The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Bill Cosby accuser makes first public statements since trial
PHILADELPHIA » The woman whose allegations that Bill Cosby drugged and assaulted her led to his conviction said the pills he gave her made her feel like a “limp noodle,” leaving her helpless to fend off the 2004 attack.
Andrea Constand, 45, a former Temple University women’s basketball administrator, spoke to NBC News in her first interview since the jury convicted “The Cosby Show” star of three counts of aggravated indecent assault.
Her comments closely tracked what she said on the witness stand at Cosby’s two trials — the first ended in a hung jury last summer — as she described how Cosby knocked her out with three blue pills he called “your friends,” then attacked her at his suburban Philadelphia home.
“My mind is saying, ‘Move your hands. Kick. Can you do anything? I don’t want this. Why is this person doing this?’ And me not being able to react in any specific way,” Constand said in the taped interview, a brief clip of which aired on NBC’s “Today” show on Thursday. “So I was limp. I was a limp noodle.”
She added: “I was crying out inside, in my throat, in my mind, for this to stop. And I couldn’t do anything.”
Constand said she felt ashamed and didn’t immediately tell anyone about the assault because she thought no one would believe it.
NBC’s full interview with Constand is due to air Friday night on the network’s “Dateline” show.
Cosby is confined to his home awaiting sentencing Sept. 24. The comedian, who turns 81 in July, is likely to face a sentence of five to 10 years in prison.
Cosby has maintained his innocence, saying his sexual encounter with Constand was consensual. His lawyers attacked Constand at the April retrial as a “con artist” who framed Cosby in order to extort a huge civil settlement from him. Constand sued Cosby after prosecutors initially declined to file charges, settling with and keepers from the zoo and police officers circled the area where the peacocks were last seen. They also checked locations where the zoo teams thought the peacocks might explore.
The peacock found dead on the highway on Thursday likely had been hit by a car, zoo spokeswoman Dana Lombardo said. him for nearly $3.4 million over a decade ago.
The four peacocks were part of a larger flock that roams freely on the zoo’s grounds and that is cared for by veterinary staff. The birds sometimes venture past the zoo’s gates but normally return on their own, Lombardo said. They have a homing sense, and it’s unusual for them to travel that far from the zoo, she said.