Chief accuser seeking ‘justice’ against Bill Cosby over allegations

Bill Cosby’s chief accuser has taken the witness stand at his sexual assault retrial, telling a jury she wants justice after five other women testified the man once revered as “America’s Dad” was a serial rapist who harmed them.

Andrea Constand’s appearance was her second chance to confront Cosby in court after his first trial ended with a hung jury. This time she faces a defence team intent on portraying her as a “con artist” who framed Cosby for money.

Cosby lawyer Tom Mesereau told jurors in an opening statement that Ms Constand was a pauper who cheated roommates on bills, racked up big credit card debt and once ran a Ponzi scheme until she “hit the jackpot” in 2006, when Cosby paid her $3.4 million (about £2.4m) to settle a civil lawsuit Constand filed after the district attorney at the time dropped the case.

Ms Constand, 45, told jurors yesterday she had nothing to gain financially now by wanting Cosby locked up.

“Ms Constand, why are you here?” prosecutor Kristen Feden asked.

“For justice,” Ms Constand said.

Ms Constand said Cosby drugged and molested her at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in January 2004 when she was a women’s basketball administrator at his alma mater, Temple University.

She said Cosby offered her pills after she said she was “stressed” about telling the Temple women’s basketball coach of her plans to leave to study massage therapy in her native Canada. He called the pills “your friends” and told her they would “help take the edge off ”.

Instead, Ms Constand said the pills instead made her black out. She awoke to find Cosby penetrating her with his fingers and putting her hand on his penis. She said she was still incapacitated and “was not able to do anything” about the assault.

Her allegation is the only one among dozens against Cosby that has led to criminal charges. He has said Ms Constand consented to a sexual encounter and denied she was incapacitated.

Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt said the sitcom actor’s new defence team had researched Ms Constand’s testimony and statements from last year and found “even more inconsistencies”.

Mrwyattonthursdayderided the five additional accusers who testified as “distractors” and “advocates for the prosecution” and for Ms Constand. Just one other accuser was permitted to take the stand at Cosby’s first trial.

The women, Mr Wyatt said, traded in “poetic licensing, better known as alternative facts”, and were pawns in an “Ocean’s 11-style script” cooked up by lawyers Gloria Allred and her daughter, Lisa Bloom.

newsdeskts@scotsman.com