The woman who accused comedian Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting her in 2004 told her story for the first time publicly Tuesday at the entertainer’s trial.
Andrea Constand, a former Temple University basketball official, told the suburban Philadelphia courtroom Tuesday that she visited the comic’s Philadelphia home for career advice. She told how Cosby allegedly gave her three blue pills, telling her they were to reduce stress.
“They’re your friends. They’ll take the edge off,” she said Cosby told her.
Constand said the pills instead left her paralyzed and unable to fend off Cosby’s sexual advances.
“In my head, I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen. I wasn’t able to fight in any way. I wanted it to stop,” she said.
She alleged that Cosby put his hands under her shirt and on her genitals.
Cosby whispered to his lawyers and shook his head during her testimony.
His defense lawyers asked Constand why she continued to telephone Cosby after the alleged assault and attended one of his comedy shows.
Constand said it was just business concerning the university basketball team. But the defense emphasized inconsistencies between Constand’s testimony and in accounts she gave to police a decade ago, including how she first met the actor.
The cross-examination will continue Wednesday.
The court also heard from the mother of another one of Cosby’s alleged victims, who corroborated her daughter’s testimony of being assaulted by the comedian in 1996.
More than 50 women allege that Cosby sexually assaulted them in incidents dating back to the 1960s, when he emerged as a major comedy star. Most would have happened too long ago to prosecute.
Constand’s complaint is the only one that has come to trial. Cosby has denied all the charges and is not expected to take the stand.
Cosby is known for his stand-up comedy routines focusing on his Philadelphia childhood and growing up in a middle-class black family. He played a wise and genial doctor in his 1980s television comedy series The Cosby Show. It was the country’s most popular television series for several years, but is scarcely rebroadcast anymore.
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