COSBY IS A RAPIST
Drugs & no consent is definition of crime
PRESIDENT OBAMA weighed in on the Bill Cosby rape accusations Wednesday, saying of the actions described in a 2005 deposition: “That’s rape.” Obama stopped short of calling for Cosby to lose his Medal of Freedom.
NOW YOU’VE heard it from the top: Drugging a woman and having sex with her is rape.
President Obama — raising eyebrows in a nationally televised news conference — weighed in Wednesday on the controversy surrounding the mountain of sexual-assault allegations against Bill Cosby.
“This country, any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape,” Obama said, when asked about the possibility of revoking the scandal-scarred comedian’s Presidential Medal of Freedom. “If you give a woman, or a man for that matter, without his or her knowledge, a drug, and then have sex with that person without consent, that’s rape.”
The President launched the Cosby smackdown during the press briefing that was mostly about the landmark Iran nuclear deal reached a day earlier.
His blunt assessment quickly grew praise from some of Cosby’s accusers.
“I’m proud of our President for speaking up on behalf of all the women who have courageously stepped forward,” former Playboy bunny P.J. Masten told the Daily News. “I think there needs to be a movement to change the laws – to have Cosby’s medal revoked and have the statute of limitations lifted on rape.”
Masten told the Daily News in December that Cosby drugged and attacked her in 1979 while she was working at the Playboy Club in Chicago.
Lawyer Gloria Allred, who represents several of the women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault, also praised Obama.
“I thought that his comments were strong, accurate and compassionate,” Allred said in a statement to The News. “I know that the President cares about women’s rights, and the right of women to be free of drugging and rape is a right that I am certain that the President would want for his wife, his daughters and all women wherever they might reside.”
Allred was hopeful that Cosby’s Medal of Freedom could still be taken away.
“The President has not yet cited any legal reason why it could not be done,” she said.
Cosby was awarded the medal, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., in 2002 by then-President George W. Bush. An online petition calling on Obama to void the award has garnered more than 10,000 signatures.
Obama said on Wednesday there was no precedent for revoking the medal. “We don’t have that
‘woman, If you give a or a man for that matter, without his or her knowledge, a drug, and then have sex with that person without consent, that’s rape.
mechanism,” he said.
More than two dozen women have come forward with claims going back four decades that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted them. Last week, court papers from a 2005 case were released in which Cosby admitted to obtaining Quaaludes in order to drug women for sex.
Cosby, 78, has never been criminally charged and has repeatedly ducked questions about the allegations.
“I totally felt good that the President addressed it,” said Angela Leslie, a model and actress who accused Cosby of attacking her in a Las Vegas hotel in 1992. “I applaud him for standing up and making a statement. I think (the medal) should be taken away. It shouldn’t be wasted on someone who’s drugging and raping women.”