“I was out of it for a day. When I woke up I was covered in black and blue marks. He did some pretty nasty stuff,” says one Bill Cosby accuser, Joan.
14 November 2014
Is Bill Cosby free because of a procedural issue? He typically gave methaqualone (Quaalude) drugs to women whom he said took them willingly, he said some years ago in a court appearance during a civil suit.
“Cosby’s intention was to take advantage of the women, against their will, once they had lost control of their senses,” says Geraldine Frisque, a spokesperson for the RINJ Women, a global women’s rights group which had sent observers to the Cosby trial in April 2018.
According to a press release issued by Philadelphia’s Montgomery County District Attorney, Bruce Castor, Cosby had been allegedly promised impunity from criminal prosecution.
“Seeking “some measure of justice” for Constand, D.A. Castor decided that the Commonwealth would decline to prosecute Cosby for the incident involving Constand, thereby allowing Cosby to be forced to testify in a subsequent civil action, under penalty of perjury, without the benefit of his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Unable to invoke any right not to testify in the civil proceedings, Cosby relied upon the district attorney’s declination and proceeded to provide four sworn depositions. During those depositions, Cosby made several incriminating statements.” Citing Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs William Henry Cosby Jr. (J-100-2020mo-104821740139246918)
On 30 June 2021, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned William Cosby’s convictions due to stated violations of Cosby’s 5th Amendment and 14th Amendment rights, said the Court.
According to Court documents, Justice Wecht, of the Philadelphia Supreme Court said that District Attorney Bruce Castor’s press release included the mention of a promise that Cosby would not be criminally prosecuted if he would just tell the whole truth about his interactions with women.
Multiple women disputed Cosby’s claim that they were taking methaqualone voluntarily. According to women’s testimony.
“In 2005, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor learned that Andrea Constand had reported that William Cosby had sexually assaulted her in 2004 at his Cheltenham residence. Along with his top deputy prosecutor and experienced detectives, District Attorney Castor thoroughly investigated Constand’s claim. In evaluating the likelihood of a successful prosecution of Cosby, the district attorney foresaw difficulties with Constand’s credibility as a witness based, in part, upon her decision not to file a complaint promptly. D.A. Castor further determined that a prosecution would be frustrated because there was no corroborating forensic evidence and because testimony from other potential claimants against Cosby likely was inadmissible under governing laws of evidence. The collective weight of these considerations led D.A. Castor to conclude that, unless Cosby confessed, “there was insufficient credible and admissible evidence upon which any charge against Mr. Cosby related to the Constand incident could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.” Citing Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs William Henry Cosby Jr. (J-100-2020mo-104821740139246918)
Following the Philadelphia Supreme Court’s decision, Cosby was promptly released Wednesday, according to Katie Alsop of the global women’s rights group RINJ Women which has members who have filed cases against Crosby.
“Cosby served three years before the Supreme Court overturned his conviction,” she explained.
The RINJ Foundation Getting ready for the protest against comedian Bill Cosby, in Kitchener, Ontario on 5 January 2015
Photo Credit: PixelHouse via The RINJ Foundation
Protesting Cosby Rapes
Photo Credit: The RINJ Foundation
Protesting Bill Cosby at Hamilton Ontario on 7 January — Finally on 27 April, Cosby was convicted on a particular case.
Photo Credit: The RINJ Foundation
The following 30 women alleged as a matter of public record that Bill Cosby sexually assaulted or raped them. They are listed in the order their allegations became public. Source: The RINJ Foundation 2014-2018.
1. Lachele Covington. Covington, an actress who was 20 at the time, filed a police report alleging that Cosby pushed her hand toward his penis after inviting her to his New York home on Jan. 25, 2000 to give her career advice. The New York Post reported that authorities “decided no crime had been committed because until the very moment Covington pulled her hand away, all actions had been consensual.” A Cosby spokesperson called the story “not true.”
2. Andrea Constand. Constand told Ontario police in January 2005 that a year prior, when she was 31, she had visited Cosby at his home in Pennsylvania seeking career advice. (Constand, an Ontario native, worked at the time for Temple University, Cosby’s alma mater.) Constand alleges he gave her “herbal” pills for anxiety, then “touched her breasts and vaginal area, rubbed his penis against her hand, and digitally penetrated” her. The Pennsylvania prosecutor who looked into the case has said that while he didn’t bring charges because the available evidence was not sufficient, he found Constand “credible” and found Cosby “evasive.” After prosecutors declined to charge him, Constand filed a civil suit against Cosby for $150 million; her suit cited, anonymously, 13 other women who alleged that he had sexually assaulted them. (Some of those women, referred to as “Jane Does” in legal language, have since identified themselves publicly and are mentioned below. The identities of Jane Doe witnesses are disclosed to defendants so their testimony can be fairly researched and challenged, but they are not ID’d by name in court or in public records.) Cosby’s attorney called Constand’s claims “utterly preposterous.” The suit was settled for an undisclosed amount in 2006.
Andrea Constand Photo Credit: Pool photo by David Maialetti
3. Shawn Brown. The National Enquirer reported in 2005 that Brown, who has also gone by the name Shawn Upshaw, says Cosby drugged and raped her while she was unconscious. The site Hollywood, Interrupted also published her allegations in 2007. Brown has now given an interview to the Daily Mail, which ran a piece on Nov. 26 detailing her story. Brown says she was in a consensual sexual relationship with Cosby in 1973 when he drugged and raped her at a house in Beverly Hills. Brown’s daughter, Autumn Jackson, was jailed in 1998 for attempting to extort the comedian, who Brown believes to be Jackson’s father. (Cosby has admitted sleeping with Brown but has said he is not Jackson’s father.)
4. Tamara Green. In February of 2005, Green, a retired trial attorney, appeared onThe Today Show and told Matt Lauer that Cosby had drugged and assaulted her in the ’70s. Green was working as a model and met Cosby through mutual friends, she says, and he once offered her what he told her was cold medicine when she was ill. When she began to feel incapacitated, she alleges, he offered to take her home, where he began groping and undressing her; when she struggled, he left, leaving behind two $100 bills on her table. Cosby’s attorney issued the following response (which referenced Green’s maiden name, Lucier): “Miss Green’s allegations are absolutely false. Mr. Cosby does not know the name Tamara Green or Tamara Lucier, and the incident she describes did not happen.” Green was one of the Jane Does cited in Constand’s lawsuit.
5. Beth Ferrier. In June 2005, Ferrier, 46 at the time, told the Philadelphia Daily Newsthat Cosby drugged her coffee when she visited him before a performance in Denver when she was 25. Ferrier, who worked as a model, had been in a consensual relationship with Cosby that ended before the alleged assault; she met him through mutual acquantainces and had believed he would help her with her career. Ferrier was also a Jane Doe.
6. Barbara Bowman. In 2006, Bowman publicly identified herself as one of Constand’s Jane Does via an article in Philadelphia Magazine, though she didn’t discuss details of her accusation at the time. In October of this year—after comedian Hannibal Buress called Cosby a rapist during a performance—Bowman, now 47 and an artist, spoke about her experience to the Daily Mail. When she was 17 and pursuing a career as a model and actress, she says, she met Cosby, who she says pursued a mentor-mentee relationship with her and drugged and assaulted her multiple times. (While the Daily Mail can be unreliable, Bowman later vouched for its version of her account in a Washington Post piece.) Bowman’s account mentions that during their first encounter he asked her to wet her hair and pretend to be drunk while he stroked her, an incident similar to those recounted by other accusers.
7. Joan Tarshis. Joan Tarshis, a 64-year-old music industry publicist and journalist,
told Hollywood Elsewhere that Cosby raped her twice in 1969 when she was 19 years old and pursuing a career as a writer in L.A. Tarshis says Cosby first assaulted her after he invited her to work on material with him in his bungalow and made her a drink that caused her to lose consciousness.
8. Linda Joy Traitz. Traitz wrote on Facebook on Nov. 17, 2014 that Cosby assaulted her when she was 19 and working as a waitress at a restaurant that he partially owned. Traitz alleges that Cosby offered her a ride home from the restaurant but instead drove her to a beach and tried to force her to take pills to help her “relax.” Traitz told CNN he then groped her chest, pushed her down, and tried to lie on top of her. Traitz has a criminal record that includes imprisonment on a drug trafficking conviction; in a response to her allegations, Marty Singer, an attorney representing Cosby, cited her troubled past and said she lacks credibility.
9. Janice Dickinson. On Nov. 18, 2014, model and reality TV personality Janice Dickinson, now 59, told Entertainment Tonight that Cosby sexually assaulted her in 1982. At a dinner in Lake Tahoe at which they were to discuss her career, she says, she asked him for a pill for period cramps, and that “the last thing I remember was Bill Cosby in a patchwork robe, dropping his robe and getting on top of me. And I remember a lot of pain.” Singer, Cosby’s attorney, called Dickinson’s story “a fabricated lie.” Dickinson says Cosby’s attorneys kept her from including a description of the alleged assault in a 2002 book, but Singer says she never wrote such a description and was never contacted by Cosby representatives.
10. Therese Serignese. The Huffington Post printed allegations made against Cosby by Serignese, a 57-year-old nurse in Boca Raton, Florida, on Nov. 20, 2014. She says she encountered Cosby in 1976 when she was 19 years old; he was headlining a show at the Las Vegas Hilton, she alleges, and approached her in the hotel gift shop. Backstage in the green room, he allegedly gave her drugs, and when she came to he was having sex with her in a bathroom, she says. Serignese subsequently stayed in contact with Cosby and accepted money from him—which he had promised to give her if she pursued an education and received good grades. She told the HuffPothat at one point in their relationship (it’s not clear when) he asked her to wet her hair and pretend to be an actress.
11. Carla Ferrigno. Carla Ferrigno, an actress and the wife of Incredible Hulk star Lou Ferrigno, told Rumorfix on Nov. 20, 2014, that in 1967 Cosby grabbed her and forcefully kissed her at a party while his wife was in another room.
12. Louisa Moritz. Moritz, a 68-year-old lawyer and onetime actress who appeared inOne Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, told TMZ in a story published Nov. 20 that in 1971, Cosby forced her to perform oral sex on him in the greenroom of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Singer responded by saying allegations against Cosby have “reached a point of absurdity” and alleging that Moritz has been the subject of professional sanctions: “Mortiz is a lawyer who was disciplined by the California State Bar and ordered not to practice. We pulled the documents — she can’t practice because she didn’t report certain quarterly reports.”
13. Renita Chaney Hill. Hill, says she met Cosby when she was 15 and he was filming an educational TV segment in Pittsburgh. Hill says they stayed in touch for four years—that Cosby flew her to meet with him in various cities and kept in touch with her parents, asking them about her grades in school. On Nov. 20 a Pittsburgh CBS affiliate broadcast an interview with Hill in which she said she believes Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her on more than one occasion during their relationship.
14. Michelle Hurd. Actress Michelle Hurd, known for her roles on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Gossip Girl, among others, described Cosby as being “very inappropriate” with her when she was doing stand-in work on the Cosby Show. “It started innocently, lunch in his dressing room, daily, then onto weird acting exercises were he would move his hands up and down my body, (can’t believe I fell for that) I was instructed to NEVER tell anyone what we did together,” Hurd reportedly wrote in a Facebook post on Nov. 20. “I dodged the ultimate bullet with him when he asked me to come to his house, take a shower so we could blow dry my hair and see what it looked like straightened… I then started to take notice and found another actress, a stand-in as well, and we started talking….. A LOT …. turns out he was doing the same thing to her, almost by the numbers, BUT, she did go to his house and because I will not name her, and it is her story to tell, all I’ll say is she awoke, after being drugged, vomited, and then Cosby told her there’s a cab waiting for you outside.”
15. Angela Leslie. On Nov. 21, 2014, the New York Daily News reported that a 52-year-old former model-actress named Angela Leslie says that Cosby sexually assaulted her in Las Vegas in 1992. Leslie alleges Cosby fixed her a drink, asked her to wet her hair and pretend to be intoxicated, and masturbated using her hand while she was “in shock.”
16. Kristina Ruehli. The 71-year-old was one of the Jane Does in the Andrea Constand case that was settled out of court. In 1965, Ruehli worked as a secretary at a talent agency in Los Angeles that represented Cosby. Ruehli told Philadelphia Magazine in a story published on Nov. 21 that Cosby asked her to a party at his home, but it turned out she was the only guest. Cosby poured her a drink that she says must have been drugged. “There is just one point at which I was having a drink and feeling normal and the next I was somehow passed out completely,” Ruehli says. When she awoke Cosby was trying to force her to perform oral sex, she says, but after she ran to the bathroom and vomited he was gone when she returned to the room where he had been.
17. Victoria Valentino. In early 1970, Valentino—a former Playboy Playmate—had dinner with Cosby and an aspiring actress named Meg Foster. Valentino says Cosby offered them red pills. All three took a pill and went back to Cosby’s house, according to Valentino’s account. Valentino, now 71, says she recalled pulling Cosby off of Foster as he tried to rape her. “The room was spinning, and Valentino said she remembered feeling as if she was going to throw up,” she told theWashington Post in a piece published Nov. 22. “[Cosby] came over to me and sat down on the love seat and opened his fly and grabbed my head and pushed my head down. And then he turned me over. It was like a waking nightmare. She protested but could not stop him, she said.”
18. Joyce Emmons. Former comedy club manager Joyce Emmons told TMZ in a story published Nov. 22, 2014 that she ran in the same crowd as Cosby in the late 1970s, and that he kept “a drawer full of drugs.” Emmons says “one night she got a bad migraine and Cosby offered her a white pill which he said ‘was a little strong’ but could cure a headache,” according to TMZ. “She says she took the pill, blacked out, and the next thing she knew she was nude in bed in Cosby’s suite with one of his friends—a guy who had unsuccessfully tried hitting on her earlier in the evening. Emmons says she confronted Bill and demanded to know what drug she took, and he laughed and said it was ‘just a Quaalude.’ ”
19. Jewel Allison. Allison, a former model, told the New York Daily News in a story published Nov. 24, 2014, that Cosby sexually assaulted her at his New York City home in the late 1980s. She says the two of them were eating dinner at his Manhattan brownstone when she became disoriented after drinking wine he poured for her. Cosby then led her in front of a mirror, telling her to look at her own face, then placed her hand on his genitals, Allison alleges. She says he then gave her a “hard kiss” before hailing her a taxi, in which she vomited.
20. Donna Motsinger. The New York Post reported on Nov. 26 that the 73-year-old Motsinger says Cosby “drugged and raped her in 1971 when she worked as a waitress at a jazz club in Sausalito, Calif.” Motsinger was one of the Jane Does identified in Andrea Constand’s lawsuit.
21. Judy Huth. In a lawsuit filed Dec. 2, 2014, Huth alleges that she met Cosby in a Los Angeles park in 1974 when she was 15 years old and that he sexually abused her days later at the Playboy Mansion. Huth claims that Cosby provided her with a number of alcoholic drinks before confronting her in a bedroom and using her hand to masturbate himself. Singer says Huth’s allegations are false and that she attempted to extort Cosby before filing her suit.
22. Helen Hayes. At a Dec. 3 press conference called by prominent attorney Gloria Allred, Hayes alleged that Cosby groped her in 1973 after they met at a celebrity tennis tournament in Pebble Beach, Calif. and he followed Hayes and her friends around the city despite their attempts to avoid him.
23. Chelan. At the same press conference that Hayes spoke at, a woman identifying herself only by her first name, Chelan, said that Cosby drugged and sexually abused her at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1986 when she was 17 after promising to introduce her to representatives from a modeling agency. She says the comedian gave her a blue pill that caused her to become groggy, asked her to wet her hair, and sexually assaulted her before she passed out.
24. P.J. Masten. Masten, a former Playboy Bunny, told CNN in an interview broadcast Dec. 5, 2014 that Cosby drugged and raped her at the Whitehall Hotel in Chicago after drugging her drink. The network did not specify when the alleged rape took place, but Masten says she began working for Playboy in 1972.
25. Beverly Johnson.* In a Dec. 11, 2014 Vanity Fair piece, Johnson—a model and actress who in 1974 became the first black woman to appear on the cover of Vogue—wrote that Cosby drugged her during a mid-’80s visit to his home when she was being considered for a role on The Cosby Show. She says he asked her to act as if she was drunk and put his arms around her before she objected. Cosby then pulled her down a flight of stairs with such force she “feared [her] neck was going to break” and ejected her from his home, she wrote. (We’re including Johnson with an asterisk because, while she alleges Cosby drugged and assaulted her, her account does not specifically accuse him of touching her sexually.)
26. Chloe Goins. The 24-year-old Goins, a Las vegas “model and lap dancer,” told theDaily Mail in a piece published Dec. 15, 2014, that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion in 2008.
27. Katherine McKee. McKee alleged in a New York Daily News interview published Dec. 22 that Cosby raped her in the early 1970s in Detroit after asking her to bring him food. “I remember I walked in the door, and he had a robe and cap on. He took the ribs from my hands and just grabbed me,” McKee said. The two were acquainted, McKee said, through Sammy Davis Jr., with whom she had a romantic relationship.
28. Linda Kirkpatrick. Appearing at a Jan. 7, 2014, press conference with Gloria Allred, Kirkpatrick said that Cosby drugged her with “clear liquid” in a champagne glass and assaulted her in a Las Vegas dressing room after meeting her at a tennis tournament in 1981.
29. Lynn Neal. Neal appeared at the same Jan. 7, 2014, press conference and alleged Cosby raped her in the early 1980s when she became disoriented after drinking a shot of vodka he’d bought for her at dinner. “Lynn Neal” is identified in some publications as a pseudonym.
30. Kacey. Identifying herself by only one name and speaking alongside Neal and Kirkpatrick, “Kacey” said she worked as an assistant to one of Cosby’s representatives at the William Morris Agency in the early 1990s. She says Cosby invited her to his house and asked her to read a script with him; the script involved the two of them kissing. Later, she says, Cosby gave her a white pill when they met for lunch at the Bel-Air Hotel; she alleges that she then became disoriented and that when she woke up he was naked in bed with her.
Source for list of complainants: The RINJ Foundation