Mandy Smith’s new perspective

Mandy Smith has undergone quite a transformation, says Jenny Johnston in the London Daily Mail. Back in the 1980s, she was London’s most visible wild child—a teenager who spent her nights in clubs, hanging off the arms of rock stars such as Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones. Today, nearly 40, she is a devout Catholic who spends her time working with young people in Manchester.

She is, she says, frequently shocked by the sexualization of the girls she meets (“I try to say to them: ‘Hold on, you don’t have to do this’”), and reckons the age of consent should be raised to 18. “I don’t think most 16-year-old girls are ready. I know, I know, people will find that odd, coming from me. But I think I do know what I’m talking about. You can never get that part of your life, your childhood, back.”

Smith was 14 when she lost her virginity to Wyman; they married when she was 18 and he was 52. She now believes what he did was wrong. “If it happened today, he would be vilified by the press. He’d be in jail. For me, for a long time, it was a gray area: I was underage, but I was complicit. Now I see it in black and white. I work with teenagers. I see how vulnerable they are under all that bravado.”

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