“I know people are tired of me not saying anything, but a guy doesn’t have to answer to innuendos,” Bill Cosby said last week. “People should fact check. People shouldn’t have to go through that and shouldn’t answer to innuendos.”
Innuendos. The definition of “innuendo,” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “an oblique allusion.” It’s a strange choice of words on Cosby’s part, since there is nothing indirect about the shocking series of allegations that have been levied against the man formerly known as Cliff Huxtable. A pattern has clearly emerged among many of the women—totaling 18 so far—who’ve come forward sharing stories alleging inappropriate sexual behavior on Cosby’s part: companionship, abuse of trust, and a drugged beverage leading to an unwanted sexual violation. The alleged incidents occurred between 1965 and 2004, from his days on I Spy to his years as the sweater-wearing patriarch of The Cosby Show, which was the No. 1 show on television for 5 years straight, to those as a sexagenarian philanthropist and civil rights crusader.
Now, the only one who’s been “oblique” thus far concerning these horrific accusations is the 77-year-old Cosby who, aside from the above quote given to a Florida Today reporter last Friday, an awkward silence and head-shaking to NPR’s Scott Simon, and a truly bizarre negotiation with an on-camera AP reporter wherein the comedian asked that the rape question (and ensuing non-answer) be “scuttled.”
ADVERTISEMENT
On Friday, Cosby’s longtime attorney, Marty Singer, issued the following rebuttal:
“The new, never-before-heard claims from women who have come forward in the past two weeks with unsubstantiated, fantastical stories about things they say occurred 30, 40, or even 50 years ago have escalated far past the point of absurdity,” he said. “These brand new claims about alleged decades-old events are becoming increasingly ridiculous, and it is completely illogical that so many people would have said nothing, done nothing, and made no reports to law enforcement or asserted civil claims if they thought they had been assaulted over a span of so many years.”
He added in closing, “When will it end? It is long past time for this media vilification of Mr. Cosby to stop.”
Without further ado, here are Cosby’s accusers—and their disturbing stories, in order of the date(s) that the alleged sexual assault(s) or misbehavior(s) took place:
KRISTINA RUEHLI (1965)
The 71-year-old New Hampshire grandmother told Philadelphia Magazine that in 1965, back when she was 22, she met Cosby while working as a secretary at talent agency Artists Agency Corp. She claimed that Cosby approached her and said: “I’m going to be on Hollywood Palace tonight, and I’m going to have a party at my home afterwards.” He invited Ruehli, and she says she went. When she arrived, she says around 10 p.m., she alleged that she was surprised to find no one else there.
Then, Ruehli says Cosby poured her two bourbon-and-7’s and after that, “I just don’t remember much.” She says she “completely passed out,” adding, “He must have drugged me. There is just one point at which I was having a drink and feeling normal and the next I was somehow passed out completely. He must have slipped something into my drink. It's the only way to go lights-out like that.”
When she came to, she alleges that she woke up in his bed and Cosby had his shirt off. “He was attempting to force me into oral sex,” Ruehli told Philadelphia Magazine. “He had his hand on my head. He had his cock out, and he had my head pushed close enough to it — I just remember looking at his stomach hair. And the hair on his chest. I had never seen a black man naked before.”
She added, “And it never went past that. I immediately came to and was immediately very sick. I pushed myself away and ran to the bathroom and threw up. I was feeling really ill. And I never got sick like that from alcohol, at least not that small of an amount. Once I threw up — it was five in the morning by now, I think — I left the bathroom and he wasn't there. I don't know where he went. But I left right away. I was able to drive myself home. I didn't live that far away.”
Ruehli claimed she kept the story to herself because she was “embarrassed,” and only decided to come forward when Constand filed her lawsuit against Cosby, serving as one of her Jane Doe’s. “I don’t need money or aggravation,” she said. “I’m very wealthy, so I have nothing to gain. But I wanted to come forward to tell the truth to back up other people.”
CARLA FERRIGNO (1967)
The wife of Hulk TV star Lou Ferrigno since 1980 and former Playboy bunny says that in 1967, she had a disturbing encounter with Cosby. “I am so upset. I'm literally shaking in my body from all of this,” Ferrigno said as she began telling her story on the John and Ken show on Los Angeles’ KFI radio station. She says that, shortly after a rough breakup, she went on a double-date with a man and Cosby and his wife, Camille. After they saw a movie together, they went to Cosby’s house, and before long Camille had retired, and her date had disappeared—leaving Ferrigno alone playing pool with Cosby.“He grabbed me, pulled me to him and kisses me on the mouth like really, really rough,” Ferrigno said. “I was a tough girl. I just took my hands and pushed him away and said, ‘What are you doing?’ and I said, ‘Hey, well, I’ve never been kissed by a black man before.’” She says she told him it was “no different,” to which Cosby allegedly angrily responded, “Oh yeah? You wouldn’t have said that if it weren’t different.” Then, she says Cosby attempted to force himself on her again. “He came at me again and I just pushed and jumped and ran and I got out of his way and ran out of the hall and this guy was coming out of one of the rooms and I said I want to go home,” claimed Ferrigno.
She says that she told a girlfriend about five years ago when she heard of other women coming forward, but the girlfriend didn’t believe her. Then, she says she told her husband who told her to “forget about it.” Ferrigno went on to claim that Cosby “loved young blonde pretty girls. I guess this guy would go out and get them for him,” and also alleges that Cosby’s longtime wife, Camille, is aware of her husband’s behavior. “All my life I thought that,” said Ferrigno. “I thought it was disgusting that she stayed with him because she knew.”
Following Ferrigno’s KFI radio story, Cosby’s lawyer Marty Singer fired off the following statement:
“This continuation of a pattern of attacks on Mr. Cosby has entered the realm of the ridiculous, with a purported ‘forceful kiss’ at a party in 1967, nearly 50 years ago, being treated as a current ‘news story’ and grossly mischaracterized as ‘sexual assault.’ This is utter nonsense.”
JOAN TARSHIS (1969)
Tarshis, a former actress, music publicist, and journalist, first shared her story on November 16 of this year on the blog Hollywood Elsewhere. She claimed to have met Cosby when she was 19 in the autumn of 1969, and visited him on the Universal Studios lot where he was shooting The Bill Cosby Show. Tarshis says he’d make a special drink called a “redeye”—a Bloody Mary topped with a beer. She says he introduced her to Sidney Poitier and promised to help her career.
Then, one day Cosby made her one of his infamous “redeye” drinks while they were working on material in his cottage at Universal Studios.
“The next thing I remember was coming to on his couch while being undressed,” wrote Tarshis. “Through the haze I thought I was being clever when I told him I had an infection and he would catch it and his wife would know he had sex with someone. But he just found another orifice to use. I was sickened by what was happening to me and shocked that this man I had idolized was now raping me. Of course I told no one.” (She’d later tell CNN’s Don Lemon that Cosby had forced her to perform oral sex.)
Tarshis says that back home, her mother was so proud of her association with The Bill Cosby Show and Cosby that she couldn’t bring herself to tell her what had happened and when he called later that year inviting her to The Westbury Music Theater, her mother answered and she “was repulsed by the thought of seeing him again” but “saw no way out.” Tarshis claims Cosby sent her a limo to take her to a suite at the Sherry Netherland Hotel, where he served her another “redeye,” and then had another drink in the car on the way to the show, at which point she started “to feel a bit stoned.”
“When we got to Westbury and he went on, there was no seat for me,” wrote Tarshis. “I stood in the back of the theater with his chauffeur, feeling insulted that I wasn’t respected enough to be given a reserved seat. But soon after, I remember feeling very, very stoned and asking his chauffeur to take me back to the car. I was having trouble standing up. The next thing I remember was waking up in his bed back at the Sherry, naked. I remember thinking ‘You old shit, I guess you got me this time, but it’s the last time you’ll ever see me.’”
The 66-year-old added, “No one began talking until 2004. And though I knew I should say something, I still felt ashamed. Ashamed that I didn’t earlier.”
VICTORIA VALENTINO (1970)
The former Playboy Playmate met Cosby in 1970 at Café Figaro, a restaurant the comedian co-owned. Valentino, who was still reeling from the death of her 6-year-old son one year prior, was introduced to Cosby by her (and his) pal, Francesca Emerson, a fellow Playboy bunny. A few weeks later, Valentino and her pal, an aspiring actress named Meg Foster, met Cosby again at Café Figaro. He took the ladies out to dinner at Sneaky Pete’s, where Valentino alleges they each popped one red pill. “We were slurring words. I couldn’t function,” Valentino told The Washington Post. She says Cosby then drove them to an apartment in the Hollywood Hills where he was going to show them props from his TV series I Spy.
Once the trio got inside Cosby’s apartment, Valentino claims that Foster passed out, and that “the room was spinning.” Then, she says she observed Cosby “sitting in a love seat near Foster and she noticed that he had an erection.”
“I reached out, grabbing him, trying to get his attention, trying to distract him,” Valentino told The Post. “He 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 claims that she put up a fight but couldn’t stop Cosby from raping her, and that the comedian eventually left and told her to call a cab.
Valentino claims she told Emerson of the incident at the time, and Emerson “confirmed Valentino’s recollection” in an interview with The Post. But she never contacted the police. “What kind of credibility did I have?” said Valentino. “In those days, it was always the rape victim who wound up being victimized. You didn’t want to go to the police. That’s the last thing you wanted to do back then.”
LINDA JOY TRAITZ (1970)
Traitz, a 63-year-old New Yorker, wrote a Facebook post that was republished by Radar Online detailing a story claiming that, when she was 19, Bill Cosby sexually assaulted her. She says she worked at Café Figaro, a Los Angeles restaurant co-owned by Cosby, and one day he offered to give her a ride home.
“Instead, he drove out to the beach and opened a briefcase filled with assorted drugs and kept offering me pills ‘to relax,’ which I declined,” wrote Traitz. “He began to get sexually aggressive and wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer. I freaked out and demanded to be taken home. I never went after him for this and have no financial gain to put myself out there like this. I’m 63 years old now and felt compelled to speak out. To all of you refuse to believe that a beloved actor could do this, you are wrong. Human failings come in all shapes and sizes. Does him being a famous actor exonerate him from this?”
The former waitress elaborated on her alleged Cosby encounter in an interview with The Washington Post, saying that Cosby “lunged” at her and “grabbed my chest, grabbed me in the front all over.” The Post story continued: “She broke free, she said, and tumbled out of the car. She ran down the beach with Cosby in pursuit, but she tripped on that long peasant skirt and fell onto the sand, she said.” Traitz then claimed Cosby convinced her to get back in the car, took her to a shop to buy a new skirt, and that was that. She says she told her family, friends, and co-workers at the time, but decided not to get the authorities involved due to Cosby’s power.
Traitz, it should be noted, has a long criminal history that includes trafficking Oxycodone, ID fraud, theft, and more.
LOUISA MORITZ (1971)
Moritz, 68, is a Cuban-born American actress who was born Louisa Castro. After making her film debut in the softcore flick The Man From O.R.G.Y., she went on to make appearances in films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Cheech & Chong’s Up in Smoke. She told TMZ that, in 1971 at the age of 25, Cosby sexually assaulted her in her dressing room prior to his appearance on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. She alleges that he entered her dressing room and “implied that he was going to see to it that I will become a major star through his direction,” before he “suddenly approached me and took out his penis, which was now in the line of my face and pressed up against it,” Moritz told TMZ. “He took his hands and put them on the back of my head and forced his penis in my mouth, saying, ‘Have a taste of this. It will do you good in so many ways.’”
Moritz claims that as Cosby was walked out of her dressing room, he turned around and said, “Now you don’t want to upset me and the plans for your future, do you?” She also told TMZ that she plans to file a civil suit against Cosby.
Of the allegation, Cosby’s lawyer, Marty Singer, told TMZ: “We've reached a point of absurdity. The stories are getting more ridiculous… Moritz is a lawyer who was disciplined by the California State Bar and ordered not to practice.” In the same article, TMZ claims that they pulled the documents and Moritz “can’t practice because she didn’t report certain quarterly reports,” but that “the nature of the reports is unclear from the documents.”
THERESE SERIGNESE (1976)
Serignese, now 57 and a twice-divorced single mother of 3, was Jane Doe 10 in Constand’s civil suit against Cosby. She claims that Cosby approached her in the lobby of a Las Vegas Hilton in 1976, put his arm around her, and said, “Will you marry me?” She was 19. He was the headliner at the hotel that evening, and allegedly offered her a ticket to his show. After his performance, she claims she was escorted to the green room and stayed after the rest of the people there left. When she was alone with Cosby, she claims he approached her as she sat on a couch and extended his hand “and he had two pills there, and a glass of water, and he told me to take them,” Serignese told People. She says he told her they were Quaaludes, and she “didn’t know what to do, so I just obeyed.”“My next memory is I felt high; I don't remember what happened in the meantime,” said Serignese. “Then my next memory is being in that vanity room, by that big mirror, and he didn't have any clothes on, and obviously I didn't either by that point. I don't know how they got off. I don't have that memory.”She claims they were in the middle of having sex. “I was just like bent over, and he was saying all kinds of dirty stuff,” she said. “I felt powerless, I didn't know what to do, and the drugs certainly enhanced that. That's what I remember – having sex with him, not wanting to be there, not knowing how to get out of there.”
Despite the alleged violation, Serignese admitted to People that she’d continued to see Cosby and request money from him afterwards until about four weeks after their first encounter, when she told him she thought she was pregnant and then allegedly “got sent away.” She says she maintained occasional contact with Cosby up until 1996, when the comedian allegedly wired her $10,000 after she reminded him of a promise he’d made to give her $500 for every ‘A’ grade she got in nursing school, and also told the AP that Cosby sent her $5,000 from his management company, William Morris Agency, and provided them a letter allegedly from the management company and signed by William Morris agent Tom Illius, who repped Cosby until his death in 2011.
TAMARA LUCIER GREEN (1970s)
In February 2005, Green, a California lawyer, made an appearance on the Today show accusing Cosby of sexual assault in the 1970s. She said she was motivated to come forward after hearing of Constand’s accusations (she was one of the Jane Doe’s in Constand’s suit), and said that her attack had “the same M.O.” Green claimed she was suffering from the flu, so Cosby offered her some Contac—cold medication—and she accepted. He produced two blue pills, which she swallowed. “In about, I don't know, 20 to 30 minutes I felt great and then about 10 minutes after that I was almost literally face down on the table of this restaurant… I was very, very, very stoned,” Green told Today.
Green said that Cosby then escorted her home. “He took me into my apartment and then very helpfully and nicely was prepared to take off my clothes and help me into bed and pet me, and that’s how the actual assault began… The center of my being understood that he had gone from helping me to groping me and kissing me and touching me and handling me and you know, taking off my clothes,” said Green.
She claimed to have told Cosby “that if he didn’t kill me and he tried to rape me, it was going to go very badly,” and that she was “furious” and “throwing things around.” After she put up a fight, she claims that Cosby left two $100 bills on her coffee table and exited her apartment.
Green told Today that she neglected to go forward with the alllegations because of the “shame” she felt as well as Cosby’s “tremendous wealth, power, a P.R. machine, a reputation.” In addition, Green said that “very soon after the attack, my brother was terminally ill in the Children's Hospital, and Bill went there and gave him a portable radio, glad-handed with all the children and was the hero of the terminal children's ward. My brother died not long after that. I was unwilling at the time my brother was alive to take that away from him.”
Cosby’s lawyer at the time claimed that Green’s allegations were “absolutely false” and that Cosby “does not know the name Tamara Green or Tamara Lucier.”
JOYCE EMMONS (late 1970s)
Emmons, who ran a comedy club in Newport Beach, California, and partied with Cosby and mutual friends in the 1970s and 1980s, told TMZ that the comedian had “a drawer full of drugs” in his Las Vegas hotel suite, including Quaaludes, which partygoers would knowingly take—but she never witnessed him taking any.According to her account, Emmons says that one night she developed a migraine and Cosby offered her “a white pill” which was “a little strong.” Emmons told TMZ that she swallowed it, lost consciousness, and when she awoke, was naked in bed in Cosby’s hotel room with a friend of his whose advances she’d shot down that same night. She says that she later rolled up on Cosby and asked him what drug he gave her, and that he allegedly laughed and confessed that he had given her a Quaalude.
Cosby’s lawyer, Marty Singer, told TMZ of Emmons’ story: “The brand new claims about decade-old events are becoming increasingly ridiculous.”
JANICE DICKINSON (1982)
The former supermodel, 59, recently sat down with Entertainment Tonight and claimed that Cosby raped her in 1982. She says he reached out to her to meet about a possible job offer when she was fresh out of rehab, and help with her burgeoning singing career. So, Cosby allegedly had her travel to Lake Tahoe, where he was performing. Dickinson claims that while they were having dinner in Lake Tahoe, Cosby gave her a glass of red wine and a pill—something she’d requested because she was menstruating and suffering from stomach pains.
“The next morning I woke up, and I wasn't wearing my pajamas, and I remember before I passed out that I had been sexually assaulted by this man,” she told ET. “Before I woke up in the morning, 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. The next morning I remember waking up with my pajamas off and there was semen in between my legs.”
Dickinson says that she tried to include the sexual assault in her 2002 autobiography, but that when she submitted a draft to her publisher HarperCollins, Cosby and his lawyers threatened them, forcing them to remove her account. The book’s ghostwriter, Pablo Fenjves, confirmed that Dickinson had told him the sexual assault story back in 2002 for the book, according to an interview conducted by inTouch. Dickinson later wrote an op-ed for Entertainment Tonight explaining the alleged incident in greater detail, and supplied TMZ with Polaroids she claims to have taken of Cosby in his patchwork robe “after she took the pill but before she blacked out.”
Cosby’s lawyer, Marty Singer, said last Wednesday: “Janice Dickinson’s story accusing Bill Cosby of rape is a lie,” and claimed he was never contacted about the story inclusion in her book.
RENITA CHANEY HILL (~1982-1986)
Hill, 47 and a former actress, told KDKA Pittsburgh that she met Cosby back in 1982 when she was a 15-year-old model and aspiring actress and the comedian was casting roles in Picture Pages, his educational TV series. She says her modeling agency landed her an audition, and she got the job. “Promises of bright lights and fame. That’s where I thought I was headed, that’s what everyone who knew me thought I was headed,” Hill told KDKA. Her casting on the show allegedly signaled the start of a 4-year relationship with Cosby.
However, each time they’d meet up together in his hotel room at night, she claims that he’d serve her a drink—she was underage—and then things would get fuzzy. “One time, I remember just before I passed out, I remember him kissing and touching me and I remember the taste of his cigar on his breath, and I didn’t like it,” Hill said. “I remember another time when I woke up in my bed the next day and he was leaving, he mentioned 'You should probably lose a little weight.' I thought that odd, how would he know that?”
She added, “I always thought it was odd that after I had this drink I would end up in my bed the next morning and I wouldn’t remember anything.” Hill claims that she can’t remember whether or not Cosby raped her because she wasn’t conscious. “It just felt weird to me, and I remember being in high school saying to him, ‘I’ll come see you, but I don’t want to drink because it makes me feel funny,'” said Hill. “And he would tell me that if I didn’t drink, I couldn’t come see him.”
Hill alleges that, although the comedian was footing the bill for her college tuition, she chose to break off contact with Cosby when she was 19. She also says that’s when she decided to quit acting. While she says her husband and three daughters were aware of her alleged history with Cosby, Hill claims that she decided to come forward now after hearing Cosby’s attorney, Marty Singer, try and refute the sexual assault allegations made by a number of other women.
“No one wants to be associated with something like this,” said Hill. “But the bottom line for me is that no one has the right to violate someone else, no matter who they are. I don’t care how big they are or how the community sees them, it’s not right.”
BETH FERRIER (1984)
Former model Ferrier, who was Jane Doe 5 in Constand’s civil suit against Cosby, claimed in a June 2005 interview with the Philadelphia Daily News that she was put in touch with Cosby in 1984 through her modeling agent and that she, a modeling booker, and a male model all went to dinner with Cosby at Mr. Chow’s in New York. When they retuned to Cosby’s place, he served coffee, which Ferrier alleges made the other woman ill, so the male model took her home. Ferrier stayed, and claims she entered into an affair with Cosby.
After she ended a 6-month-long consensual affair with Cosby, she claims he drugged her backstage before a performance in Denver. “He said, ‘Here’s your favorite coffee, something I made, to relax you,’” Ferrier, 46, told the Daily News. Then, she claims that after she drank the coffee, she felt woozy. She woke up and realized she had no recollection of the past several hours.
“I woke up and I was in the back of my car all alone,” Ferrier said. “My clothes were a mess. My bra was undone. My top was untucked. And I'm sitting there going, ‘Oh my God. Where am I?’ What's going on? I was so out of it. It was just awful.”
She then claimed that security guards approached her car saying Cosby told them to escort her home. Ferrier claimed that, after the alleged drugs wore off, she confronted Cosby at his hotel and he claimed she’d “just had too much to drink.” According to the Daily News, Ferrier sold her story to The Enquirer for $7,500, and was interviewed by the publication and even passed a lie detector test.
“I want to support Andrea,” she told the Daily News. “And I want to support Tamara. I want Bill Cosby to know I'm not afraid of him and that what he did to me was wrong.”
BARBARA BOWMAN (1986)
Bowman, a former model, first made her allegations against Cosby in a cover story for Philadelphia Magazine published June 9, 2006. It was titled “Dr. Huxtable & Mr. Hyde.” She told People that November about her alleged horror story. Bowman claimed her modeling agent introduced her to Cosby in 1985 at a Denver comedy club. She was just 17, and things were a bit odd from the start. During their first meeting, Cosby gave her an acting exercise. “He wanted me to imagine fully that I was inebriated, that I was out of control, drunk or drugged… He wanted me to just slump in my chair, and he wanted my limbs to be limp, and he would whisper in my ear what he wanted,” she told People.
Still, he didn’t harm her. And, when Bowman’s agent arranged for her to move to New York City in 1986, Cosby continued to mentor her, and she claims he even introduced her to his Cosby Show costars Phylicia Rashad and Lisa Bonet. Then, Bowman claims he assaulted her one night in a Reno hotel room in 1986, telling People: “It was in a hotel in Reno, claims Bowman, that Cosby assaulted her one night in 1986. ‘He took my hand and his hand over it, and he masturbated with his hand over my hand,’ says Bowman, who, although terrified, kept quiet about the incident and continued as Cosby's protégé because, she says, ‘Who's gonna believe this? He was a powerful man. He was like the president.’ Before long she was alone with Cosby again in his Manhattan townhouse; she was given a glass of red wine, and ‘the next thing I know, I'm sick and I'm nauseous and I'm delusional and I'm limp and ... I can't think straight.... And I just came to, and I'm wearing a [men's] T-shirt that wasn't mine, and he was in a white robe.’”
She also told People she was sexually assaulted by Cosby “a month or two later” in Atlantic City—an incident that she retold in a recent op-ed for The Washington Post.
“As a teenager, I tried to convince myself I had imagined it,” wrote Bowman. “I even tried to rationalize it: Bill Cosby was going to make me a star and this was part of the deal. The final incident was in Atlantic City, where we had traveled for an industry event. I was staying in a separate bedroom of Cosby’s hotel suite, but he pinned me down in his own bed while I screamed for help. I’ll never forget the clinking of his belt buckle as he struggled to pull his pants off. I furiously tried to wrestle from his grasp until he eventually gave up, angrily called me ‘a baby’ and sent me home to Denver.”
Bowman claims that she told both her agent and an attorney about the incident, but her allegations fell on deaf ears.
JEWEL ALLISON (late 1980s)
Allison, a former model, claims that she was introduced to Cosby through her agent, Sue Charney—a woman that also discovered Janice Dickinson, who also claims she was sexually assaulted by Cosby. According to an interview she gave to the New York Daily News, Cosby first invited Allison to his East Side townhouse in Manhattan for a dinner for her birthday, which went smoothly. He then charmed her with regular phone calls to her home. “He said he wanted to help models and actors who were well-educated, who could do something else,” Allison told the Daily News. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is Bill Cosby.’”
So, Allison allegedly accepted another dinner invite at Cosby’s home. There, during dinner, she claims he produced an expensive old bottle of wine, which Cosby claimed was a gift from former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca. Allison claims that Cosby poured her a glass, and after she drank it, she immediately began feeling wobbly, and collapsed on a couch. He then allegedly picked her up and transported her to another room.
“He said, ‘Look in the mirror, and see the glow in your face,’” Allison recalls Cosby saying, according to the Daily News. “I looked at myself and didn’t look good. My eyes were all over the place.”
Then, Allison claims that Cosby took her hand and guided it to his penis. “That was my sexual assault by this comedian,” she said. “He turned me around and said, ‘Let’s get you home.’ At the door, he gave me a very hard embrace and a hard kiss.” Cosby then allegedly ordered a pre-paid yellow cab that transported Allison home. During the ride, she says she vomited.
She says that Cosby tried to invite her to dinner again, but she declined. “There’s no such thing as America’s Dad,” she said. “There’s just a man named Bill Cosby. He’s a very sick sociopath.”
ANGELA LESLIE (1992)
Leslie, 52, spoke to the New York Daily News and claimed she’d met Cosby after sending him a letter and a photograph in 1990 while vying for a role in the film Ghost Dad. She claims Cosby had a driver deliver her to his Las Vegas hotel suite in 1992, and when she got there, he demanded an audition on the spot. “If you want to act, show me what you’ve got. Pretend you’re intoxicated,” Cosby allegedly said, according to Leslie’s account in the Daily News.
She then claims he poured her a drink and told her to act intoxicated once more, but she just “tasted it and put it down. Then he asked me to go into the bathroom and wet my hair… I walked back out, and he had removed his clothing and gotten into bed,” Leslie told the Daily News. Then, according to her account, Cosby poured lotion in her hand and guided it to his genital area. “With his hand on top of mine, he had me massage his penis,” she said. “He masturbated with my hand. I wasn’t pulling back. I was in shock.”
After that, Leslie alleges that since she didn’t drink the possibly drugged cocktail, he kicked her out and forced her to spend the rest of the Vegas trip solo. “I didn’t drink the alcohol, and maybe since I didn’t pass out, he decided to get rid of me,” she said, adding, “I felt so used.”
Leslie, who works in logistics management in Warren, Michigan, claims she never spoke to Cosby after the Vegas trip, and that she just wants the truth to come out. “The main thing I want is for people to know him for who he really is,” she said. “He’s not the Dad of America.”
MICHELLE HURD (~1995)
The 47-year-old Law & Order: Special Victims Unit actress, who’s currently married to actor Garret Dillahunt, shared a post on her Facebook page on Nov. 20 detailing the inappropriate sexual behavior she experienced at the hands of Cosby. Hurd, who appeared as a “jogger” on an episode of The Cosby Mysteries in 1995, says that the comedian was “very inappropriate with her.” “It started innocently, lunch in his dressing room, daily, then onto weird acting exercises were [sic] he would move his hands up and down my body,” Hurd recalled. “I was instructed to NEVER tell anyone what we did together (he said other actors would become jealous) and then fortunately, 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. At that point my own red flags went off and I told him, ‘No, I’ll just come to work tomorrow with my hair straightened.’”
She added in the post, “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.”
LACHELE COVINGTON (2000)
Back in March 2000, Lachele Covington, a 20-year-old actress who’d appeared as a background extra on the comedian’s CBS sitcom Cosby, filed a police report against Cosby accusing him of making an unwelcome sexual advance on her, reported the New York Post. According to the Post story, Cosby agreed to meet with Covington on Jan. 25 after she asked him several times for career advice. After dinner and drinks at Cosby’s East Side townhouse, Covington reportedly asked Cosby for the advice and he replied, “There isn’t anything you can’t do if you don’t put your mind to it.”
“The comedian said that when he wants to do deep thinking, he uses relaxation techniques and to demonstrate, he came around behind her and began rubbing her head,” reported the Post. “Then he slid his hands down her arms, stopping at her buttocks, [the report] said. Covington lay down on a couch—apparently to relax further—and it was then that Cosby guided her hand toward his sweatpants, the report said.” The Post also cited a story in The National Enquirer alleging that relatives of Covington’s claimed Cosby went even further, “grabbing [Covington’s] breasts, trying to put his hand down her pants and exposing himself.”
According to the Post, police “consulted the Manhattan district attorney’s office and decided no crime had been committed because until the very moment Covington pulled her hand away, all actions had been consensual.” Cosby, meanwhile, denied the claim through his spokesman.
ANDREA CONSTAND (2004)
The most litigious of the group is Constand. In 2004, Constand, then 31, was working at Cosby’s alma mater, Temple University, as Director of Operations for the Women’s Basketball program. She claimed to have met Cosby, a big-time donor to the university, in November 2002, and the two “fostered a friendship” together to the point where she considered him “a mentor,” according to a civil complaint filed by Constand in 2006. She claimed that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her at his Pennsylvania mansion in 2004, and Constand, a Canadian citizen, later reported the incident to Durham, Ontario police—but no criminal charges were filed against Cosby.
Constand filed a civil lawsuit against Cosby in March 2005, alleging battery, assault, infliction of emotional distress, defamation and invasion of privacy stemming from the alleged incident. The civil complaint alleged that Cosby gave Constand three blue pills, saying they were an herbal remedy, and then, after she felt woozy, Cosby “rubbed the woman’s breasts and genital areas and ‘digitally penetrated’ her, meaning with his finger,” reported ABC News. Constand had lined up 13 Jane Doe women who were willing to testify and offer up similar sexual assault claims against Cosby, according to the suit.
In the aforementioned complaint, Constand also claimed that Cosby and his attorney, Marty Singer, arranged to give an exclusive interview to The National Enquirer in 2005 in exchange for them killing a planned story featuring Beth Ferrier, a woman who’d been interviewed and given a lie detector test by the tabloid and claimed she’d been sexually assaulted by Cosby. The Guardian recently reported that the Enquirer’s senior writer, Robin Mizrahi, had filed the Ferrier story in February 2005, but “was then informed by her editors that they had decided to kill it after the magazine came under pressure from Cosby’s lawyers, who threatened to sue.” Then, according to The Guardian, the Enquirer replaced the Ferrier piece “with a celebrity interview in which the comic dismissed [Constand’s] claims as money-motivated ‘misinterpretations.’”
Constand would settle her civil suit against Cosby out of court; the terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The prosecutor in her original case, Bruce Castor, recently told NBC10 in Philadelphia that he didn’t charge Cosby with sexual assault even though he thought Cosby “did it” because “thinking that and being able to prove it are two different things.”
****
To recap: 12 of the women who’ve come forward with allegations against Cosby claim they were drugged prior to their assault, 12 of them were white females, and most were allegedly promised some form of mentorship or professional help. Many of the women also claimed they were in emotionally vulnerable states when Cosby allegedly set his sights on them. Ferrigno had experienced a rough breakup; Tarshis says she was an alcoholic; Valentino’s 6-year-old son had passed away one year prior; Green’s brother was terminally ill, and a Cosby fan; Dickinson was fresh out of rehab; Hill was a minor; Bowman’s father had died when she was a teenager; the list goes on.
Recently, more weird allegations against Cosby have emerged. Staffers on CBS’ The Late Show with David Letterman reportedly told the New York Daily News that when Cosby was a guest, “the young girls, interns and assistants, all had to gather around in the green room backstage and sit down and watch him eat curry” and “[Cosby] would sit silently eating and make us watch and want us to watch.” The source added that the staffers “hated” the bizarre alleged practice. Another item at Deadspin branded Cosby “an asshole,” and recounted how the comedian berated Notre Dame All-American football player Dean Brown to the point of tears, which led to the lineman going “a lot of years feeling like I was a failure.”
And, last but not least, former longtime NBC facilities manager Frank Scotti came forward and told the New York Daily News that he personally delivered thousands of dollars on Cosby’s behalf to women, some of whom were being paid $2,000 a month. Scotti claims that Cosby was having sex with the women he was allegedly paying off. “Why else would he be sending money?” Scotti told the Daily News. “He was sending these women $2,000 a month. What else could I think?” According to the article, Scotti provided the paper with four money orders allegedly detailing payouts to women—including one bearing Angela Leslie’s name.
Scotti, who is now 90 and living in Lakewood, New Jersey, also claimed that a Manhattan modeling agency would provide Cosby with young women in his dressing room, some of whom were as young as 16.
“He had everybody fooled,” Scotti said. “Nobody suspected.”
