More than 13 years later, trial for Crosby begins
Woman alleges she was drugged, sexually assaulted
A Canadian woman is the central figure in one of the most highly anticipated trials in recent history, a potential reckoning for an entertainment legend whose legacy as “America’s Dad” lies in tatters. The trial that started Monday with jury selection will determine whether Bill Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand, the only woman to have her allegations against Cosby heard in a criminal court.
Cosby, now 79, has professed his innocence but says he won’t testify.
Instead, he’ll cede centre stage to a lanky jock who works as a massage therapist for cancer patients and whose appearance before the jury will be critical in a case hampered by a lack of physical evidence or a police report filed at the time of the alleged crime. It all rests on Constand, now 44, a woman Cosby met and befriended when she was a staffer for the women’s basketball squad at Temple University.
The criminal charge — aggravated indecent assault — harks back to a late night and early morning in 2004 at Cosby’s estate in Elkins Park, Pa., 15 miles from the Montgomery County courthouse where testimony in his trial is set to begin June 5 before a sequestered jury.
But it wasn’t until a year after that night — in early 2005, in Toronto — that the case began to develop.
Constand had moved there to get her life in order. But, she later told police, she was having bad dreams.
Constand was a superstar on a high school basketball team in a Toronto suburb, a 6-foot-tall scoring machine who averaged an astonishing 30 points per game. She landed a scholarship to play basketball at the University of Arizona and went on to play professionally in Italy. Eventually, she moved to Philadelphia, taking a job as an operations manager for the women’s team at Temple, where she met one of the world’s most famous men. Cosby was for years the public face of the university and a frequent presence on campus.
After leaving Temple, she started studying massage therapy at a school in Toronto. But her nightmares were getting in the way, she told police. The cause, she said, “was the incident with Mr. Cosby.”
Cosby’s and Constand’s basic accounts are remarkably similar.
Cosby, 36 years her senior, became a mentor. Sometime in January or February of 2004, during a dinner at his estate, Cosby gave Constand some pills and they had sexual contact. He says they were Benadryl. Constand’s attorneys suggest it was something much stronger.
Constand contacted two Philadelphia-area lawyers, Bebe Kivitz and her partner, Dolores Troiani.
They were unable to persuade the district attorney, Bruce Castor, to bring criminal charges, so they filed a civil lawsuit.
Troiani’s phone began to ring. Beth Ferrier, a former model, called from Denver to talk about the 1980s, when she says Cosby spiked her coffee and she woke up in a parked car with her bra undone. Donna Motsinger rang Troiani’s office to discuss the night in the early 1970s when she says Cosby drugged her in a limo and she woke up naked in her bed.
The women, 12 in all, came forward anonymously as Jane Does.
The lawsuit settled for an undisclosed amount in 2006 before any of the Jane Does could testify.
Then in October 2014 a Philadelphia Magazine reporter posted a video of the comedian Hannibal Buress telling an audience to Google “Bill Cosby rape.” It went viral.
As more Cosby accusers came forward, everything changed. The emergence of so many accusers exerted public pressure on Cosby. But nothing they said carried the same weight as Cosby’s own words.
In July 2015, the media quoted Cosby from once-sealed deposition testimony in Constand’s lawsuit. In it, Cosby admitted acquiring Quaaludes to give to women with whom he wanted to have sex. He also spoke about how he set a romantic mood for Constand’s visit with a fire and wine at his house.
Cosby’s defence attorneys fought to keep the deposition out of the upcoming trial, but the testimony about Constand will be admitted.
Cosby has sought to put race front and centre. His daughter, Ensa, released a statement decrying what she called the “public lynching” of her father and saying racism played a “big role” in his scandal.
Asked about her remarks on SiriusXM radio, Cosby said: “I just truly believe that some of it could very well be that.”