‘I’m no longer afraid’
New York magazine interviews 35 women who say they were sexually assaulted
New York magazine has published an instantly iconic front cover featuring interviews and photographs from 35 women who allege actor and comedian Bill Cosby sexually assaulted them between 1960 and 1996.
The cover also features a vacant chair, intended to represent other women who cannot speak up, either through personal choice or a non-disclosure agreement.
On Twitter, The Empty Chair hashtag trended globally Monday and the article itself was tweeted tens of thousands of times.
Social media users voiced a mix of emotional admissions that they were victims of sexual assault and/or offered support for those who had not yet felt comfortable enough to speak publicly of their ordeal.
Elon James White, CEO of independent digital platform This Week in Blackness, anonymously published direct messages he received documenting experiences of rape.
In the article, the alleged victims, an “unwelcome sisterhood,” document their attacks in 35 interviews and six audio and video excerpts that the magazine says were all conducted separately.
“I felt like a prisoner,” one of the accusers, Barbara Bowman, told New York magazine. “I felt like I was kidnapped and hiding in plain sight. I could have walked down any street of Manhattan at any time and said, ‘I’m being raped and drugged by Bill Cosby,’ but who the hell would have believed me? Nobody, nobody.”
Another accuser, Chelan Lasha, said: “I’m no longer afraid. I feel more powerful than him.”
After the article was published, the New York magazine’s website went down for several hours. It was not clear whether the crash was a result of a substantial increase in web traffic, or a distributed denial of service attack. One hacker claimed to be responsible, but the Star could not verify if that was true. A tweet from the media outlet said: “Our site is experiencing technical difficulties. We are aware of the issue, and working on a fix.”
The project, which the magazine says was “six months in the making,” follows years of sexual assault accusations and months of increased media and public scrutiny of the veteran performer and star of The Cosby Show.
Stand-up tour dates were cancelled at the end of 2014 following public outcry over the increasing number of accusations, some from well-known public figures. Despite protests outside the venues, several Cosby gigs in Ontario went ahead in January.
The Associated Press recently fought to publish documents related to a 2005 court hearing, in which Cosby admitted obtaining the sedative drug Quaaludes with the intent of giving them to young women prior to sexual intercourse.
His lawyers defended the actions, arguing in a letter that he “admitted to nothing more than being one of the many people who introduced Quaaludes into their consensual sex life in the 1970s.”
“A woman can be not believed for 30 years? But it takes one man? VICTORIA VALENTINO (ON A MALE COMEDIAN WHOSE JOKES ABOUT COSBY SPARKED THE CURRENT SCANDAL) TIME OF ALLEGED ASSAULT: 1969 “I felt ashamed. I was embarrassed to be me.” LOUISA MORITZ TIME OF ALLEGED ASSAULT: 1971 “The part of it I wasn’t prepared for was the onslaught of women that have been assaulted and them telling me their story because I told mine.” BEVERLY JOHNSON TIME OF ALLEGED ASSAULT: MID 1980S