Cosby details area between ‘permission,’ ‘rejection’

NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Jurors on Tuesday got a sense of Bill Cosby’s view of consent from graphic deposition testimony in which the comedian described reaching an area “somewhere between permission and rejection” during what he claims was a prior sexual encounter with his chief accuser.

Cosby, 80, testified a dozen years ago as part of a lawsuit that Andrea Constand filed against him, and prosecutors won the right to introduce it at his sexual assault retrial on charges he drugged and molested her at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.

In the deposition, Cosby described his attempt to obtain consent from Constand during a previous encounter.

“I’m giving Andrea time to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ about an area that is right there in the question zone,” Cosby testified.

He said he rubbed the skin above her trousers, and “without talking I’m asking, can I go farther.”

“I don’t hear her say anything. And I don’t feel her say anything,” Cosby said. “And so I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped.”

He then described the purported encounter in extremely graphic terms that had several jurors with their hands to their chins, some of them looking taken aback, pained or disgusted.

Constand has testified she rejected Cosby’s prior advances.

Jurors also were expected to hear Cosby’s description of the night Constand says he assaulted her, as well as his explosive testimony about how he gave quaaludes to women before sex.

Judge Steven O’neill ruled Tuesday that prosecutors could have the “Cosby Show” star’s deposition testimony read into the record, handing the prosecution a key victory in its effort to portray the comedian as a serial predator.