Joyce McKinney.
Nestled amongst the Appalachian mountains is a small town. One of its inhabitants is a girl called Joyce McKinney, and her dreams are filled with flashing cameras and trophies. She wants to be a beauty queen. She pursues this dream and enters various pageants but, despite a certain charm, the fact that she’s not uncommonly beautiful means that victories are far and few between.
However, she is conflicted.
On the one hand, she seeks this lifestyle of celebrity and glamour. On the other, she’s caught religion. A pious, virtuous life beckons. So, when she came of age, she converted to Mormonism and moved to Utah to study at the denomination’s Brigham Young University. Whilst there, she reportedly became fascinated with the Mormons’ crowning jewel — the Osmonds. Her and a friend become groupies and eventually, McKinney reportedly struck up some sort of relationship with one of the group’s older brothers, Wayne, but any hopes of something deeper were stamped out by the clan’s matriarch, Olive Osmond, who was concerned about her behaviour.
Any heartbreak would be short lived though, as she soon met and moved on with fellow Mormon, Kirk Anderson, a normal if slightly awkward 19-year-old. With Anderson still a teenager and McKinney being a fully-fledged adult at 25, there was already an uncomfortable power dynamic. Either way, the relationship led to sex, McKinney stating that she lost her virginity to him but that Anderson quickly felt remorseful for his actions, and subsequently confessed to Mormon elders who briskly brought the two year relationship to an end.
Anderson was then soon moved out of Utah.
His former lover was appalled by the Mormons’ interference and promptly turned her back on the religion. She didn’t however, give up on Anderson. In fact, she chased him across the USA, first to California and then to Oregon, with Anderson resorting to taking an assumed name to hide from her, making it clear that he wanted no more to do with her.
He was then dispatched abroad, to England, on missionary work. Still, she would not give up. McKinney hired a PI to track Anderson down and once she’d got the information she needed, hopped on a plane to England with friend and accomplice, 24-year-old Keith May, to hunt Anderson down.
Using a fake handgun, Anderson was abducted at the steps of Ewell’s LDS church and taken to a remote cottage in Devon, where he was strapped to a bed and made repeatedly to have sex with McKinney, in an attempt to get herself impregnated. On the contrary, she has always maintained that the restraints were part of an effort to make him “feel less guilty”.
After three days, he was allowed to leave.
He bravely reported what happened to the police, who set up a sting that successfully saw McKinney and May arrested. The madness of McKinney started flooding out during judicial proceedings, where she ranted about the benefits of oral sex and declared of Anderson, "I loved him so much that I would ski naked down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose if he asked me to."
She also stated that it was impossible for a woman to rape a man.
Anderson’s testimony made his stance clear:
"She grabbed my pyjamas from just around my neck and tore them from my body. The chains were tight and I could not move. She proceeded to have intercourse. I did not want it to happen. I was very upset."
McKinney had in the meantime being held at Holloway prison whilst the legal process rolled forward. She has been charged with kidnapping and the “indecent assault of a man”. True justice was outright out of the question for Anderson. This was 1978. British law was still using the Sexual Offences Act 1956, under which, no rape had legally been committed — the act did not recognise the rape of a man by a woman as possible.
In the meantime, she had been granted bail and had been presenting herself as a chaste innocent, wronged by the world. This image was soon contradicted by her antics and journalistic digging. She toured Fleet Street looking to sell her story for £50,000 and put ads in Variety, trying to attract film agents. In the evenings, she was stepping out in low cut dresses and partying hard, mixing with glitterati in the process:
Ex-boyfriends were discovered and with them, that the virginal McKinney had posed nude for erotic shots, shots which the press got their hands on.
Before the trial was due to take place, McKinney and her accomplice jumped bail, and flew back to the USA on false passports. They were sentenced in absentia to a year in prison for skipping bail and, as far as the legal system was concerned, that was that. They were later arrested by the FBI for the fake passports, but only received suspended sentences.
With that, Anderson tried to fade quietly away from what had been a media circus, one that treated the situation as a joke, and in no small part thanks to McKinney’s own machinations.
Keith May died in 2004, but ever since their flight from justice, McKinney has repeatedly resurfaced. In 1984, she was arrested for having once again stalked Anderson outside his place of work, who was now married with children, having with her a notebook detailing his movements, a pair of handcuffs and some rope. In 2008, she found herself in the news for having
her dog cloned in South Korea despite initially denying and snapping at reporters who asked her if she was the same McKinney. Most recently in 2019, she was arrested and charged for the fatal hit and run of a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor, with the police also discovering other outstanding warrants for battery and public nuisance. She faces up to eleven years in prison if found guilty.
In subsequent interviews, McKinney’s obsession evidently continues, with her having hyped up her former lover to some kind of Hollywood handsome star.
To this day, it’s not concretely clear what happened between them, and there are those who don’t think it was full-on rape. Indeed, I’ve seen one describe the truth as probably being “somewhere in the middle”.
Personally I think it’s pretty cut and dry. If it was really consensual, why would McKinney need to kidnap him, with an accomplice’s aid no less? If it was simply consensual but guilty sex on Anderson’s part, how does going to the police to report her for rape make any sense? It doesn’t follow through. He would surely have either kept quiet or as before, confessed to the elders.
For a man to turn to the police and report that he’d been raped by a woman is a big deal in 2021, so it would’ve been a huge one in 1978. The ridicule, the scoffs, the naysayers. It’s still one of the last taboos. So it’s a very brave and serious step, completely disproportionate to a bit of post-sex guilt. I feel that the evident resolve in him taking that step speaks volumes about his sincerity. Who would honestly face that humiliation and scrutiny just because they felt a bit guilty about having sex?
Anderson made it clear in his actions that he wanted nothing to do with her, and his testimony stacks up with that. There’s no fine line when it comes to sex — either someone wants it or they don’t. When you start speaking of persuasion and pressure, you’re speaking of coercion. Rape.
The sad thing is that the whole affair was reduced to a sensationalist joke, with McKinney grabbing all the attention and suffering no consequences. Kirk Anderson is not a joke. He is a flesh and blood human being. A living, breathing, feeling person. One that was definitely kidnapped
at what he believed to be gunpoint, held hostage and one that was almost certainly raped repeatedly.