He is not the only one who has been accused. Multiple women have accused Bill Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting them. Cosby has repeatedly denied the allegations, and settled a 2006 lawsuit that included 13 accusers.
However,Tamara Green, a former trial attorney now living in Southern California who says Cosby assaulted her in the 1970s; only came forward in 2005, after hearing about some of his other alleged victims.
In a new confession with Newswatch, Green talked candidly about how her confession was a “career-ender,” and about how difficult it can be for women who accuse powerful men of sexual assault.
Her account below
I met him when I was a 19-year-old model in the 1970s. I was really pretty and I thought the world was my oyster. I thought, “Of course people will invite me places.” I was friends with a plastic surgeon who knew [Cosby], and we would all go to the racetrack together. I was in charge of driving the limo so they could all get loaded and I’d drive them home.
He asked me to help him raise capital for a club he wanted to start. One day, I called him to cancel a meeting because I was feeling really sick, and he said, "Why don’t you come over to this restaurant I’m at, you’ll feel better if you have lunch.” I sat down, and he gave me what he said was two pills of [an over-the-counter cold medicine]. I swallowed them, and 20 minutes later I felt terrific; 30 minutes later, I was face-down in my soup. He volunteered to take me home. And then, because I was so ill, he volunteered to undress me and put me to bed. I started fighting him -- I took a lamp and broke a window. He finally left. When I woke up, I saw that he left two 100-dollar bills on the table next to my front door. I was so sincerely and deeply infuriated that, even through the drugs.... I was crazed. I wanted to rip his neck off.
The next day, I went to go visit my brother, who was in the terminal ward at a children’s hospital. Cosby, smart man that he is, had been to the hospital to give presents to the kids. By the time I got to the hospital, my brother was glowing that the great Bill Cosby had given him a portable radio.
I was sitting in my kitchen [in 2004] and saw CNN was covering the “allegation” that another girl had been drugged and assaulted by him, and I thought, surely this will all come out now, surely it’s happened all over the place. Then the district attorney issued a statement that it was still under investigation, but it seemed a “he said / she said” type of situation, as all sexual assault cases are. So I called and left a very substantial message, and I didn’t hear from them. I called the detectives, and didn’t hear from them either. All I wanted to do was back her up, so I called her lawyer, and they took my statement and listed me as a Jane Doe. Then, the media found me, and completely assaulted me.
The first thing I thought when I heard [the 2004 allegations] was, “Really, at [his] age?” I guess the drugs explain all that.
A lawyer told me I would be crazy to come out after 20 years and accuse him. But I waited and waited to see who would back this girl up, and nobody else would. The Cosby team started smearing her, making her seem petty and loose and cheap.
I saw how nobody believed her. She had trusted him, and he had drugged her and then assaulted her, just like what happened to me. I saw that nobody was going to take him on, so I felt like it was my duty to risk my neck and stand [up] for all the other women who’ve been assaulted by him.Here’s a question: that girl who he attacked in 2004, how did it work out for her? It never works out, unless you’re bleeding and there’s DNA and an eyewitness. I was 19 and he was the king of the world, so how was it going to work? I was a teenager. Nobody would’ve believed me.
It was a career-ender when I came forward. All my clients were suddenly interested in whether I was a liar or a former hooker or a philanderer. People want their lawyers to be serious-minded intellectuals, honest and honorable people. It casts a shadow on your character if you dare to attack one of these icons. The whole community -- my neighbors, my friends, people in the industry [her ex husband is an Academy Award-winning writer and producer] -- hinges your identity upon what happened. To come out and admit that you’ve had a guy’s hands all over you is disgusting to some people. People accused me of seeking my own fame, but I had a high profile of my own. I don’t need a rapist or child molester to make me famous.
