Former Rolling Stone’s Lover: Raise the Age of Consent

 Mandy Smith, whose teenage affair and later marriage to Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, made headlines decades ago. Now her life has taken a decidedly different route as she returns to her Catholic roots. She now has some definite opinions on protecting young women from falling into the same trap that she did.

LifeSiteNews reports that Mandy Smith, the former child-lover and later wife of Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman, believes that the age of consent should be raised to 18 in order to protect young girls, who are emotionally vulnerable when it comes to sexual relationships at that age. In an interview with the UK’s Daily Mail, Smith said that she had slept with the much older Wyman when she was 14 years old, beginning a relationship that stole away a childhood she “could never get back.”

Smith, 39, revealed to the Mail that she has come a long way from being the Wild Child on London’s celebrity scene in the 1980s to a woman who is now single, celibate, and living out a revived Catholic faith, mentoring young girls, and involving herself in charitable work.

But the experience of her child sexual relationship with Rolling Stone Wyman, 34 years her senior, taught her that teenage girls are not emotionally equipped for sex by the age of 16.

“It’s not about being physically mature. It’s emotional maturity that matters,” Smith told the Mail.

“I don’t think most 16-year-olds are ready. I think the age of consent should be raised to 18 at a minimum, and some girls aren’t even ready then,” she said. “People will find that odd coming from me. But I think I do know what I’m talking about here. You are still a child – even at 16.”

“You can never get that part of your life, your childhood, back. I never could.”