In 1989, former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, then 52, married Mandy Smith, then 18, in a wedding covered by Hello! magazine. The couple first met in 1984 when Smith was 13 and Wyman was 47.
A Relationship That Began When She Was 13
Smith met Wyman at an awards ceremony in 1984. She was an ordinary schoolgirl from a Tottenham housing estate who had gone to the event with her older sister, Nicola. Wyman, a self-described womaniser who admitted to sleeping with more than a thousand women, wrote in his 1990 autobiography that Smith "took my breath away…she was a woman at thirteen."
The pair began dating in secret, and Smith spent a night at his country home when she was 13. They went public when she was 16. Smith's single mother, Patsy, was often ill, and Smith said she saw Wyman as a "father figure" and "mentor" during a lonely time.
The Wedding and Its Aftermath
When Smith turned 18, the couple married. The ceremony began at Bury St Edmunds Register Office in Suffolk, followed by a church blessing and a reception at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane, attended by the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Boy George, Roger Taylor, and other rock royalty.
Before the wedding, Smith said she was questioned by police but did not want to take the investigation further. She told journalist Caroline Phillips: "I felt partly to blame, like it was my fault as well. I fell in love with Bill. I wasn't a little sex temptress. But I'd feel too guilty getting someone charged for sex abuse."
During the marriage, Smith fell ill, her weight dropped to five and a half stone, and she was hospitalised for six months. The couple separated after two years, and their divorce was finalised in 1993.
Reflections and Regrets
In 2010, approaching 40, Smith admitted she had been too young for an adult relationship. She told the Daily Mail: "It is not about being physically mature. It's emotional maturity that matters. I don't think most 16-year-olds are ready. If it happened today he [Bill] would be absolutely vilified by the press. He'd be in jail."
Wyman has said he was lucky not to go to jail for having sex with a minor, saying he cooperated with police in 2013 following the Jimmy Savile scandal. "I went to the police and I went to the public prosecutor and said, 'Do you want to talk to me? Do you want to meet up with me, or anything like that?' and I got a message back, 'No'. I was totally open about it."
Smith later worked with young people, helping them prepare for exams, and called for the UK's age of consent to be raised to 18. "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. "You are still a child, even at 16. You can never get that part of your life, your childhood, back. I never could."
