Predator Cosby jailed for sex assault

BILL Cosby has been sentenced to three to 10 years in prison for drugging and molesting a woman at his home.

Judge Steven O’Neill sentenced Cosby yesterday, five months after his conviction in the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era.

Prosecutors sought a sentence of five to 10 years in prison. The defence asked for house arrest.

The 81-year-old comedian did not make a statement in court.

Cosby sat back in his chair, his head on the headrest, as the sentence was read. The entertainer, once known as America’s Dad, was convicted in April of sexually assaulting Temple University athletics administrator Andrea Constand in 2004.

She is one of about 60 women who have accused Cosby of sexual misconduct, and the pun- Disgraced: Bill Cosby is led away from court in handcuffs

ishment all but completed the dizzying, late-in-life fall for the comedian, former TV star and breaker of racial barriers.

“It is time for justice. Mr Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The time has come,” Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill said. He quoted from victim Andrea Constand’s own statement to the court, in which she said Cosby took her “beautiful, young spirit and crushed it”.

The punishment came at the end of a two-day hearing at which the judge declared Cosby a “sexually violent predator”.

He must have monthly counselling for the rest of his life and notify neighbours and schools of his whereabouts.

The comic, famed for his role on the top-rated Cosby Show in the Eighties, was convicted in April of violating Constand at his Philadelphia estate in 2004.

His lawyers had asked for house arrest, saying Cosby, who is legally blind, is too old and vulnerable to do time in prison.

Montgomery County district attorney Kevin Steele rejected the notion that Cosby’s age and infirmity entitle him to mercy.

“He was good at hiding this for a long time. Good at suppressing this for a long time. So it’s taken a long time to get there,” Steele said. When the ruling came down, a woman in the courtroom shot her fist into the air and whispered, “Yessss!”

In a statement submitted to the court, Constand, now 45, said that she has had to cope with years of anxiety and self-doubt.

She said she now lives alone with her two dogs and has trouble trusting people.

“When the sexual assault happened, I was a young woman brimming with confidence and looking forward to a future bright with possibilities,” she wrote in her five-page statement.

“Now, almost 15 years later, I’m a middle-aged woman who’s been stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward.”

She also wrote of Cosby: “We may never know the full extent of his double life as a sexual predator, but his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over.”