I begged bully Ike to get off

ABUSE

IT was while doing some laundry on tour that 17-year-old Patricia Cole found herself totally alone with Ike Turner.

Pat claims he came into the room and after brief small talk pinned her down and raped her, not stopping despite her pleas.

Afterwards, he insisted on giving her money, she says. Humiliation and shame replaced terror. She didn’t take it and didn’t tell a soul, only later her sister and one close friend.

This is the first time, aged 75, she has talked publicly about it.

“I fought as much as I could, but can you imagine me at 17 and how fragile I was?” she says. “I was a young girl, been through a lot, I was scared, I knew nothing about the world.

“I wanted to keep my job. Do I go back and tell my family and go back to another hell? I didn’t want to go back home.”

CONTROLLING

Did she consider the police? “It didn’t cross my mind,” she adds. “You feel ashamed, that’s what happens to you.

“A man overpowering you, being overbearing, controlling, there is nothing you can do.”

She claims Ike tried a second time not long afterwards, targeting her in a toilet. Then, another Ikette was present and stopped it. Neither said a thing.

Pat had long witnessed him beating and humiliating Tina, who she credits with convincing her to leave her own abusive husband to join the band.

Once she says she witnessed a vicious beating right before Tina went on stage, but she recalls the star put on make-up and went ahead anyway.

It was Pat who cried. “I got fined [by Ike] for crying on stage,” she says.

Pat with Ike, and Tina