Cosby accuser: I was drugged and groped
NORRISTOWN — Bill Cosby's chief accuser took the stand at his sexual assault trial Tuesday to tell her story publicly for the first time, saying the comedian groped her after giving her three blue pills that left her paralyzed and helpless.
“In my head, I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen,” Andrea Constand, a 44-year-old former employee of the basketball program at Temple University, Cosby's alma mater, said in their long-awaited courtroom confrontation. “I wasn't able to fight in any way.”
She added: “I wanted it to stop.”
Cosby, 79, is charged with drugging and violating Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. The TV star once dubbed America's Dad could get 10 years in prison if convicted.
Constand, an athletic 6-footer with colorful arm tattoos and a mane of dark curly hair, could face a bruising cross-examination from Cosby's lawyers, who have argued that the two had a romantic relationship, that she wasn't incapacitated and that the sexual encounter was consensual.
Constand was calm and collected as she testified, looking at the jury as she began describing the assault.
She said Cosby gave her pills he claimed were a natural remedy to ease her stress about a looming career change. “They're your friends. They'll take the edge off,” she quoted him as saying.
She told the jury she started feeling woozy after about 20 minutes, with blurred vision, slurred words and legs that felt like rubber. Cosby then penetrated her with his hand and also placed her hand on his penis and moved it back and forth, she said.She said she was unable to push him away or tell him to stop.Afterward, Constand said, “I felt really humiliated and I felt really confused.”Cosby, sitting across the room at the defense table, leaned in to listen, whispered to his lawyer and, at times, shook his head.Before Tuesday, Constand had never spoken about Cosby in public, barred from doing so under the terms of a confidential settlement they reached in 2006. Her deposition from that lawsuit remains sealed.Some 60 women have come forward to say Cosby sexually violated them, all but destroying his nice-guy image, but the statute of limitations for prosecution had run out in nearly every case.
