Accuser calls Cosby ‘serial rapist’ on witness stand
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The first accuser to testify at Bill Cosby’s retrial described the comedian Wednesday as “a serial rapist” as she parried with his lawyers, while a second accuser tearfully confronted the comedian over a 32-year-old assault allegation: “You remember, don’t you, Mr. Cosby?”
The courtroom dramatics prompted mistrial requests from Cosby’s lawyers — which were denied — as prosecutors began putting on a parade of women who say Cosby drugged and molested them long before he met Andrea Constand, the chief accuser in his sexual assault retrial.
Sobbing uncontrollably as she testified, Chelan Lasha told jurors she got to know Cosby through a family connection as a 17-year-old aspiring model and actress. She met the star at a Las Vegas hotel in 1986 under the pretense that he had arranged a photo shoot for her.
She said Cosby gave her a little blue pill he described as an antihistamine to help her get over a cold, along with two shots of amaretto “to help break up the cough.” The combination immobilized her and rendered her unable to speak. Cosby then assaulted her, touching her breast and rubbing himself against her leg, Lasha said.
“I could barely move. He guided me there, and he laid me in the bed. I couldn’t move any more after that. He laid next to me, and he kept touching my breast and humping my leg. I remember something warm hitting my leg,” she said.
Asked what was going through her mind, Lasha testified: “Dr. Huxtable wouldn’t do this.”