Evening Standard

‘Here was America’s dad on top of me’ ... former model accuses Cosby of rape

- David Gardner US Correspond­ent

FORMER model and reality TV show star Janice Dickinson has told a court how she was drugged and raped by “America’s dad” Bill Cosby.

The Celebrity Big Brother 2015 housemate claimed Cosby gave her a pill to ease menstrual cramps — but the drug left her unable to move and protect herself from his “gross” sex attack.

Dickinson, 63, pictured, said the assault happened in Lake Tahoe, California, in 1982 when she was

27. “I didn’t consent. Here was ‘America’s Dad’ on top of me. A married man, father of five kids,” she told the jury. “I was thinking how wrong it was. How very wrong it was.”

She said Cosby, now 80, looked at her “like

I was crazy” when she confronted him: “I wanted to hit him. I wanted to punch him in the face.”

Today at Montgomery county court in Pennsylvan­ia, Cosby’s chief accuser Andrea Constand, 45, was set to take the stand. Cosby denies three counts of aggravated indecent assault. His first trial, which ended last year without a verdict, featured Ms Constand’s claim that he drugged and molested her at his Philadelph­ia mansion in 2004. He says the encounter was consensual.

Under cross-examinatio­n yesterday, Dickinson admitted fabricatin­g a story in her 2002 memoir that she rebuffed Cosby’s advances. She said she cut out the sexual assault story after her publisher warned it could ruin her career, but she insisted she was telling the truth over the alleged rape. The retrial continues.

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