my life had something terrible happen to them while they were kids.
I’ve mentioned in other posts that I’ve done a lot of manual labor before getting into IT permanently. I worked with a lot of very vocal republicans. They would all say that all pedophiles need to die, then gawk and comment on the bodies of the high school or middle school girls jogging by. I’ve thought for a long time that a much larger portion of the population is attracted to children and they all just act completely disgusted by it. Look at all the Republican politicians that get caught with child porn.
Yeah, it was then that I realized that it’s not that people don’t believe victims, it’s that they don’t care and don’t want to get popped for it themselves if they ever do it. It was also then that I understood why no one did anything to known pedos except warn their own kids to stay away from them.
This current climate, or at least the one from ten years ago, was an anomaly. The backlash for it has been so big that America elected a very open and well known child trafficker to the presidency, to take care of it.