PILL COSBY
How America’s Dad drugged and violated me
Andrea Con stand testified yesterday that Bill Cosby fed her three blue pills, saying they were herbal supplements that would help her “relax.” Instead, they incapacitated her, allowing Cosby to molest her, she said.
The woman at the center of Bill Cosby’s sexual-assault trial took the stand Tuesday, telling the world for the very first time how “America’s Dad” drugged her into unconsciousness — and how she awoke to find the comedian molesting her.
Andrea Constand’s voice shook as she gave jurors a disturbing play-by-play about the alleged assault at Cosby’s suburban Philadelphia home in 2004 for which he now stands trial.
“I was jolted conscious, jolted awake, and I felt Mr. Cosby’s hand groping my breasts, under my shirt,” she recalled. “I felt his hand inside my vagina, moving in and out. And I felt him take my hand, place it on his penis and move it back and forth.”
“Did you ask him to stop?” asked Montgomery County prosecutor Kristen Feden.
“I wasn’t able to,” Constand said. “In my head, I was trying to get my hands to move and my legs to move, and those messages were frozen. They didn’t get there. They were limp and I wasn’t able to get there, to fight, to get away.”
Then, she added, her voice quavering, “I wanted it to stop.”
Constand — wearing a gray suit jacket, white top, cream-colored pants and a mess of curly hair — took a deep breath as she settled into her seat on the witness stand, where over several hours she told jurors about her relationship with the TV pioneer.
At times, Cosby, who claims to be completely blind, smirked during her testimony. Other times, he slumped in his chair looking tired, his elbow resting on the defense table while he stared blankly into space.
He looked away from Constand, now 44, as she pointed him out in the courtroom and described what he was wearing.
The two first met at Temple University, where Cosby was an esteemed alumnus and on the board of trustees, and where Constand worked as the director of basketball operations.
“He was a Temple friend, someone I trusted, a mentor and somewhat of an older figure to me,” said Constand, who was looking to pursue a career in broadcast journalism at the time and leaned on Cosby for advice.
But soon into their friendship, she said, Cosby morphed from mentor into pill-plying sexual predator.
It was early to mid-January 2004 when Constand showed up at his Elkins Park home to discuss a career change. The comedian — who won over America’s hearts with his role as the affable Dr. Cliff Huxtable on the long-running NBC series “The Cosby Show” — told her she needed to “relax” and handed her three blue pills, Constand recalled.
“I said, ‘ What are they, are they natural, are they herbal?’ He nodded his head and said, ‘Put them down, they’ll help you relax.’ I said, ‘Three of them?’ He nodded,” she said.
Cosby, who was 66 at the time, married to his wife of 53 years Camille, then told Constand to have some wine, which she declined.
“He said, ‘Just taste it, it’s an old bottle,’ ” she remembered.
That’s when the effects of the mysterious pills began to hit her — hard.
“After several minutes of talking, I began to slur my words. I also told Mr. Cosby I had trouble seeing him,” Constand said.
“My mouth was very cottony. I wasn’t able to speak without getting a buildup of white stuff around my mouth. I said, ‘I’m seeing two of you, I’m slurring my words.’ ”
But Cosby insisted she needed to relax and led her to his couch.
“I was very concerned. I thought I was having a bad reaction. I was panicking a little bit. But I knew I couldn’t get up and go anywhere,” she said. “Mr. Cosby assisted me to the couch and laid me down.”
Constand testified that she doesn’t remember passing out — but woke up to him fondling her breasts and putting her hand on his privates.
The next morning, around 5 a.m., Constand awoke with “my brassiere . . . around my neck.” Cosby was in the kitchen and offered her a cup of tea and a muffin. He said nothing else. “I was very confused and disoriented,” she recalled. “I took two sips of tea and I took the top of the muffin and I put it in a napkin and I drove myself home.”
Months later, a “humiliated” Constand confronted Cosby at his house about what happened that night — but he only dodged her questions.
“He looked at me and said, ‘I thought you had an orgasm, didn’t you?’ ” she said. “I said, ‘I
did not, I just want to know what you gave me.’ He said, ‘Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait’ and he wanted to speak to me near where the incident occurred.
“I realized he was not going to tell me what he gave me that night. I was under the impression it was herbal but he was evasive with me so I left,” she added.
It took Constand a year before she told her mom about the incident and reported it to police in her native Canada.
“It was wrong and I didn’t want it to happen to another person,” Constand said. “We called the police.”
Afterward, the mother and daughter called Cosby together and demanded to know what pills he gave Constand that night — testimony that Cosby suddenly found amusing Tuesday.
“My mother and I were both on the phone, and she spoke with him very briefly,” Constand explained to jurors about the 2005 call. “I told Mr. Cosby exactly what I remembered that evening, ‘ You gave me three blue pills, I didn’t feel well, you walked me to the couch.’ ”
From the gallery in the courtroom, Cosby could be seen breaking out into a smug smile as Con- stand said, “I told him exactly what he did to me.”
His publicist, Andrew Wyatt, then whispered in his ear, prompting Cosby to swivel in his chair away from the audience. Constand was unable to see the bizarre reaction.
Cosby apologized for his actions and did not deny what had happened, Constand said about the phone call with her mother.
But the TV dad refused to tell the women what drug he gave her.
“He said he would write it down on a piece of paper and give it to us,” Constand said. “He said that he could not see right now, the bottle that he wanted to see.
“He agreed with everything that I said. And he said, again, with my mother on the telephone, that he thought I had an orgasm.”
Prosecutors also played for jurors a batch of voicemails and phone conversations — including one in which a Cosby representative called Constand to “discuss my client and an invitation to contribute to your education fund.”
Prosecutors said Cosby, in a civil deposition, admitted to offering to pay for Constand’s graduate degree as long as she main- tained a 3.0 grade point average.
On cross examination, Cosby lawyer Angela Agrusa grilled Constand on inconsistencies in her story.
Earlier in the day, Canadian Detective David Mason testified that Constand originally told him in 2005 that she had been out to dinner with Cosby and others the night of the assault.
“So, a full year later, you were very clear in your head, that the incident occurred after dinner at a local restaurant with other people,” Agrusa probed.
“It didn’t,” Constand insisted. “I was mistaken. It was not after a group dinner.”
She also said, “I was really confused. I had a lot running through my mind.”
Agrusa also challenged Constand about how she told cops she had never been alone with Cosby prior to the alleged abuse.
“But in fact, you had been alone with Mr. Cosby, prior to that night,” the lawyer asked. Constand replied, “Correct.” Earlier, she testified that Cosby got handsy with her the very first time she went over to his house for dinner.
“I remember that evening, Mr. Cosby sat very closely to me and put his hand on my thigh,” Constand said. “I knew his hand was there. I just kind of moved away. It was the first time he put his hand on my thigh, it was the first time he touched me.”
Constand also recalled traveling to hang with Cosby several times, including to New York for dinner and to Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, when she sat next to him in bed in his hotel room before leaving. Sometimes, Constand said, Cosby reimbursed her for her trip.
“When you laid alone in a bed with him, you were alone?” asked Agrusa on cross.
“To answer the second part of the question, the answer is yes,” Constand answered. “I think I stated on the record there was a lot of confusion.”
Agrusa snapped, “But you weren’t confused about the fact that you were alone in a hotel room with a married man?” “Correct,” Constand replied. Cosby is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault, each carrying up to 10 years in prison. He has said he won’t be testifying in his own defense during the roughly two-week trial.
Constand returns to court Wednesday to continue cross examination.