Cosby’s chief accuser tells her story

NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Bill Cosby’s chief accuser took the stand at his sexual assault trial Tuesday to tell her story publicly for the first time, saying the comedian violated her after giving her three blue pills that left her paralyzed and helpless.

“In my head, I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen,” Andrea Constand, a 44-yearold former employee of the basketball program at Temple University, said in their longawaited courtroom confrontation. “I wasn’t able to fight in any way.”

She added: “I wanted it to stop.”

Cosby, 79, is charged with drugging and sexually abusing Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. The TV star once dubbed America’s Dad could get 10 years in prison if convicted.

His lawyers tried to poke holes in Constand’s story, citing differences between her courtroom testimony and the accounts she gave to police and in a lawsuit in 2005. The defense has argued the two had a romantic relationship, that Constand wasn’t incapacitated and that the sexual encounter was consensual.

Constand, an athletic 6-footer with dark curly hair, was calm and collected as she testified, looking at the jury as she began describing the assault.

She said Cosby gave her pills he claimed were a natural remedy to ease her stress about a looming career change. “They’re your friends. They’ll take the edge off,” she quoted him as saying.

She told the jury she started feeling woozy after about 20 minutes, with blurred vision, slurred words and legs that felt like rubber. Cosby then penetrated her with his hand and also placed her hand on his penis and moved it back and forth, she said.

She said she was unable to push him away or tell him to stop.

Afterward, Constand said, “I felt really humiliated and I felt really confused.”

Cosby, sitting across the room at the defense table, leaned in to listen, whispered to his lawyer and, at times, shook his head.

Before Tuesday, Constand had never spoken about Cosby in public, barred from doing so under the terms of a confidential settlement they reached in 2006. Her deposition from that lawsuit remains sealed.

Some 60 women have come forward to say Cosby sexually violated them, all but destroying his nice-guy image, but the statute of limitations for prosecution had run out in nearly every case. Constand’s case is the only one in which Cosby has been charged.

Constand, who is from the Toronto area, met Cosby while working for the women’s basketball team at Temple, Cosby’s alma mater. She said they became friends over conversations about the team and later her career. He invited her to dine with him at his home.