Bill Cosby: A Fallen Star

Bill Cosby: A Fallen Star

Once a shining star, Bill Cosby’s popularity has faded. The actor, comedian, author, and activist has been in the spotlight for many years. However, after all his years of success, on October 9, 2015, Dateline did a broadcast, The Cosby Accusers’ Speak, announcing that twenty-seven women, about half of his alleged victims, ages 46 to 80, of diverse races and backgrounds, shared stories of being violated by the star. The women’s accounts were sketchy with no DNA evidence, and none had filed reports to the police or hospital at the times of the incidents. Thus, his guilt could only be based on the victims’ testimonies and little but circumstantial evidence. Most of them accused him of sexual assault, and there

He said that when he was 13-years-old, he and his male buddies started talking about weird things like “Spanish fly,” believed to be an aphrodisiac and quite dangerous drug. A girl called Crazy Mary had been given some Spanish fly in her drink, and she went “Blahhhh.” Cosby said that they thought her reaction was funny and it made her act crazy. He went on to say that if you went to a party and saw five girls standing in a corner, you could light the corner up with Spanish fly. Years later, as an adult, he worked on I Spy and an episode was going to be filmed in Spain. He then felt that his childhood dream had come true because he was going to the Spanish fly paradise. In response to the comedian’s joke, most of the audience roared with laughter. They did not know then that Cosby’s jokes about drugging females was a clue to background and evidence of his predatory behavior in real

In 2005, college student Andrea Constad filed a lawsuit of sexual assault against Bill Cosby. In a legal deposition, he gave graphic, predatory accounts of having sex with her and many other young women. He casually described his encounters while defending himself. The court transcript reveals that in the early 2000’s, his relationship with Constad started after he spotted her on the campus of Temple University. One night at his Pennsylvania home, the entertainer said that he gave her some Benadryl to relieve her stress and then had sex with her. However, she thought that he gave her a stronger drug. Later, when she returned home to Canada, she told her mother about the incident with Cosby. Constad’s mother became disturbed by what the married man had done to her daughter. When Cosby spoke to the young woman’s mother by phone, she told him that the encounter was a “mother’s worst nightmare.” He worried that the older woman would think of him as a “dirty old man,” so he told Constad to tell her mother “about the orgasm. Tell your mother how we talked,” and then she would realize it was consensual. Ultimately, Cosby offered to help pay for the young woman’s further education because he worried that she and her mother might attempt to embarrass him. Like other accusers, before Constad, he paid them off to exert his power and sexism against them. However, Constad went a step further than previous victims by