Woman shockingly details decades-old sexual assault allegations against Axl Rose.
Michelle Rhoades, who previously spoke about her claims during a press conference earlier this year, went on the “enough.” podcast and said that Rose sexually attacked her while she was a minor in 1985.
A woman is speaking out about decades-old claims that Axl Rose sexually molested her as a kid in the 1980s, before Guns N’ Roses became one of the most successful rock bands of all time.
Michelle Rhoades has previously spoken up about her charges against Rose, coming forward earlier this year during a press conference about sexual assault in the music industry, but she went into much greater depth with the podcast during the last two weeks.
Rhoades claimed on the “enough.,” podcast that she met Rose when she was 15 and he was 23, and that their relationship rapidly became sexual. She claims she fell pregnant with Rose’s child but miscarried at the Troubadour in West Hollywood on the night of one of the band’s first gigs.
Rhoades said she later went to the band’s rehearsal area to tell Rose what had happened. “It went from ‘we need to talk because you’re pregnant with my baby’ to him screaming at me that I killed the baby, to him sobbing in my arms that he should have been there for me,” she claimed.
Rose abandoned her at the studio, and Rhoades claims she later went outside to use an outhouse behind the studio. She claimed that she witnessed Rose having sex with another woman and approached them to confront him about it. Rhoades claimed Rose was “still fucking her while he’s talking to me, and he starts telling me these really sick things.”
Rhoades claimed that she returned inside the studio to retrieve her handbag before Rose led her back to the outhouse and took off her dress. “As soon as my clothes hit the floor, his roadie came in and grabbed my clothes,” according to her.
Rhoades raged at Rose, demanding that she return her clothes, she claimed, but he grabbed her up, drove her through the parking lot, and returned her to the studio while she yelled for help.
“He threw me in the studio, and almost immediately he was holding me down,” Rhoades claimed. “He was holding me down with his hands on my knees and his knees resting on this region of my elbows. I remember being extremely hurt, and his ass was in my face. He was beckoning people over to me like a carnival barker. Like,’she’s got the finest tits in town,’ and people came over to touch me. I was surrounded by people and was yelling. And he kept yelling that if I didn’t stop talking, he was going to shit in my face.
She said that Rose and others had “put bondage cuffs around my ankles,” and that Rose “was really hurting me and allowing these other people to put themselves inside of me and pinch me and do all these things.”
Shortly later, she claims Rose raped her. “And then he swung me around, inserted himself into me, and placed his face to mine. “I remember trying to bite him,” Rhoades claimed. “And then it was as if he came to terms with himself for a brief moment. He threw everyone and the ankle shackles off of me. He was holding me again. I remember begging him for my garments. I told him, ‘Please just give me my clothing, and I’ll never come back. And he said I didn’t deserve my clothes.
Rose allegedly threw her out of the studio naked, and a member of a band in the studio next door noticed her and handed her a towel to cover herself.
Rhoades was picked up from the space by her mother’s boyfriend, Vince Gilbert, who managed another local recording studio at the time. He requested that she be given her clothes. Gilbert confirmed picking Rhoades up in an audio recording of a 2019 interview, which the podcast published this week.
Rhoades stated she told Gilbert not to tell her mother, but she found out and reported it to the police. Rhoades claimed that other band members had contacted her, imploring her not to go to court. Duff McKagan, whom Rhoades referred to just as “the bass player” in the podcast, arrived to her house with his girlfriend and “begged my mother to drop the charges,” she stated.
“I’ll never forget him saying, ‘we know there’s something wrong with him, and we promise that he will get mental health and that he’s not going to hurt any more girls.’” (A representative for McKagan did not respond to a request for comment.
Rhoades alleges she experienced significant mental agony and suicidal ideation prior to the court date for the allegations and eventually decided not to pursue them. She claims Rose “profusely apologized” to her, and after she informed the rest of the band that she would not be pursuing the matter, the band “came and hugged me that night.”
Various variations of this narrative have surfaced in books and memoirs about Guns N’ Roses’ early years. In his 2007 book, Slash described an unknown woman who “had sex with Axl up in the loft.” Slash makes no reference in the book of whether he knew the girl or how old she was.
“Toward the end of the night, maybe as the drugs and booze wore off, she lost her mind and freaked out intensely,” according to Slash. “Axl told her to go and attempted to throw her out. I tried to help resolve the issue so she could leave quietly, but it wasn’t happening.”
Slash reported that the LAPD invaded the studio, and that he and Rose were charged with felony rape. Rose went to Orange County, Slash said, and he went to Santa Monica. “For fear of being arrested, we didn’t book shows and kept a low profile. The fact was that Axl had sex with the girl, but it was consensual, and no one had raped her.
A few weeks later, he and Rose moved in with their future manager, Vicky Hamilton, to sleep on her sofa. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2016, Hamilton mentioned some of the same details.
“Axl had a guest at the rehearsal studio, and he basically took her clothes off and locked her outside, and the girl went to the cops and said he raped her,” Hamilton recalled. “Slash called me and asked, ‘Can Axl come stay on your couch for a little while?’ And I am like, ‘Why?’ He told me that narrative, and it was obvious that I would be sheltering a fugitive at the time, but I let him in. It was meant to be just a few days, but it turned out to be six months.”
Rhoades came forward more openly when former Penthouse model Sheila Kennedy filed a complaint late last year, claiming that Rose sexually abused her in a New York hotel room in 1989. Kennedy was one of numerous women who sued important music industry individuals under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, accusing them of sexual misconduct.
Rose moved to dismiss the action in April, calling Kennedy’s assertions “salacious, inflammatory, and false,” and claiming that Kennedy “is a fabulist and an opportunist looking to rewrite history in pursuit of a financial windfall.”
