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
US weekly Magazine: “Jay Leno is mystified by those who don’t believe the women who have come forward with accusations against Bill Cosby. The late night alum opened up about the accused Cosby Show star during a Q&A session at the NAPTE conference in Miami on Wednesday, Jan. 21…..
“I don’t know why it’s so hard to believe women,” Leno told comedian Tom Papa, who moderated the conversation, when asked about the controversy surrounding Cosby. “You to go Saudi Arabia and you need two women to testify against a man. Here you need 25.”……”
I like that Jay Leno is pointing out the absurdity of logic that multiple victims means the rapes did not happen but…
to use Saudia Arabia as an example?
Saudia Arabia? Where women who have been raped are stoned to death for their “crime”.
I think that’s the irony he’s trying to point out….. Even where morality is archaic, they’d condemn Cosby with far less victims coming forward.
Another brave victim comes forward. Donna after reading her account I do think that Bill Cosby was grooming you for a future meeting in his “hotel room”. His pattern is to get young woman to trust him with a few uneventful meets then he invites them to his hotel room where he drug & rapes the victims. So glad you just left him at the sub shop that day.
Here is Cindra Ladd article. Cindra Ladd is a former entertainment executive in the film business who currently is involved with various charities in Los Angeles. Her husband, Alan Ladd Jr., is a film producer whose works includes Blade Runner, The Right Stuff and the Academy Award-winning best pictures Braveheart and Chariots of Fire. During his more than 50-year career he also served as president of Twentieth Century Fox and Chairman of MGM/UA.
In 1969 I met Bill Cosby while working in New York for the late film producer Ray Stark. I was a 21-year-old single woman in the world’s most exciting city. He was a 32-year-old internationally known comedian and television star, one of the most likeable and popular entertainers in the business. He asked for my number and I gave it to him.
We began hanging out, took in a movie, watched television and ate pizza and hot dogs in my apartment with my roommate. He was married to his current wife and he acted like a perfect gentleman who didn’t come on to either of us, which, I have to admit, made me wonder what his objective was.
One night we were going out to a movie. We agreed to meet at an apartment that he said belonged to a friend of his. I had a terrible headache but didn’t want to cancel the evening. He told me he had a miracle cure his doctor had given him that would get rid of the headache. He went into another room and came back with a capsule. I asked a couple of times what it was. Each time he reassured me, asking, “Don’t you trust me?” Of course I did. This was Bill Cosby.
For more than 45 years I have tried to recall exactly what happened that night. To this day it remains a blur. I have a vague recollection of feeling like I was floating while walking through Times Square and watching some kind of Japanese samurai movie with him. I don’t remember where the theater was nor very much of the evening.
What I do recall, vividly and clearly, is waking up the next morning nude in the bed of his friend’s apartment and seeing Cosby wearing a white terrycloth bathrobe and acting as if there was nothing unusual. It was obvious to me that he had had sex with me. I was horrified, embarrassed and ashamed. There was a mirror above the bed, which shocked me further.
After some awkward small talk, I got out of there as fast as I could. Once in the elevator, I broke down crying, which I continued to do as I walked home to my apartment in the east 70s. It never occurred to me to go to the police. It was a different time and “date rape” was a concept that didn’t exist. I just kept asking myself over and over in disbelief why this had happened to me. Other than my roommate, I did not discuss that night with anyone for 36 years.
Like millions of people, I watched The Cosby Show at its zenith and was a fan. But as I watched Dr. Cliff Huxtable, so compassionate and kind, so honorable and wise, I could never reconcile that image with the Bill Cosby I encountered so many years ago.
Those who suffer from these types of assaults know the prison of shame, bewilderment and disbelief. Like so many victims, my way of coping was to shove the memory into the back of my mind. I only revealed nine years ago what happened that night to my husband of nearly 30 years after another woman went public with similar allegations and sued Cosby. I always thought I was the only one. I couldn’t believe he had done this to others. I told my story to our attorney, who is also a good friend, because I was considering going public then, but eventually chose not to because the case was settled.
This is the first time I have chosen to speak out about that night. It is also the last time I intend to address it publicly. I have no plans to sue, I don’t want or need money. I have no plans for a press conference or for doing any interviews.
So why speak out at all and why now? The simple answer is that it’s the right thing to do. The truth deserves to be known. As I write this, more than 20 women have come forward, many with stories that are remarkably similar to mine. In response to these brave women, I have read comments like, “What took them so long?” and “What are they after now”? I would ask these people to remember that up until relatively recently, prosecuting rape was a “he said/she said” proposition where the victim was blamed for having worn “suggestive clothing” or questioned as to why she went somewhere with her rapist.
When this happened to me, the idea of drugging someone and raping them was almost fantastical. It was years before “date rape” drugs made the news, but it was a perfect modus operandi for a predator, rendering his victim unconscious or so incapacitated as to be unable to clearly answer police questions about the incident. After having done a lot of work on myself, I realize that we are only as sick as the secrets we keep. Once those secrets are spoken aloud, even if to just one person, they lose their power. I no longer feel the shame that kept me silent. Yes, I could have told my story years ago, and in hindsight I probably should have. It’s time now that my voice be added and to finally pull the curtain back from this dark moment in my life.
Having come of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s before marrying in the mid 1980s at 37, I certainly have a history. The difference is that any other relationships were consensual … my encounter with Bill Cosby was most certainly not.
In the years since that night I have crossed paths with Cosby only once, when my husband, a highly successful Oscar-winning film executive and producer, introduced me to him. I was shaking, wondering if he would recognize me by my unusual first name. His reaction spoke volumes. To Bill Cosby, I was just another stranger.
______________________________
Cindra Ladd is a former entertainment executive in the film business who currently is involved with various charities in Los Angeles. Her husband, Alan Ladd Jr., is a film producer whose works includes Blade Runner, The Right Stuff and the Academy Award-winning best pictures Braveheart and Chariots of Fire. During his more than 50-year career he also served as president of Twentieth Century Fox and Chairman of MGM/UA.
As a 15 yr old girl from a poor and abusive family, I was raped and I remember wondering as I was screaming and shrieking, “how can this man stand my voice next to his ear?” I knew I was realllllly loud. As violent as the rape was, I was traumatized more after finding out that my creepy neighbor paid the man to rape me. It cost $20 to rape a 15 yr old virgin. I worked so hard during my childhood to hold myself as different from my abusive family. I based my value on that $20 price for most of my life. After the rape, who would ever have someone who was so worthless to my family, and then not even a virgin anymore, only worth being raped. I quit trying to do good in school, I gave up on college, I ran away a lot, I tried to find love with horrible boyfriends. I just went with the flow for years, until I fell into a fantastic job and found my purpose in life, a career that saved my life as much as I saved the lives of others.
I am VERY sensitive about rape and about pedophilia b/c my father was a pedophile and I considered my creepy neighbor a pedo as well. He had propositioned me for years and I just steered clear of him. The dirty old creepy neighbor ACTUALLY thought if I weren’t a virgin, that I’d submit to him.
I confess that I still feel some rage at the one thing of value that I had being taken from me. But I accepted that no one cared what happened to me, except me. As I have said here on LF, there is NO such thing as JUSTICE. If someone receives justice, it is RARE. I would NEVER have thought so many other women have also swallowed their rapes, pushing them to the back of their psyche, getting on with life.
Look at these disgusting men who have raped and raped and raped and felt ENTITLED to rape the innocence of women. Bill Cosby used his status and his knowledge of the law to rape FAR more women than have come forward. It’s clearly his M.O.
It does NOT give me any comfort that so many women are raped, but at least I know that I was not the only one who accepted there was no justice for themselves. I can’t do anything about me, but I will NOT give Bill Cosby a pass. The testimonies are detailed, and authentic. Those who claim it’s he said/she said are revealing themselves in a litmus test… they are the ones for whom rape is okay… people for whom I will NOT acknowledge as human.
NotWhatHeSaidofMe, my heart breaks reading your story. I am so sorry that you had to endure this horrific nightmare while so young…I am at a lose for words hon…I can not even image how you picked yourself up emotionally to get through all of the pain.
Thank you for sharing your story…I hear you.
HUGE Hugs to you.
Jan7
I got through with two thoughts:
1) Others have it worse than me.
2) I vowed that when I was of legal age, 18, then these abusers would not have control of me anymore. My life would belong to me.
And it did, until I married my ex. I was stupid. I thought only people like my birth family were that abusive. I had NO IDEA about covert abusers, abusers who have their own hidden agenda to harm. My family was covert, they were very open about what they wanted from me and how I “owed” them. My mother said I owed her because she was the reason I lived. That’s why turning 18 was so important to me, b/c then my debt to her was paid.
NWHSOM, I always want to give you a hug, but now more than ever.
HanaleiMoon
You are an angel person. There seems to be a LOT of angel people here on LF. That’s one way I know that EVENTUALLY justice will be done to the evil ones. GOD says so.
jenna23
How are things with your therapist? PLEASE, if you aren’t getting good help from your therapist and rape counselors, then get a DIFFERENT one. And as Jan7 has recommended, hormones and trauma chemistry is released in your body. I hope you are seeking the medical care that Jan7 recommends.
I am so glad to hear that you are going somewhere new. We are all pulling for you here. I know the depths of despair and can empathize, but all my feelings don’t help you a bit. You need hands on there. I am also glad you have family who love you. That makes a huge difference dearest jenna.
Let’s hope Cosby’s victims continue to come forward. Unfortunately his team of detectives may be having the intended effect of intimidating more victims from speaking out.
Recently Chloe Goins filed a criminal complaint claiming she was assaulted in 2008 at the Playboy mansion. This is significant, depending on the particular charge, as it falls within the statute of limitations. If so, there must be more victims that he assaulted within the last 6 years. It only takes one to prosecute this sociopath. According to a recent interview with her attorney Spencer Kuvin, she has a very good case but he wasn’t at liberty to discuss specifics. Of course Cosby’s attorneys fired back claiming they have documented evidence that he wasn’t in LA at the time she says she was assaulted. Aside from the 2005 settled out of court case and the recent lawsuit filed and dismissed in LA, this is the only time his attorneys have even specifically responded to a victim. It will take months for the LAPD to investigate this case which would involve the Playboy mansion (for videos), interviewing Hugh Hefner, and guests (famous and otherwise) that were present at that party.
It will be interesting to see how Bill Cosby, and his attorneys, lie and buy their way out of this one.
Comedian Roseanne Barr comes forward & states that Everyone knew in Hollywood…sociopaths keep everyone silent as their abuse continues…very sad for all of these young victims that no one in Hollywood spoke the truth about Cosby.
Yahoo News report:
At every stop on Bill Cosby’s concert tour, protestors have made their voices heard regarding the allegations of rape leveled at the legendary comic.
The always outspoken Roseanne Barr, whose sitcom, “Roseanne,” not only dominated the ratings alongside Cosby’s “The Cosby Show” in the 1980s, but was also produced by the same company, spoke her mind when Access Hollywood’s Shaun Robinson visited the set of “Cristela,” where Barr is guest starring.
Cosby, through his reps, has denied the allegations and has not been charged with any crime.
Roseanne Barr Talks Bill Cosby
When Robinson sat down with Barr she asked, “You’ve been pretty vocal on social media about the allegations against Bill Cosby. Did those allegations surprise you?”
“No, because like everybody else — now I’m really [going to get] in trouble ”“ but, you know, like every woman in Hollywood — there’s hardly any hairdressers or waitresses or working women who don’t know somebody,” Barr said. “We’ve all heard it for a long time, and it surprises nobody.”
Roseanne On The Cosby Scandal: Can He ’Make It Right’?
Robinson asked Barr why she thinks women are speaking up now with allegations against Cosby.
“Well, ’cause nobody gives a damn… until a man says it. But once Hannibal Buress said it,” Barr replied, referencing Buress’ bit on Cosby, which made headlines after being captured in a clip, posted on PhillyMag.com last year.
Barr said she holds out hope for her fellow comedian.
“Maybe it’s not the end of it. … I have hopes for this great comic. I do. I have hopes that he would just make it clean, and make it, you know, make it right, and I do think he could do that,” she said.
Asked how he could make it right, Barr said, “There’s so many ways. He’s got a billion bucks.”
“And, you know, I hope he gets a lot of suggestions from people who say they care about him, of how to do that, ’cause we all want a happy ending, and a just ending,” she added.
“It sounds like you’re saying that the redemption is give the women a monetary settlement?” Robinson asked.
“Whatever it is, I hope he finds it, and I really do. I hope he finds it because, I mean, he’s a great talent,” Barr answered. “It’s too bad, but, I mean, we’re all half nuts anyway. But, I mean, we go like this, ‘Hey, I made a mistake.’ How hard is this really? Seriously.”
And does Barr think Cosby’s legacy is permanently damaged?
“I think it’s damaged, but, I mean, there’s none of us alive who can’t go, ‘I made a mistake. I had a really bad problem and I’m fessing up to it. And here’s a scholarship.’ … You know, there’s a million ways around it to go. But there’s nothing more powerful than, ‘I am sorry.'”
na7-
Thanks for this information. And here’s my response to Roseanne Barr…
No, no, no! Please Roseanne!
Doing something once, coming clean and making retribution….. that’s a mistake. Doing something 30 times, and then defaming the victims whose lives you plundered, a mistake? I used to think Roseanne was ballsy, but together. I’m so disappointed!!
Joyce
I saw this on Access Hollywood last night and it was just plain odd. The total of what she said added up to zero and I’m not sure why she said anything at all. Very disappointing.
Jm…I commend Roseanne for speaking the truth now…maybe just maybe people will listen to all of these Hollywood comedians that are coming forward to tell the truth about Cosby…no one else in Hollywood is speaking out…their silence speaks volumes…this man (Cosby) has been in Hollywood for over 50 years and not one of his long time friends has come out in defense of him only his lawyer, his wife & daughter (which I am sure he manipulated both of them to do so) and one of his co stars who does not want the residual checks to stop now that the rerun Cosby show has been pulled.
I just feel so bad for these young victims at the time they were drugged/raped that no one protected them by speaking out to the magazines/tv/police…very sad but I am very proud of all of these victims for joining force and speaking their truth…that is powerful and shows that these woman are strong & courages.
jm_short
I agree about Roseanne Barr…uggg. She speaks as though he just had sex with these women.
Bill Cosby did the equivalent of kidnapping dozens of women, rendered them unconscious, and while completely incapacitated raped them in whatever way he chose for as long as he chose, and because there was no DNA then, and no tests for being drugged, he ensured any complaint filed would go just as he intended, smeared them as greedy lying celebrity stalkers. SOMEBODY supplied him with the drugs. And SOME legal person taught him how to avoid prosecution. Wish there was a blue dress in someone’s closet somewhere….
But gee, all will be fine if he says “I’m sorry?”. Now why would he ever do that? His wife looked the other way about his affairs, I am sure she perceived these victims as “just affairs”.
This is a VIOLENT predator rapist. Supposedly Roseanne has a history of sexual abuse. I don’t understand with that background how she can be so blasé about it. Frankly she sounds like a crass comedian.
Finding his supplier is the key to finding him guilty of these crimes!
Someone sold the drugs to him. And I’m sure on more than one occasion, someone stood by the door so no one could get in while he did his worst.
Have you all signed the petition to outlaw Sexual Assault by Fraud in New Jersey? You don’t have to be a NJ resident for your voice to count! Please log onto change.org and enter Sexual Assault By Fraud in the keyword, today!
Huge thanks!
Joyce