Entertainer told cops of romantic link with accuser
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Bill Cosby told police that he and Andrea Constand had a romantic relationship well before the January 2004 night when he is accused of assaulting her and that she was aware and conscious during their entire encounter that evening.
The pair, Cosby told police, had kissed and petted “at least three times” in his Philadelphia-area home before the night in question, and she wasn’t paralyzed by pills on that night, as she has testified.
Richard Schaffer, a sergeant in Cheltenham Township, Pa., testified Thursday at Cosby’s sexual-assault trial. He recounted the transcript of his interview with the entertainer when he and several colleagues met with Cosby and his lawyers in January 2005, shortly after Constand made a report to police.
“Did she tell you to stop?” Schaffer had asked Cosby of the sexual contact at his home for which he’s facing three felony charges. “No,” Cosby replied.
“Was Andrea conscious?” he asked. “Yes,” Cosby said. Schaffer also said that Cosby told police the pills he had given Constand were Benadryl. After she told him about her trouble sleeping, he reached into the same supply he normally brought on the road to help him sleep, the entertainer told police.
“Did she ever tell you she was paralyzed by the Benadryl?” Schaffer had asked. “No,” Cosby said.
That account contradicts testimony Constand had given in court over the previous two days, in which she said that there had been no romantic relationship between them and that she previously had rebuffed any attempt at sexual contact. She also said she was barely conscious after ingesting the pills that night and did not want any sexual contact.
“In my head, I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen and those messages didn’t get there,” she told the jury.
The defense is seeking to turn the tide after several days of strong testimony from Constand and her mother, which painted Cosby as a friend and mentor who made sudden and unwanted advances, culminating in what Constand describes as an assault that night.
Cosby told police that neither he nor Constand wanted a serious relationship but that she reciprocated when he had initiated kissing and petting in the months before the night in question. He said that on another night at a Foxwoods hotel in Connecticut, “we did not kiss, (but) I held her in my arms and we talked” for more than two hours.