HOW COS DRUGGED, VIOLATED ME
Sobbing accuser tells jury brutal details of sex assault by TV idol
BILL COSBY gave her three blue pills that virtually paralyzed her. Then he groped her breasts, put his hands down her pants and forced her to touch his penis.
When Andrea Constand fully regained consciousness the next morning, she testified on Tuesday, Cosby greeted her with tea and a muffin.
“In my head, I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen,” Constand said in her first-ever public comments about the alleged assault in Cosby’s suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.
“I wasn’t able to fight in any way,” she said, adding that the pills slurred her speech.
Her voice cracked with emotion as she described the alleged attack by the TV icon she once trusted as a father figure. “I wanted it to stop,” Constand, 44, testified. She told jurors Cosby assured her the pills were “herbal” before he attacked her as she lay helplessly on the comedian’s couch.
“I felt really humiliated and confused,” she said. “I just wanted to go home.”
Constand appeared calm during her highly anticipated turn on the witness stand, making regular eye contact with the five women and seven men now hearing Cosby’s high-profile sex assault trial in Norristown, Pa.
As he listened to Constand speak Tuesday, 79-year-old Cosby leaned forward at the defense table, whispered to his lawyer and sometimes shook his head.
Now a massage therapist living outside Toronto, Constand said she first met Cosby in 2002 through her job as a director of the women’s basketball program at his alma mater, Temple University.
She said a friendship quickly took shape, with Cosby showing a personal interest in her career plans.
“He was a Temple friend, somebody I trusted, a mentor, and somewhat of an older figure to me,” Constand testified.
She said the comic often invited her to events and made romantic passes on two occasions that she rebuffed.
During their first dinner at his home, he put his hand on her thigh, she told jurors. At another dinner, she said he tried to unbutton her pants but stopped when she told him, “I don’t want that.”
Constand — who previously told police she was involved in a monogamous relationship with a woman during most of her friendship with Cosby — said she never suspected Cosby might try to ambush her with drugs.
That perception changed forever the night he invited her over to discuss her plans to leave Temple and become a massage therapist, she said.
Constand said she arrived feeling stressed out, and Cosby went upstairs to retrieve a mystery medication.
“He opened his hand, and he had three blue pills,” she told jurors.
“These will help you relax,” she recalled Cosby telling her. “They’re your friends.”
Constand said she specifically asked Cosby if the pills were “herbal” and he nodded that they were. She told Cosby she trusted him and swallowed the pills, she testified.
The pair continued their conversation until she began losing control about 20 minutes later, she said.
“I began to slur my words, and I told Mr. Cosby that I had trouble seeing him,” she testified. “My mouth got cottony.”
At that point, Cosby stood up and began moving her to a nearby couch, she said.
“I panicked a little bit,” she testified. “My legs were rubbery.”
She said Cosby put a pillow under her head and urged her to relax as she faded in and out of consciousness. A short time later, something “jolted” her awake, she said.
“I felt Mr. Cosby’s hands groping my breasts and his hand inside my vagina,” she testified.
She recalled the utter confusion she experienced feeling her own fingers touching Cosby’s penis without being able to pull back. He had grabbed her hand and was using it to masturbate, she said.
“I wasn’t able to — in my head — I wasn’t able to move,” she said.
Cosby has been charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault. Each charge carries up to 10 years in prison.
Constand’s claims fell within Pennsylvania’s 12-year statute of limitations, and prosecutors charged him in December 2015 after a judge unsealed deposition testimony in which Cosby admitted he obtained seven prescriptions for Quaaludes in the 1970s so he could give the powerful drug to women he found sexually attractive.
The former “I Spy” star has pleaded not guilty, saying the drug he gave Constand was Benadryl and that their sexual contact was consensual.
In his opening statement Monday, Cosby’s hard-charging defense lawyer Brian McMonagle attacked Constand’s credibility, saying she and Cosby spoke by phone 72 times after the alleged attack.
Constand explained Tuesday she was seeking answers about the pills and still had to do her job at Temple, where Cosby was a very involved trustee.
She recounted meeting Cosby for dinner after the alleged attack, hoping to get to the bottom of what happened. She said he dodged her questions.
“I thought you had an orgasm, didn’t you?” she recalled him asking her.
Defense lawyer Angela Agrusa grilled Constand on cross-examination, asking why she called a personal injury lawyer on Jan. 13, 2005, the same day she told her mother about Cosby and also spoke to police for the first time.
“I wasn’t really familiar with who I should call,” Constand said.
Agrusa suggested Constand wanted advice on filing a sexual assault lawsuit. She also attacked Constand over inconsistencies in her prior statements. She asked why Constand erroneously told Canadian cops during her first police interview that she’d only known Cosby for six months.
“I was really nervous. It was a long 16 months I wanted to compress,” Constand said.
Around 60 women have accused Cosby of sexual misconduct, but Constand’s case is the only one to reach criminal prosecution.
The judge allowed one other accuser, Kelly Johnson, to testify at trial. Johnson told jurors Monday that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her inside a hotel in 1996.
Johnson’s mother backed those claims in her own testimony Tuesday morning.
She said her daughter was “nearly hysterical” when she called her at work shortly after the alleged assault and began telling her story to the family.
Accuser Lili Bernard, a former “Cosby Show” actress, sat in the courtroom Tuesday and watched Constand’s testimony while wearing a “We Stand With Truth” badge.
“It just broke my heart to see Andrea like that on the stand. She did cry. She’s (normally) stoic,” Bernard said outside the courthouse. “I would like to see the consequences.”
“He was a Temple friend, somebody I trusted, a mentor, and somewhat of an older figure to me.” “(Cosby said), ‘These will help you relax ... They’re your friends.’ ” “In my head, I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen.” “I felt really humiliated and confused. I just wanted to go home.”