Update (May 24, 2016, 1:11 P.M.): The Associated Press reports that Cosby has been ordered to stand trial in Pennsylvania, where he has been criminally charged with assaulting Andrea Constand. Cosby’s arraignment is scheduled for July 20.
The first criminal case against alleged serial rapist Bill Cosby has begun with a set of major revelations.
On the same day that the Cosby Show star is scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing in Philadelphia that will determine whether the case goes to trial, the Associated Press has released more damning excerpts from a deposition Cosby gave when his accuser, Andrea Constand, first made a complaint against him in 2005.
Back then—when Constand became Cosby’s first alleged victim to go public—prosecutors declined to charge the once beloved comedian; the case was settled out of court.
But in the fall of 2014, after video of comedian Hannibal Buress calling Cosby a rapist went viral, Cosby’s unsavory past began making headlines again—and woman after woman began to come forward, accusing the Presidential Medal of Freedom winner of assault.
The snowball effect led to court records from Constand’s first complaint being unsealed in the summer of 2015—including a deposition in which Cosby admitted to drugging women he wanted to have sex with. In December, Cosby was formally charged with aggravated indecent assault.
The new excerpts find Cosby, under oath, describing a sexual encounter between him and Constand (in which he admits that he gave his accuser three pills and “didn’t [ask] verbally” for her consent), calling Constand a liar, and explaining why he had seven prescriptions for sedatives he apparently never ingested himself: because he fully intended to give them to other people, “the same as a person would say, ‘Have a drink.’”
The excerpts also delve into other disturbing elements of Cosby’s sexual history, including his sexual relationship with Therese Serignese—now among the nearly 60 women who have accused Cosby of assault. Serignese was 19 when she met Cosby; he was in his late 30s.
Cosby’s relations with teenagers, including another supposed 19-year-old who filed a complaint that did not lead to charges, are a running theme in the deposition. He says that an agency used to send him “five or six” models each week while filming one of his sitcoms, then admits to having a sexual encounter with one of them—who may have been just 17 years old when she met Cosby. (The encounter occurred in 2000, which implies that the sitcom in question was Cosby, which ran for four seasons on CBS.)
The comedian also admits to paying off Constand (who received an “educational trust”) and Serignese in an attempt to prevent his wife, Camille, from discovering the truth.
If found guilty in the criminal case, Cosby “faces up to 10 years in prison and would have to register as a sex offender,” according to NBC.
