The Sad Irony of Bill Cosby Finally Being Prosecuted

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Why did you wait so long to report?

Thats the question that Bill Cosbys lawyer Bruce McMonagle reportedly said hed have asked Andrea Constand if shed been at the Tuesday hearing where a judge decided her accusations of sexual assault by the comedian will, finally, be tried in criminal court.

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To date, more than 50 women have accused Bill Cosby of sexual misconduct. Constand was the first. In January of 2005 she told police that a year earlier, Cosby had touched and penetrated her after drugging her. A prosecutor decided against proceeding with the case, and Constand followed up with a civil suit that resulted in a 2006 settlement. After that came an accelerating drip of women making allegations about incidents spanning a wide swath of Cosbys career, from Kristina Ruehli (1965) to Chloe Goins (2008).

Throughout, these women have faced suspicion and ridiculefrom the Cosby team, from allied celebrities, and from members of the public making their thoughts known on social mediafor not coming forward sooner. How big is his p***s that it gives you amnesia for 40 years? the comedian Damon Wayans said in a riff bashing the accusers. That Constand went to police about a year after the alleged event and is still facing this same question shows how slippery its premise can be: Most any time period can apparently be declared suspicious.

Constand remained in contact with Cosby in the time between the alleged assault and her going to the police, with her mother at one point calling the sitcom icon to ask what hed done to her daughter. Newly public deposition transcripts from the 2006 civil suit have Cosby describing his M.O. in terms that dovetail with the stories of the accusers who would later come forward, except when it comes to whether they were consenting or not. At one point, he talked about having an agency send five or six models to his studio each week while filming his sitcom. In another, he explained what happened with Constand after hed given her drugs that hed described as a remedy for stress:

Q: So, youre not telling us that you verbally asked her for permission?

A: I didnt say it verbally, I said. The action is my hand on her midriff, which is skin. Im not lifting any clothing up. This is, I dont remember fully what it is, but its there and I can feel. I got her skin and its just above the hand and its just above where you can go under the pants.

Q: Then what happens?

A: I dont hear her say anything. And I dont feel her say anything. And so I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped.

The question of why many sexual-assault victims often delay in making allegations, especially against public figures, has been answered time and again. Justified fears of reprisal and disparagement have to be put into the cost/benefit calculationand if anything, the Cosby situation has highlighted the costs. People often these days say, Well, why didnt you take it to the police? another accuser, Tamara Green, told New York Magazine last year. Andrea Constand went to the police in 2005howd it work out for her? Not at all. In 2005, Bill Cosby still had control of the media. In 2015, we have social media. We cant be disappeared.

Constands case, incidentally, also defies other rhetoric that Cosbys defenders tend to use about accusers. As an athletics administrator at Temple University, she didnt have a clear interest in gaining public exposure. She wasnt speaking out only after it became fashionable to do soCosbys reputation at the time was sterling. As to the fact that Cosby himself has never been convicted of a crime, that could now change now, too. So whats harder to believe: that it took a year for Constand to make an accusation, or that its taken 11 years and dozens more women coming forward for those accusations to be prosecuted?

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/cosby-andrea-constand-coming-forward-sooner-trial/484190/