Cosby’s accuser branded a con artist
NORRISTOWN: Bill Cosby’s chief accuser, Andrea Constand, took the witness stand for the second time to tell a story of molestation and broken trust, describing for jurors how the comedian knocked her out with three blue pills and then sexually assaulted her at his home.
The defence has blasted her as a “con artist” who levelled false accusations against the comedian as part of a scheme to get money from him.
During cross-examination on Friday, Cosby’s lawyer, Tom Mesereau, went through a thick binder of Constand’s police statements and prior testimony as he tried to poke holes in her story. But the jury heard only minor discrepancies between what she said in the past and her account on the witness stand.
After telling jurors in his opening statement that Constand had operated a Ponzi scheme while running women’s basketball operations at Temple University, Mesereau’s evidence was a cut-andpaste email that Constand sent to a friend years ago. She testified that she barely remembered it.
Constand said Cosby offered her pills and wine after she said she was “stressed” about telling the Temple basketball coach of her plans to leave to study massage therapy in her native Canada.
She said Cosby, a Temple trustee, called the pills “your friends” and said they would “help take the edge off”.
Instead, Constand said, the pills made her black out.
She awoke to find the actor known as “America’s Dad” penetrating her with his fingers, touching her breast and putting her hand on his penis.
She said she wanted Cosby to stop but couldn’t say anything. She tried moving her arms and legs but couldn’t do that either.
Constand said she awoke between 4am and 5am to find her bra up around her neck and her pants half unzipped. She said Cosby stopped her as she went to leave: “All he said was there’s a muffin and tea on the table and then, ‘all right’ and then I left.”
The now 80-year-old entertainer has said he gave Constand the cold medicine, Benadryl, and that she consented to a sexual encounter.
Constand testified she decided to report the assault to police in January 2005, about a year later, jarred to action by a nightmare and an increasing awareness of consent issues from her massage therapy training.
“I didn’t want it to happen to anybody else, what had happened to me,” she said.
She said she was “very scared” about going to police because
“he was a Temple trustee. A very powerful man. An entertainer. A very famous person.”
Constand’s allegation is the only one among dozens against Cosby that has led to criminal charges. If convicted, Cosby faces up to 10 years in prison on each of three related aggravated indecent assault charges.
Mesereau, best known for winning an acquittal in Michael Jackson’s 2005 child molestation case, told jurors that Constand was a pauper who stiffed roommates on bills and racked up big credit card debt until she “hit the jackpot” in 2006, when Cosby paid her
$3.4 million (about R41 million) to settle her civil lawsuit over the assault allegation.
Cosby’s lawyers say Constand outlined her get-rich scheme to a Temple colleague, Marguerite Jackson.
The defence plans to call Jackson as a witness and says she will testify that Constand mused about framing a celebrity before she lodged sexual abuse allegations against Cosby in 2005.
Jackson, a longtime Temple official, has said that she and Constand worked closely together, had been friends and had shared hotel rooms several times. She has said Constand once commented to her about setting up a “high-profile person” and filing suit.
Constand testified that she remembers having a hotel room to herself at Temple’s away basketball games and did not recall ever rooming with Jackson.
The AP does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand and the other women have done. – Ap/african News Agency/ana