Cosby gave her a pill, assaulted her, model says
Testimony comes at comedian’s retrial
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Janice Dickinson was a young model in 1982 when she said Bill Cosby offered to fly her to Lake Tahoe to discuss her interest in an acting career.
“I felt comfortable to accept his invitation because I saw this as the next step … to further my career,” she said.
Ms. Dickinson said Mr. Cosby gave her a pill at dinner after she complained of menstrual cramps. He then took her to his hotel room and she began to feel light-headed and struggled to speak.
“He got on top of me and his robe opened,” she said, and he began to have sex with her. “I remember his breath, I remember the taste of his kiss, it smelled like cigars and espresso. I remember he was — ‘America’s Dad’ on top of me and a happily married man with five children, and I remember thinking how wrong it was, how very wrong it was.”
Mr. Cosby, who says he’s legally blind, stared toward the sound of her voice, his mouth fixed in a stony frown.
Mr. Cosby is not charged with raping the former model and TV personality, but Ms. Dickinson’s testimony helped prosecutors tee up a climactic courtroom appearance by Andrea Constand, the former Temple University women’s basketball administrator whom Mr. Cosby is charged with drugging and molesting at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. Ms. Constand was expected to testify
Friday — the second time she will face a jury after Mr. Cosby’s first trial ended without a verdict.
Mr. Cosby says his sexual encounter with Ms. Constand was consensual, asserting through his lawyers that she set him up to score a big payday. Mr. Cosby settled her civil suit for $3.4 million in 2006.
Ms. Dickinson, the fourth accuser to take the stand this week at Mr. Cosby’s trial in Norristown, had a different tone and life experience than the three other women who testified against the entertainer this week. She used a curse word from the witness stand — quickly catching herself and apologizing — and she casually dropped the names of agents, lawyers and other celebrities throughout her testimony.
She said she was in Bali on a modeling job when Mr. Cosby offered to fly her directly to meet him in Lake Tahoe.
“He offered me transportation and he said, ‘Will you fly economy?’” she said. “And I said, ‘No, I will not, I will fly first class.’”
The morning after the alleged rape, Ms. Dickinson said she woke up in her own hotel room, mostly unclothed, and was sore between her legs. The next day, she said, she confronted Mr. Cosby.
“’That wasn’t cool,’” she said she told him. “And he said nothing. He looked at me like I was crazy. And I didn’t feel crazy at that moment standing up for myself saying ‘that’s not cool. That’s not cool.’ I remember saying ‘you’re married, how did this happen, like why did you do it?’ … I wanted to hit him. I wanted to punch him in the face.”
In 2010, when she was on the television show “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew,” Ms. Dickinson said she told Drew Pinsky, the doctor who is the namesake of the show, what had happened to her.
Ms. Dickinson said she also wanted to include the alleged rape in her memoir, but her publisher and ghost writer advised against it.
“[They] said it would never get past Cosby’s legal team,” she said. “He’s a powerful guy and they told me he can ruin your career.”
Also Thursday, Mr. Cosby’s lawyer Tom Mesereau completed his crossexamination of Janice Baker-Kinney, who testified Wednesday that Mr. Cosby gave her pills and had sex with her in Reno, Nev., in the 1980s.
Mr. Mesereau suggested that Ms. Baker-Kinney had called her sister the day after the alleged sex assault and told her only that she got too drunk, not that she had taken pills.
“I don’t remember,” she said. “I can’t say it in any other way other than I don’t recall one bit of my conversation with her the day after.”
Mr. Mesereau questioned her representation from lawyer Gloria Allred for media appearances. Ms. Baker Kinney said she never sought money or litigation against Mr. Cosby, but wanted to speak out to try and help other victims feel safe disclosing their own sexual assaults. She now works with a group of people trying to end the statute of limitations on sex assaults in California.
“It is something so wonderful that has come out of this,” she said. “I couldn’t be prouder.”