Is Bill Cosby A Rapist?

"It’s even worse because Bill Cosby has the f&#kin’ smuggest old man black persona that I hate. He gets on TV, ‘Pull your pants up black people, I was on TV in the ‘80s! I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom!’ Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple of notches."

"I guess I want to just a least make it weird for you to watch Cosby Show reruns. I’ve done this bit on stage and people think I’m making it up. When you leave here, Google ‘Bill Cosby rape’. That s&#t has more results than Hannibal Buress."

phillymag.com

Joan Tarshis, then an aspiring comedy writer, claims she recalled Mr Cosby mixing her a drink at his studio bungalow. “The next thing I remember was coming to on his couch while being undressed,” she wrote on the website Hollywood Elsewhere.

“Through the haze I thought I was being clever when I told him I had an infection, and he would catch it, and his wife would know he had sex with someone. But he just found another orifice to use. I was sickened by what was happening to me and shocked that this man I had idolized was now raping me.”

At the time Ms Tarshis told no one what had happened, and claims she later felt obliged to accept Mr Cosby’s invitation to his stand-up show, where she said he again mixed her a drink, and she grew woozy.

“The next thing I remember was waking up in his bed back at the [hotel], naked. I remember thinking ‘You old s***, I guess you got me this time, but it’s the last time you’ll ever see me.’”

gawker.com

In her article, Barbara stats: "Cosby won my trust as a 17-year-old aspiring actress in 1985, brainwashed me into viewing him as a father figure, and then assaulted me multiple times."

"In one case, I blacked out after having dinner and one glass of wine at his New York City brownstone, where he had offered to mentor me and discuss the entertainment industry. When I came to, I was in my panties and a man’s t-shirt, and Cosby was looming over me. I’m certain now that he drugged and raped me."

"But as a teenager, I tried to convince myself I had imagined it. I even tried to rationalize it: Bill Cosby was going to make me a star and this was part of the deal. The final incident was in Atlantic City, where we had traveled for an industry event."

"I was staying in a separate bedroom of Cosby’s hotel suite, but he pinned me down in his own bed while I screamed for help. I’ll never forget the clinking of his belt buckle as he struggled to pull his pants off. I furiously tried to wrestle from his grasp until he eventually gave up, angrily called me “a baby” and sent me home to Denver."

As the AP interviewer squirms uncomfortably in his chair, Cosby tells him that he has agreed to do the interview because he expected the AP to have "integrity." (Cosby appears to be under the mistaken impression that the word "integrity" is defined as "willingness to avoid discussion of the numerous women who have accused you of drugging and raping them if that would make you uncomfortable Mr. Cosby.")

"I would appreciate it if it was scuttled," Cosby says. "I think that if you want to consider yourself as serious, then it will not appear anywhere." An off-camera Cosby associate can then be heard insisting that another AP reporter, Lynn Elber, had agreed not to question Cosby about the rape allegations, implying that there was some sort of AP policy against covering the issue.

The AP obviously refused to accede to Cosby's demands not to show the interview. But how many times, over the years, have reporters agreed not to question Cosby about the rape allegations? How many times has he succeeded in having such interview segments quashed?

Perhaps the answer to those questions could help explain why the rape allegations against Cosby had so little effect on his career until now.

vox.com

One of the most common reactions is denial—denial of a depth and intensity so overwhelming that it's unlikely that people like you or me can realistically grasp it. The frantic need to deny that it happened frequently leads victims to place themselves in harm's way in a desperate effort to regain control of themselves and their environment.

You see it in shell-shocked soldiers returning to the front lines, in earthquake survivors refusing to leave their homes, in abused children seeking care and attention from their abusers and, of course, rape victims returning to their rapists. It's very, very common. It is not a sign of weakness or stupidity. It's a symptom of a traumatised brain screaming for help.

gawker.com

Believing or even paying attention to the allegations against Cosby would have required us all to do work and make sacrifices, and we didn't want to do that. Ignoring his accusers meant that we got to keep our happy childhood memories of the Cosby Show. Ignoring his accusers meant that we got to keep laughing at Cosby's classic standup routines, which still hold up, even after all those years. Ignoring his accusers meant that we got to keep Cosby as a powerful cultural figure.

Believing the accusers, or just entertaining the thought that they could be telling the truth, meant that we would have to come to terms with the knowledge that someone we accepted into our lives, someone whose art we loved, had the capacity to commit this evil act, over and over. We didn't want to do that. So, for a long time, we didn't — until comedian Hannibal Buress made the decision to come at the king, and did not miss.

vox.com