On Sunday, April 18th on the Caribbean
Connection radio show which is broadcast on WNSB Hot 91.1fm &
Vibes 24/7 in Virginia, there was an extremely hot discussion
regarding Rita Marley's recent claim to reporter Matt Roper of
the Daily Mirror newspaper that she was raped by her late
husband Bob Marley.
The show which is owned by the West Indian
Times news magazine and hosted by Lady Cham and Princess Ann,
received live calls from many listeners who expressed their
shock, outrage and horror about the claim. Most of the
callers wondered why Rita would make these allegations now, 23
years after her husband's death, when he is not here to defend
himself. They also wondered if it was a money making
ploy to sell her upcoming book. Only one caller spoke in
defense of Rita, saying that no one should judge Rita as only
she knew what she had gone through and she should be seen as a
victim.
There was an interesting call from a lady
who was highly upset that Rita only talked about Bob's
infidelities and did not mention that Bob had to confront a
man in Bull Bay who had fathered Rita's baby. The caller
said that once the baby was born Bob Marley knew it was not
his baby because the baby had an extra finger.
Upon researching the situation we at the West Indian Times
discovered that Bob's friend 'Ital' fathered Rita's child
Stephanie yet in her interview Rita denies being unfaithful.
We at West Indian Times feel that it is
important for you the reader to view the article in full as it
appeared in the Daily Mirror and take issue with the claims.
Bob Marley was by no means a saint, he
cheated on his wife and brought his outside children home for
her to raise but this claim of rape, a heinous crime, is one
that Bob is not here to defend.
The following article by
Matt Roper appeared in the Daily Mirror newspaper on Wednesday
31 March 2004.
'My Husband Bob Marley Raped Me'
To millions she was the luckiest woman alive - married
to Bob Marley, the international superstar of reggae,
recognized the world over as a living icon.
But for Rita Marley life with the "Negus" of reggae was
far from a fairytale, as she watched the man she dearly loved
disown and betray her at every turn.
When she tried to put her foot down by denying him sex
until he stopped playing around, the young Jamaican adored by
millions as a peace-loving legend forced his way into her home
and raped her. Talking publicly for the first time about
that day in 1973, Rita, now 57, says: "Bob wouldn't take no
for an answer. He said to me, 'No, you're my wife and you're
supposed to.' So he forced himself on me, and I call that
rape. Afterwards I felt so terrible. I screamed at him, 'I
hate you, I hate you!" The rape happened after years of
Marley's cheating with a stream of women, many of whom bore
his children.
But despite everything, Rita insists she still adores
him as much as the day they first met in 1965. "Just
because he did these things and cheated on me doesn't mean he
was a bad husband. He always provided for me, always gave me
anything I wanted." But he was corrupted by show
business, by the girls who would throw themselves at him. This
is what I've come to understand."
The Cuban-born Alpharita Anderson met Robert Nesta
Marley when she was 18 and he was 19, in the Trenchtown ghetto
of Kingston, Jamaica. Robbie was the shy guitarist of local "rocksteady"
group the Wailing Wailers, who would pass Rita's house every
day on their way to the studio. One day, Rita and her
friends stopped the group and performed an impromptu song -
Bob was immediately won over. He invited them to sing backing
vocals on some tracks they were recording and the pair soon
became lovers.
"We were so in love. Bob was so romantic and faithful,
and I thought we would always be like that. We'd be rehearsing
and looking into each other's eyes and singing, and then we'd
put our mouths to each others'. It was magic."
In 1966 the couple had an "impulse" wedding. From then
until 1972, when Bob signed to Island Records, Rita sold his
early recordings from a makeshift record shop at their house.
When international stardom arrived she toured the world with
him as one of his I-Threes backing singers.
Days before a peace concert in Kingston in 1976, she was
caught in the crossfire when a gang of youths tried to
assassinate Bob. Rita was shot in the head and was lucky to
survive.
In the early days, Rita would wash Bob's only pair of
underpants by hand every night in the tank outside their first
house in St Ann. But as Bob Marley and the Wailers
earned global fame, Rita could only look on helplessly as the
husband she adored succumbed to its trappings. "Every country
he'd go to Bob would meet the Miss So-and-so or the local
beauty queen. And then at night, she's there, in the bedroom,
and then the next morning she's still there. "And of
course I'd be there too because I was a backing singer in his
group as well as his wife. So I would see all this going on
and it would really hurt, the jealousy.
Once, asked by a New York newspaper about his wife, Bob
replied: "Oh no - Rita's my sister." "For most of the
time I was Mrs. Marley, but it was only a title, nothing more.
I considered divorcing him many times. I just thought, 'To
hell with this', especially when he started bring back the
babies of women he'd got pregnant, wanting me to look after
them.
But Bob's charm would always win her over. Drawing a
circle in the palm of his hand, he explained: "You see this
circle, this is like life. And you see this line around it?
Nobody can break that line to come into the circle with you
and me. So don't worry yourself, man, you're safe. You're my
queen, my wife, my life."
Rita, now a reggae star in her own right, admits: "As
much as I love him, if Bob were alive today I honestly don't
think I'd still be married to him. Because of the frustration
and insult that I had to face, and in spite of the good face I
showed to the world, Bob's lifestyle was killing me."
When Rita complained about the babies Bob was fathering,
he explained that he wanted lots of children but didn't want
his wife and backing singer to be burdened with childbirth.
"He'd say, 'I don't want you to get pregnant every year. So
some of that is really just taking the burden off you and your
body`."
Yet despite Bob's constant womanizing, he was still
extremely possessive. "Even though he was carrying on right
under my nose, mostly one-night stands, he remained very
suspicious of my having an affair. When we argued, my
line was always, 'Who cares? I'm your wife but I'm not your
slave, you know. I'm not going to be your call girl. When you
want to have sex, you call me to your room? Or we have a
relationship when you feel like? No, no, no.'"
Returning to Jamaica from a tour of Britain in 1973, Bob
told Rita about a girl in London he'd made pregnant, and he
wanted Rita to take care of the baby. At the same time
he was having a relationship with Cindy Breakspeare, the
Jamaican beauty who would win Miss World three years later.
For Rita it was the last straw, and when Bob arrived at their
home in Bull Bay, she drew the line. "I felt I was being taken
for a ride, and it seemed like it was going to be a long ride.
So I decided I wasn't going to play the game. I told him
plainly, straight out, if you're going to be doing this, we
will not have a sexual relationship.
WE didn't have Aids at that time, but there were other
diseases and I thought, 'This is getting crazy now.'
"Something was going to happen to me if I continued having sex
with him. I didn't know if he was using a condom, but I doubt
it, because he was a Rasta man. I was also trying to punish
him, because I knew he wanted me but I was being stubborn to
show him what he was missing. "I wanted to put the
pressure on, because the kids were growing up and they were
starting to ask, 'What's going on?'
"When I told him, 'I'm not going to have sex with you,'
Bob immediately thought I was having an affair. He was angry
and he wouldn't take no for an answer. "We had sex, it
wasn't love-making, just sex. And afterwards I felt terrible.
I screamed at him, 'I hate you, I hate you!' I think that's
when I got pregnant again. When I discovered I was going to
have another child, my first thought was, 'My God, what is
this? Despite trying to overlook everything and be the good
sister, I'm so sick of his ways.'"
RITA and Bob's third daughter, Stephanie, was born in
1974. But despite the hurt and humiliation, Rita continued to
love and support her husband and be a mother to his many
children.
She held Bob in her arms when he died of cancer in 1981,
aged 36. Now she takes care of the Bob Marley Foundation in
Jamaica, as well as running her own charity which works with
poor children in Ghana, West Africa.
She is, after everything, forgiving.
"Bob was a good person and a good husband. Just because
he had other women doesn't mean he wasn't a good husband.
"I was always there for him and I'll always be there for
him. He knew I wasn't there for the glamour, the fantasy or
the fame, but because I loved him and
I'm determined to keep his memory alive."
