Accuser views Cosby’s admission as vindication
Admits giving women drugs before sex
PHILADELPHIA — Bill Cosby’s accusers see his admission of obtaining Quaaludes to give young women before sex as vindication of their claims he drugged and sexually assaulted them.
But a former television co-star and a prominent Cosby defender say they’re reserving judgment because the 2005 deposition testimony unsealed Monday doesn’t show he did anything wrong.
Cosby admitted he gave Quaaludes, a nowbanned sedative, to a 19-year-old woman before they had sex in Las Vegas in the 1970s. He also admitted giving the powerful drug to unnamed others. His lawyer interfered before he could answer deposition questions in 2005 about how many women were given drugs and whether they knew about it.
“I never thought I would be validated or vindicated in this,” said Joan Tarshis of Woodstock, N.Y., who accused Cosby of drugging and attacking her when she was breaking into comedy writing in 1969. “I mean, it has turned my life around 180 because now all the people that haven’t believed me or us have come out, most of them, and said, ‘We were wrong.’ ”
The Associated Press had gone to court to compel the release of a deposition in a 2005 sexual-abuse lawsuit filed by former Temple University basketball team employee Andrea Constand — the first of a cascade of lawsuits against Cosby that have damaged his image as doting TV dad Dr. Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show.
On ABC’s The View on Tuesday, Whoopi Goldberg said she was still reserving judgment on Cosby, reiterating the stance she has held since the allegations against him resurfaced last winter.
“You are still innocent until proven guilty,” Goldberg said Tuesday. Cosby, she said, “has not been proven a rapist.”
The View co-host Raven-Symone, who starred on Cosby’s 1980s sitcom as a child, said she doesn’t like talking about the allegations because he helped launch her career.
“You need the proof and then I’ll be able to give my judgment here or there,” she said.
More than two dozen women have accused Cosby, 77, of sexual misconduct dating back more than four decades. He has never been charged with a crime.