It started with Kahlua and coffee, the woman said. Then, she said, Bill Cosby asked her a question: “Do you like back rubs or belly rubs?”
The
setting was Cosby’s hotel room one night in the mid-1980s after the
comedian had appeared at Clemson University, the woman said, according
to court records. What allegedly came next follows a familiar pattern in
the accusations against the iconic entertainer.
The woman, an anonymous Jane Doe accuser in a 2005 civil lawsuit against Cosby, said she rubbed Cosby’s belly. That’s when the story goes foggy.
The
woman said she passed out. Her accusation, which has not previously been
reported, adds to the mountain of publicly known allegations levelled
against the 79-year-old as his case on charges of sexually assaulting a
woman he was mentoring slogs through a Pennsylvania court. (Cosby and
his attorneys have vigorously denied that he sexually assaulted any
women.)
The
newly surfaced accusations come from a woman known in the 2005 civil
suit as Jane Doe No. 6, according to sources who declined to be
identified because of ongoing legal cases. Her claim, as well as those
of another woman, whom sources identified as Jane Doe No. 8, raises the
total number of confirmed Cosby accusers catalogued by The Washington Post from 58 to 60.
Dozens
of women have held news conferences or given media interviews to outline
their accusations against Cosby, but others have chosen to remain
anonymous, even as they have provided detailed accounts of their
allegations to attorneys in civil suits or investigators.
Among
those who have not spoken publicly are four of the 12 Jane Doe accusers
who were prepared to testify in the civil lawsuit filed in 2005 against
Cosby by Andrea Constand, a former Temple University women’s basketball
official. The Post is publishing only the names of those who have spoken
publicly about their allegations.
The
Constand lawsuit ended in a confidential settlement. Cosby has now been
criminally charged with sexually assaulting Constand.
The
allegations of Jane Doe No. 8, a modeling agency booker, also date back
to the mid-1980s. A friend of hers, a male model named Tony Hogue, said
in an interview that she was frantic when she called him from Cosby’s
Manhattan home late one night in 1984.
The
woman, who’d been to dinner with Cosby and one of the models from her
agency that night, pleaded with Hogue to come get them. She said her
“clothes were messed up,” Hogue recalled, and she was “very
uncomfortable” because Cosby was kissing and touching her.
Hogue
said he initially suggested that his friend ask Cosby’s driver to take
her to the apartment where she was staying. Her response unnerved him:
“She said she couldn’t even really move.”
Hogue,
who first gave an account of that evening to the Daily Beast, said he
banged on Cosby’s door for a long time. Finally the comedian answered,
he said, acting as though nothing was wrong. Hogue left with his friend
and the model, a woman named Beth Ferrier, who would later become Jane
Doe No. 5.
“They were such a mess that there wasn’t a lot of conversation,” he said.
During a deposition related to the civil lawsuit, Cosby said he did not know Jane Doe No. 6 or Jane Doe No. 8.
A
Pennsylvania state judge has ruled that Cosby should stand trial in the
case but no date has been set. A pretrial conference is slated for early
September.
The
accusers could play a significant role if the case goes to trial because
Pennsylvania law allows testimony in sexual assault cases by other
women who make similar allegations. Prosecutors have said Cosby drugged
and sexually assaulted Constand at his suburban Philadelphia estate.
Forty-one of the 60 accusations analyzed by The Post involve allegations
of drugging.
In a
sense, the Jane Does have been through a screening process because they
were selected by Constand’s legal team as the 2005 civil lawsuit was
being prepared.
“We
were vetted,” one Jane Doe said in an interview on the condition of
anonymity because of legal sensitivities associated with the ongoing
criminal case. “We were chosen.”
Source : Washington post.
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