A Lovefraud reader asked me to write about the Bill Cosby scandal. A total of 27 women have publicly come forward to tell their stories of being sexually assaulted by the famous comedian.
A complete list of the women who have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault, on Slate.com.
As I read the accounts, I kept seeing virtually the same story, over and over.
Many of the women were young models and actresses who claim Cosby made a pretense of offering them career advice. One woman, however, was a 19-year-old waitress who said Cosby offered her a ride home and then assaulted her. Another woman was 19 when Cosby approached her in a gift shop at the Las Vegas Hilton, where he was performing, and invited her backstage. She says she was drugged, and woke up to find him having sex with her in the green room bathroom.
At this point the shocking realization hit me: This could have happened to me.
Atlantic City Magazine
From 1978 through 1982 I was editor of Atlantic City Magazine. It was my first job out of college.
The job sounds more prestigious than it was. Casino gambling had just become legal in New Jersey, and Atlantic City’s first casino opened a few weeks after I graduated from college. Atlantic City Magazine was a startup publication. I was not only the first editor; I was the first employee.
I had majored in magazine journalism in college, and founded a campus magazine. But I think the prime reason I got the job in Atlantic City was because I was in the right place at the right time.
Arranging the Cosby interview
Atlantic City Magazine frequently published interviews with the headline entertainers who performed at the casinos. Sometime around 1980, when I was 24 years old, Bill Cosby, who regularly appeared in Atlantic City, agreed to be interviewed.
I needed to finalize the time and place where our writer would meet the comedian. But Cosby wasn’t available — he was playing tennis with a casino executive. So in this era before cell phones, I drove over to the indoor tennis courts.
After making the arrangements with a casino PR person, I, along with a few others, watched Cosby play tennis.
As the game was coming to an end, Cosby announced that he wanted to go to the famous White House Sub Shop. But he didn’t have a car. So as the casino folks were trying to figure out how to get him to the sub shop, Cosby pointed at me and said, “She’ll take me.”
Driving Bill Cosby
I was astounded. Everybody looked at me, and I said I could take him.
So, when Cosby finished playing tennis, we got into my car. The car was something plain and white that Atlantic City Magazine rented for me — certainly not what I assume the TV star was accustomed to driving in.
I was star struck. During the 15 minutes that it took to drive from the tennis courts to the sub shop, I tried to engage Cosby in conversation. He didn’t say much. But he did spit out the window.
When we arrived at the sub shop, I stopped the car, let him out and drove away.
It never occurred to me to go in with him, be a groupie, order subs, or make sure he got back to the casino. That’s how naive I was.
Dodged a bullet
Later, realizing that I’d let an opportunity to make an important connection slip through my fingers, I berated myself for my stupidity.
But now, after reading the accounts of all the young women who claim that Cosby assaulted them, I can’t help but wonder if the same thing could have happened to me.
Maybe Cosby assumed that I’d go into the White House with him, and drive him back to the casino. Then, perhaps he would have invited me backstage. I know I would not have questioned his intentions. I didn’t understand then that rich, famous, powerful men took advantage of young women.
Had Bill Cosby done the same thing to me that he allegedly did to all those other young women, I know one thing. I would have been severely traumatized.
So perhaps I was lucky that I drove away.
More info:
Everything you need to know about the Bill Cosby scandal, on Time.com
Bill Cosby’s legacy, recast: Accusers speak in detail about sexual assault allegations, on WashingtonPost.com.
I was chewed up and spit out in a ‘classic’ manner and at record speed
I just wanted to add that I think Andrea Constand court full deposition questions of Cosby will be the smoking gun if the courts do release the full deposition (so far they only allowed part because it has been sealed). I so proud of Ms Constant that she is going to court asking for this deposition to be fully unsealed. That takes so much strength & courage to do.
It is the smoking gun and the flood gates are open! The public desperately wants to believe the “innocent until proven guilty” BS. Gloria Allred said it succinctly. ..It is “PRESUMED INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY” Hear that Whoopi?
“I WARNED YOU ABOUT BILL COSBY IN 2007” Mark Ebner said in 2014. Ebner is an investigative journalist. He writes primarily about issues in the Los Angeles area, including pit bull fighting in South Central, Scientology, and celebrity scandal.
This is a must read: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/20/i-warned-you-about-bill-cosby-in-2007.html#
In his most recent interview following Cosby’s admittance of using drugs to incapacitate women he says: “Cosby is a sick, sociopathic serial rapist who is supremely arrogant in thinking it wouldn’t come out sooner or later. I have to applaud that judge who unsealed those documents.”
Watch his interview on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sIdI8rT1_A
Ebner tried to break his story to major news outlets in 2007 but none would feature him as they were afraid they’d get sued by the massive Cosby Machine. His story was well reported with confirmed sources.
It’s an up hill battle for victims of sociopaths to be heard…sad.
It’s up lifting that so many men have come out in support of the victims and in this case Mr Ebner doing his best to expose a serial rapist 7 years ago. How many victims did Cosby abuse in the last 7 years because no one wanted to listen to Mr Ebner. And yet now the story has gone straight up to the top of news media outlets CNN for all to hear the truth if they choose to take their head out of the sand.
Good man Mr Ebner & others for trying to expose Cosby also for not being afraid to use the proper term to describe Cosby mental illness “Sick Sociopathic serial rapist” wish that Dr Drew & the other therapist on his show with Ms Bloom would have the courage to use same terminology so that more people would understand how common/abusive sociopaths really are while blending into society as the “father good guy” type.
Thanks for posting this article & video very informative.
It’s very heartening that so many men are coming to the defense of these women and questioning Cosby and his Machine. But where are the women? Why aren’t they outraged as well as these men? Recently Jill Scott has done a 360 and expressed her disgust with Cosby upon the release of deposition records.
Thank God we have Gloria Allred and Lisa Bloom as spokespersons against evil Cosby. Whoopi Goldberg will soon be eating her words, her credibility will be crap, and no network will want or be associated with her, just like Cosby
Not sure what Mr Ebner’s motives are for exposing Cosby…here is an excerpt from one of his articles on “investigating” Scientology:
“..I am an ex-drug addict who has solicited prostitutes in my day. I’ve also masturbated and inhaled at the same time, and I have been arrested more than once in my life. I dropped out of high school, and I’ve been under psychiatric care. Oh yeah, and I owe the IRS roughly six thousand dollars that they are well aware of..”
Lots of people are abandoning Bill Cosby:
Bill Cosby sexual assault allegations prompt exodus of allies, on Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/11/bill-cosby-sexual-assault-allegations_n_7776348.html
Donna, thanks for posting your two post. It’s interesting to see his house of cards slowly falling down. He must be scrambling for crazy glue to hold everything together haha.
Peoples eyes are beginning to open up to see him for who he really is = pure evil.
Petition to the White House to revoke the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to Bill Cosby:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/revoke-presidential-medal-freedom-bill-cosby
Donna .. thanks for supporting and posting the petition site so clearly on LV. Washingtonpost.com just reported:
“On Friday, a spokeswoman for Gillibrand, who along with McCaskill has pushed for reform in how sexual assault allegations are handled in the military and on college campuses, told Politico that the senator supported the effort to revoke Cosby’s medal “because we need to set a clear example that sexual assault will not be tolerated in this country, and someone who admitted to using drugs for sex no longer deserves the nation’s highest honor.”
Sorry…make that LF!
I agree to revoke the medal. It tarnishes the honor for others. It was won by deceit. UGH.
Bill Cosby’s Wife Says Accusers “Consented” to Drugs and Sex, reports NYpost.com:
“Bill Cosby’s wife knows her husband is a serial philanderer, but believes his scores of accusers consented to drugs and sex, two confidants of the couple say.
Last week’s revelation that Cosby admitted during a deposition that he intended to ply women with Quaaludes before bedding them barely fazed Camille Cosby, the insiders told The Post.
“Camille still doesn’t believe that Bill provided drugs and had sex with women without their consent,” said a source employed by the Cosby family. “She’s well aware of his cheating, but she doesn’t believe that her husband is a rapist.”
Mrs. Cosby is “a proud, dignified but stubborn woman. You can say that she’s standing by her husband, but really, the more people stand against him, the more she perceives it as an affront to her and all that she’s done to make him a star,” said another source who’s done business with the Cosbys and remains close to them.
Camille Cosby, 71, who is also her 78-year-old husband’s business manager, demanded last week at a crisis meeting with advisers that their lawyers and p.r. specialists “get back out in front of this,” the business source said.
“I created him, I knew what I was getting and we’ll fix this,” she told the gathering at a meeting at the couple’s Shelburne Falls, Mass., home Tuesday night.
“They are making him out to be such a bad guy, a monster,” Camille said, according to the source.
“People are jumping ship,” she added in an apparent reference to actress Jill Scott, who now says she’s sorry for her staunch support of Cosby, and comedian Jimmy Walker, another onetime defender who now calls America’s Dad the “O.J. Simpson of comedy.”
As prosecutors in Los Angeles and Las Vegas reportedly take a closer look at Cosby’s nearly 50 alleged sexual assaults on women dating back five decades, advisers last week urged him to sever ties with virtually everyone and permanently halt any comeback attempts.
“It’s advisable that you close ranks. That means [cut off] family, Hollywood family, friends, Hollywood friends,” the star was told, according to the business partner.
Camille Cosby remains on Bill’s side, despite his constant cheating.
She “stopped being embarrassed long ago” by her husband’s affairs, the family source said, but cannot tolerate the “invasion of privacy.”
The infidelities were “personal, between Bill and I,” she’s told her circle, the source said.
According to the family source, Camille confided, “You have to allow for space to let your partner do what he wants. I have done that and [Bill] has done that and there’s no jealously, no friction.”
She said every so often the couple goes through an “evaluation period” to determine whether the marriage should continue. “She even once talked to Oprah Winfrey about cleansing herself of baggage every now and again and how it always seems to lead her back to staying with Bill,” the family source said.
Rev. Carl Dianda, the couple’s longtime spiritual adviser who presided over their marriage 51 years ago, told The Post his “heart breaks” for her.
“She made so many sacrifices for him to have a career.”
A Cosby family representative did not return calls for comment.”
If I were her I’d dump him now and get half of his $400 million while he still has it.
Sad lives, and disordered people all around, and so much harm done to so many. It’s often easier to see clearly when looking at others’ problems, than it is to recognize what’s best to do in our own.
Mrs. Cosby’s perspective at 70 may be different than if she were 20 years younger.
Camille Crosby was his manager? That explains her. She vested everything in him. She says she MADE him what he is? Mebbie so. She sold her soul to the devil.
Bill Cosby was wonderful except for just one little thing. He had a permanent anger against women, a misogynist seeking revenge by having total power and control over these women.
The problem about staying married to a man with this one little problem… is that it’s not a little problem and this “little” aspect to their personality is the one thing that defines EVERYTHING about them.
Camille Cosby enabled him. By doing so, she was an accomplice. She KNEW. As his manager, she took care of the problem by organizing others to help her husband get away with drugging and RAPING.
And like a sociopath, when the victim screams out their pain of being assaulted, he AND Camille lease their rage on them. A whole community of people came together to smear and destroy the victim. That is what “those women” get for not submitting to being degraded and humiliated and assaulted.
Sounds familiar to me, deja vu. …hmmmm. Yep. Smear and silence the victim. Smear campaignes. Just standard operating procedure…for sociopaths.
All these years of NO JUSTICE for the victims. FINALLY, people are listening… and ya know what? Being HEARD is VERY VERY healing.
The ‘wonderful’ is 100% fake, for the purpose of deception. I wonder how many spaths never get caught (in this lifetime)?
NWHSOM”..I no longer think Camille is brain-washed. OK, maybe the first couple years of their marriage but as his success grew and the money poured in the game changed.
By all reports Camille is an intelligent and shrewd business woman. Early on when they lived in LA Cosby was partying and spending money as fast as it was coming in nearly bankrupting them. At that point she took over managing their finances and his career, building their fortune up to what it is today.
She made a business out of Bill Cosby and she fiercely doesn’t want her business to go under. It’s easier for her to remain emotionally unaffected by these victims when years ago she decided Cosby was more of a money making business than a husband. Let’s read into what she was really saying”..“You have to allow for space to let your (business) partner do what he wants. I have done that and [Bill] has done that and there’s no jealously, no friction.” Don’t care anymore, just keep the bucks rolling in.
Indeed, she sold her soul to the devil. Money corrupts. Yes, she knew! She enabled him! She was as complicit as his attorneys, staff, assistants, PR people and any others associated with him. He got away with it as long as he did because he had layers of people insulating him. Now, she’s opened herself up to a big fat lawsuit as well.
I agree knownow,
I don’t think Camille was brainwashed at all. I think, like us here on LF, that she learned in short order that Bill liked to dominate and humiliate women in a certain way. But, like us, she tried to find a way to keep her dream. Only she took it WAY far beyond, she “couldn’t beat him”, so she joined him.
I never knowingly enabled my husband. He told me that he was the reason for the success in his biz partnership and I just thought the partner and his wife were ungrateful and arrogant. They acted like they did MY husband the favor. Now I know the truth. My husband took credit for a lot of people’s work. He sure did take credit for mine, and smeared me as a couch potato when that wasn’t the truth at all. So when people were mean to me, I just avoided them.
But Camille not only “made peace with it”, she validated his behavior and enabled it. And she cleaned up the crap that came after. Unlike me, who wanted the honorable, dignified, salt of the earth husband, Camille wanted the fame, the money, the power.
And YES YES YES, knownow, she was as complicit as Bill. As his manager, Camille called in the heavies to stomp on and threaten victims (if you say anything, you’ll never work in this town again), and like my husband’s minions, she re-defined victims into enemies and justified perpetrating the nightmare that followed onto those victims. She was like some of the women my husband cheated with, the ones that made my life hell, because I “didn’t understand him and they did”. Witch. I felt sorry for her until I found out she was his business manager. NOT blindsided. She was his accomplice.
Knownow, anyone who is around a sociopath IS brain washing, mind controlled, manipulate, lied to, has had gas lighting abuse done to them, they have experienced reward & punishment at the hands of their abuser…..this is what sociopaths do to control people & spin their heads around so they keep defending the sociopaths horrible behavior all along they are calling it out to their abuser.
When I was with my ex I didn’t know which way was up and which way was down…this is what they do to victims. It’s constant drama, chaos & confusion on a daily bases. I was working full time & running his business full time because he would have run us into a financial tail spin had I not along with his pity play that he “needed help” mean while he was out chasing never ending women to fill his sex addiction. Did I see things YES but he was so masterful at spinning my head away and convincing me they were lying & what I was seeing (gas lighting abuse) was not the truth. Add in the fact that I was psychically exhausted from not only the chaos but the 7 days a week working 365 days a year.
Lets give Camille a break she is married to one of the most evil & masterful sociopaths maybe psychopath on this planet. She IS a victim of a sociopath just like all of these other woman she just needs help out of this abusive relationship to see the truth and to know her gut instinct was right from the very first day she met this guy. She also stays because she is very religious plus she is 71 years old and it might be to scary to her to get a divorce at her age and be alone.
Camille is a victim & we should not speak ill of a victim on LF as it is a safe heaven for all…hopefully one day soon Camille will find LF and open her mind with the truth.
Jan7 ” Yes Camille is a victim. Her children are victims. The American public collectively is a victim. Everybody who has ever come into contact with Cosby is a victim. But the women he sexually assaulted are HER VICTIMS too, because she knew what he was doing and as his business manager enabled it to continue and now she’s smearing the victims and re-victimizing them.
“She said every so often the couple goes through an “evaluation period” to determine whether the marriage should continue. “She even once talked to Oprah Winfrey about cleansing herself of baggage every now and again and how it always seems to lead her back to staying with Bill,” the family source said.”
So she has considered leaving him on several occasions but after all these years has chosen to stay with him, I think in large part because of the money, her children, social standing, and HER legacy. She’s had more support and resources, financial and community wise, available to her than any of us ever had when we made the painful decision to disconnect from our sociopathic abusers.
I’m sure she takes solace in her faith, friends and children to see her through a marriage to an evil sociopath but years ago she chose not to dwell on the marriage as a relationship but as a money making business.
Jan7
I get what you’re saying but I am also aware that even as topsy turvy upside down my world became when I was married to my ex, I still retained knowledge of right/wrong. I also knew the dif between various women that my husband had affairs with… that some were snowed by him while others were the female version of him. I don’t believe Camille is a victim. She’s a predator, not sexual, but out for power, prestige, and money. And no matter how my ex messed with my mind, I NEVER victimized anyone, not for gain, not even for revenge. I could not live with myself if I chose to do what Camille did.
Just because someone is married to a sociopath doesn’t mean she/he is a victim. Just like my x BIL and SIL,they are together because they compliment each other’s thuggery…OVERT sociopaths while my ex was Covet.
All I can say is read more on sociopathic abuse & brain washing/mind control. Read the book Freedom of Mind by Steven Hassan (Donna just posted a review last week) you will see things differently. Like a cult follower Camille is following her cult leader (Cosby).
Camille did not set these victims up to meet him…she did not say go drug & rape these women. Cosby has been manipulating her mind from day one….what drugs has he been feeding her for 50 years to get away with his abuse? We don’t know what drugs she is on now whether Rx or off the street that he might be feeding her so she can not think clearly. Like all victims she looks like she is in a fog…she looks like she is a zombie, robot step ford wife.
find compassion & empathy for a women that has endured the full brunt of his evil sociopathic ways for 50 years. Camille is not educated on sociopathic behavior/traits/control techniques if she were she would have left him years ago.
Like I stated everyone that is in contact with a sociopath is abused…the closer you get to a sociopath’s “inner circle” the worse the abuse becomes. Right now Cosby is in full manipulation mode with his wife, children, friends etc. He is turning everyones heads & shifting blame to all his other victims…his pity play is at full swing…his gas lighting abuse is off the charts…when a sociopaths is being exposed their abuse becomes worse for their family members.
Keep an open mind that is all I am asking. Everyone belittled Christie Brinkley ex husbands second wife on another site because she was saying Christie was lying about her ex…I said the same she is a victims who is not educated she will see the light soon enough…guess what she did educate herself, apologized to Ms Brinkley both privately & publicly because she was conned by her husband just like his ex wife Brinkley was conned. Together these too women joined forces to expose his lying manipulative, cunning evil ways. Hopefully Camille will find out the truth by someone educating her which will open up her mind from all the brain washing/mind control.
Again everyone who is in contact with Cosby is a victims. everyone! His family, friends, coworkers, these courages women that have come forward and even the viewing public has been conned by Cosby. He is masterful with manipulation…masterful!!
he is also using “sociopath triangulation” between his wife & these courageous victims that have come forward to spin his wives mind.
Jan7
You make some excellent points. Since I don’t know for certain that Cosby’s wife isn’t a different version of the same monster, I will suspend my judgment. Yes, I imagine he did use triangulation, a perfect tool to vilify the victims. But I will say, no matter how vicious my husbands women were to me, I never destroyed their lives, and I did have the power to, but destroying others/vengeance is NOT who I chose to be. I just wanted them to stop attacking me.
You are very kind Jan7. I hope she is worthy of you.
Two more courage victims step forward…From the Guardian:
“Two more of Bill Cosby’s accusers have joined a motion to have the whole of a deposition unsealed from a 2005 case in which the former comedian testified to having given a woman the sedative quaaludes before having sex with her.
Bill Cosby’s defenders split after revelation comedian drugged women
Read more
One of them has also attacked the National Enquirer for allegedly suppressing a 2005 interview with her in exchange for an exclusive from Cosby about his daughter’s drug use.
Beth Ferrier and Rebecca Lynn Neal were unidentified witnesses ”“ known as “Jane Does” ”“ in a 2005 case in which Cosby was sued by Andrea Constand, the first of more than two dozen women to come forward with allegations of sexual abuse against the comedian.
Last week a judge granted a motion by the Associated Press to unseal part of Cosby’s deposition. Constand has now been joined by Ferrier and Neal in a motion to have the rest of the deposition, which has so far been barred from public view, unsealed.
In a statement Gloria Allred, the lawyer representing both Ferrier and Neal, said she was concerned the partial testimony, “if believed”, would cause reputational damage to her clients.
“After reading Mr Cosby’s statements in the deposition, I am surprised that he says that he doesn’t remember me,” said Neal in a statement on Monday. “I saw and spoke to Mr Cosby for weeks and weeks at the health club I worked at in Las Vegas. He played tennis there. He even called my mother’s home and talked to her and her sister that was visiting from Texas.
“I was at my sister’s home years later after he drugged and sexually assaulted me, and I told her what had happened to me,” Neal continued. “That was around 1986. Up until then, I hadn’t told anyone about what had happened to me. I was embarrassed by it all.”
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In her own statement, Ferrier said: “It is important for the world to know the truth about how Bill Cosby hunted me like a predator.
“My refusal of his constant advances fuelled his desire and eventual drugging rape ritual. In the recently released excerpts of his deposition, Bill Cosby admits that he was with me in Denver and that he ’probably’ had sex with me.”
Both Ferrier and Neal have told their stories to the press since the Constand lawsuit. However, while it was known that Ferrier was one of the Jane Does in the case, it was not until Monday known that Neal also was one.
Allred told the Guardian that after Constand settled the suit, and the court proceedings were sealed, Ferrier tried to tell her story to the National Enquirer, which pulled the story after Cosby offered them an exclusive about his daughter’s drug use.
In her statement, Ferrier said she was speaking out not just against Cosby, but also against the Enquirer.
“I am extremely upset that Bill Cosby was able to quash my interview with the National Enquirer and that the National Enquirer suppressed my story, which if it had been published by them, would have shed light on Bill Cosby’s horrific conduct years earlier,” she said.
The owner of the National Enquirer, American Media, issued a statement in response to the allegations last week.
“The National Enquirer, more than any other publication, was unflinching in our aggressive coverage of allegations against Mr Cosby beginning in 2000 when everyone else avoided the story,” a spokesman told the Wrap. “We continue to remain aggressive in our reporting today and stand by the integrity of our coverage of this story which we have taken the lead on for more than a decade.”..”