RITA MARLEY, widow of Reggae legend Robert Nesta Marley, has responded to a story published about her in a British tabloid on Wednesday.
The article was first published in the London tabloid Daily Mirror, but was published in The Gleaner and The Star yesterday. In the story, Rita is quoted as saying that her husband, superstar Bob Marley, raped her one day after she refused to have sex with him.
According to the story, the incident happened in 1973 and left her afterwards screaming at her husband telling him how much she hated him.
Rita, however, has stated that what she said was taken out of context by her interviewers and for that reason, despite the attention the story has brought to her since Wednesday, it has not yet ruffled her feathers.
OUT OF CONTEXT
"It don't bother me because definitely it was taken out of context," she explained in an interview with The Gleaner yesterday.
"We spoke about my husband coming home after I hadn't seen him for a long time, cause you have to talk about the realities, and they wanted to know about Bob and the other women and how I took it, so there was a point where we were not having a good relationship because of it, so if I feel to say he hold me down and take it and I felt it was rape. I had a right to say it... but it wasn't the way they made it look, cause he would be in jail if he had really raped me like a stranger. He wasn't a rapist," she said.
Rita toured the world with Marley as one-third of his harmony group, The I-Threes. It has been an open secret that even though Marley was married to her, he had indiscreet liaisons with several other women. In the story, Rita also explained why this happened. She said that Marley became "corrupted by show business and by the girls who would throw themselves at him".
Despite this, she admitted that Marley was still a good husband to her.
This she further stressed while speaking with The Gleaner. "My husband is still the best husband in the world... If his wife said that (he raped her), then she must mean something else. Its not like a strange girl come out and said Bob Marley raped me, I'm his wife," she said.
Rita told The Gleaner that the interview with the tabloid, along with several other interviews, came about because she has been in London promoting the release of her book, titled No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley.
The book, Rita argues, places everything about her relationship with her husband into its proper perspective. Concerning why she decided to speak on the topic some 20-odd years after his death, Rita said it was a matter of her exercising her right.
"It's my story. Whether 20 years or 100 years, if you feel like saying what happened in your lifetime you are free to say it; you don't have to lie or pretend about it. It is happening to plenty people right now... It's a reality, so why some choose to live in a pretence?" she said.
Rita was scheduled to do more signings this week and will return to Jamaica shortly to further promote her book.
