New York Magazine has published an explosive cover story chronicling the stories of nearly three dozen women accusing Bill Cosby of rape or sexual assault.
The cover itself features 35 of the 46 women who have come forward publicly. The magazine said it spent six months interviewing each of Cosby’s accusers separately, “and yet their stories have remarkable similarities, in everything from their descriptions of the incidents to the way they felt in the aftermath.”
Joyce Emmons, a former comedy club manager who was allegedly assaulted by Cosby in the late 1970s, gave this account:
I had a terrible headache, and I said, “Bill, do you have some Tylenol? I have a mother of a headache.” And he said to me, “I have something stronger.” And I said, “You know I don’t do drugs.” He said, “You’re one of my best friends. Would I hurt you?” And I believed him. All I remember is taking the pill; I don’t remember going to bed. But I do remember waking up in a fog and opening my eyes, and I had no clothes on, and there was Bill’s friend totally naked in bed with me. I said, “What the F did you give me?” He said, “Oh, you had a bad headache, you were in so much pain. I gave you a Quaalude.”
Jewell Allison, whose alleged assault occurred in the late 1990s, recalled a similar encounter:
I was introduced to Bill Cosby through my modeling agent. She said that Cosby wanted to see me. Which I thought was obviously for the show. I was told there was going to be a dinner, and when I got there, no one ever arrived. He asked me if I wanted a glass of wine; I took a few sips. It had a horrible taste. And I started not feeling well. He helped me up by my underarms with both hands. He walked me into the next room, where there was a mirror on the wall, and he told me to look at myself. Something was wrong with me. And then he took my right hand, and he put it behind my back. I remember seeing semen on the floor. And I felt some liquid on my hand. That was when I knew something sexual was going on.
“He then said, and I will never forget this, he said, ‘Look at the glow on your face,’” Allison told Yahoo News.
In a 2005 deposition for a sexual assault lawsuit filed by Temple University basketball manager Andrea Constand, Cosby described her as having “a glow,” too.
Louisa Moritz, a 69-year-old actress, was allegedly assaulted by Cosby in 1971 inside a “Tonight Show” dressing room before they both were scheduled to appear.
“He walked in and closed the door behind him,” Moritz told the magazine:
It went on for maybe four minutes, five minutes. But it was the longest five minutes that I ever experienced. And when they called my name, he ran out. When he walked down the stage, he introduced himself as Louisa Moritz. And then a huge laugh. When they called me to go onstage, I was a zombie. He didn’t look at me while we were on the show. I didn’t look at him. I just felt him. I was afraid to tell anybody. I knew who Mr. Cosby was, and that prevented me from telling anybody. I felt ashamed. I was embarrassed to be me.
The New York Daily News wasted no time weighing in on New York magazine’s cover story, labeling Cosby “America's rapist.”
Lawyers for the 78-year-old comedian have long denied the allegations, and he has never been criminally charged. But last fall, a clip of comedian Hannibal Burress talking about the accusations onstage went viral, igniting the firestorm Cosby had successfully avoided for more than a decade.
“I went online one morning, just to check my email,” Victoria Valentino, a former Playboy bunny who was allegedly drugged and assaulted by Cosby in 1969, told the magazine. “The Yahoo page came up, and there was something about Cosby, this thing with Hannibal Buress. And all of a sudden, something just hit me. Anger. Son of a bitch! You know, a woman can be not believed for 30 years. But it takes one man? To make a joke about it? That f---ing pissed me off so bad. Suddenly I’m thinking, Who do I contact?”
New York Magazine published its Cosby story online Sunday night, but “technical difficulties” forced the website offline Monday morning, as the magazine pointed readers to its Tumblr and Instagram pages.
A Twitter user and self-described hacker, @Vikingdom2016, claimed to have executed a distributed denial-of-service attack on the website but told the Daily Dot that it had nothing to do with silencing the alleged victims.
The publication comes three weeks after the unsealing of the 2005 deposition in which Cosby admitted that he gave quaaludes to at least one woman he wanted to have sex with — a revelation that was viewed as a damning corroboration by many of his accusers.
Judd Apatow, one of Cosby’s most vocal critics in Hollywood, said we shouldn’t need him to admit guilt to believe his alleged victims.
“I don’t think there is anything new here,” Apatow said of Cosby's admission. “It is only new to people who didn’t believe an enormous amount of women who stated clearly that he drugged them.”
Meanwhile, Cosby’s longtime associates have been distancing themselves from the embattled entertainer. Late last year, Nickelodeon pulled reruns of “The Cosby Show,” NBC cut ties with him and Netflix scrapped a planned Cosby standup special. Earlier this year, Creative Artists Agency, which had long represented Cosby, quietly dropped him.
In recent weeks, some of Cosby’s most staunch supporters, including singer Jill Scott and Whoopi Goldberg, have stopped defending him.
“About Bill Cosby,” Scott wrote on Twitter following the release of the deposition. “Sadly his own testimony offers PROOF of terrible deeds, which is ALL I have ever required to believe the accusations.”
“All of the information that’s out there kind of points to guilt,” Goldberg said earlier this month on “The View.” “It looks bad, Bill.”
Even President Obama weighed in on the mounting allegations against Cosby when he was asked if he would consider revoking the comedian’s Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“With respect to the Medal of Freedom, there’s no precedent for revoking a medal. We don’t have that mechanism,” Obama said. “And as you know, I tend to make it a policy not to comment on the specifics of cases where there might still be, if not criminal, then civil issues involved. I’ll say this: If you give a woman, or a man, for that matter, without his or her knowledge a drug and then have sex with them, that’s rape. And I think this country, and any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape.”
Following the release of New York magazine’s cover, Spelman College, the historically black women’s liberal arts school in Atlanta, announced that it had terminated a professorship named for the disgraced comedian and returned all funds related to it. According to Reuters, Cosby and his wife, Camille, donated $20 million to the school in 1988.
Allison called her participation in the cover “bittersweet.”
“It’s one thing to see everybody on the Internet,” she told Yahoo News, “but it’s another thing sitting in the studio where we were photographed and you start seeing these women walk in.”
Allison said she hopes Cosby will eventually speak out about the allegations.
“I’m praying for that,” she said. “By him coming forward and saying something, it will actually aid the healing process for so many of the people that are involved.”
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