The New York Times is reporting the Cosby story.
The entertainer Bill Cosby testified 10 years ago that he had obtained Quaaludes in the 1970s to give to young women with whom he wanted to have sex, according to a court document unsealed on Monday.
That must be the wording of the court document, since all the outlets are reporting it that way, but damn it’s bad wording. You don’t “have sex with” someone you just sedated! Having sex with is, obviously, mutual – that’s what “with” means. He wanted to fuck them, not “have sex with” them. He wanted to rape them. If he’d wanted to have sex with them, he wouldn’t have sedated them.
It was an acknowledgment, the first to become public and in Mr. Cosby’s own words, that he viewed powerful, sedating drugs as a part of his sexual encounters with women.
It was an acknowledgment that he wanted them unable to resist.
That’s an admission of rape, if you ask me.
The name of the woman Mr. Cosby cites in his testimony is redacted in the paperwork, but the discussion in the court record closely tracks an incident recounted by Therese Serignese, who says she was sexually assaulted by Mr. Cosby in a Las Vegas hotel after one of his performances in 1976.
Joseph Cammarata, a lawyer for Ms. Serignese, said the account in Mr. Cosby’s testimony of the Las Vegas encounter with a woman and Ms. Serignese’s story of her encounter with Mr. Cosby were one and the same. “It’s Therese,” he said. “It’s the same case.”
Ms. Serignese, then 19, has said in interviews that Mr. Cosby gave her pills in a backstage room and that she took them because he was an authority figure and she felt compelled. Her next memory, she said, was of feeling drugged and being sexually assaulted by him without her consent.
But everybody thought he was such a nice guy!
This next bit is fascinating in relation to that:
The records from the Constand case were released in response to a request by The Associated Press, which Mr. Cosby and his legal team had fought. “It would be terribly embarrassing for this material to come out,” his lawyer, George M. Gowen III, argued last month.
In deciding to release the documents, Judge Eduardo Robreno of United States District Court said he was guided by the sense that Mr. Cosby had fashioned himself as a moral guide with pronouncements that offered “his views on, among other things, child-rearing, family life, education and crime.”
“The stark contrast between Bill Cosby, the public moralist, and Bill Cosby, the subject of serious allegations concerning improper (and perhaps criminal) conduct is a matter as to which The A.P. — and by extension the public — has a significant interest,” the judge wrote in a memorandum issued on Monday.
Yes it is. Yes.it.is.
As you say, that’s the precise wording in the deposition:
Source.
I love the way Cosby’s lawyers are saying that his admission that he was buying disassociatives to give them to women he planned to rape might be “embarrassing” and shouldn’t be public knowledge. Why, yes, yes – that is the very definition of fucking “embarrassing.”
I liked the judge’s rationale that, since it was Cosby’s own words, he shouldn’t be too embarrassed about it.
… he had obtained Quaaludes in the 1970s to give to young women with whom he wanted to have sex…
Had I read that without knowing the allegations against Cosby, and with the general drug-naïveté of the average American, I would have thought he was using the ‘ludes as just an enticement, a (somewhat-more) adult version of offering candy to children.
I suppose the reporters and editors chose the article’s wording with lawyers leaning over their shoulders.
I in no way want to defend Mr. Sleazebag Rapist Cosby here.
But I keep coming back to this section: “Judge Eduardo Robreno of United States District Court said he was guided by the sense that Mr. Cosby had fashioned himself as a moral guide with pronouncements that offered ‘his views on, among other things, child-rearing, family life, education and crime.’ ”
My understanding is that the judge wasn’t deciding on any of this based on Mr. Cosby’s culpability, but rather on whether releasing his own words violated his right to privacy.
That’s a right that’s already pretty minimal for celebrities and public figures. But the notion that even the small island of privacy they have may get diminished if they publicly express opinions on matters of public concern is … troubling.
The judge seems to be saying that, if he’d just kept his mouth shut, then he might have been able to keep his words out of the public eye.
If someone exercising their right to freedom of speech causes them to involuntarily give up some of their other rights — even if that person is a hypocritical rapist sleazebag — shouldn’t that make the rest of us who care about protecting all rights feel a bit concerned?
This is gonna HURT:
https://time.com/3949005/bill-cosby-statue-disney-world/
“Disney will remove a statue of Bill Cosby from its Hollywood Studios theme park, a spokeswoman for the company said Tuesday, following revelations through court documents that support multiple allegations that the veteran comedian drugged multiple ….”
I am of course, reminded of another person who intoxicated people to rape them. He went ahead and wrote a book called ‘The Moral Arc’ on how ‘science and reason lead humanity toward truth, justice, and freedom’.
That’s one hell of a modus operandi.
What I am curious of, is whether Shermer will publicly apologize or keep denying this and let the spin go out of his control. He’s pretty obviously a good target for multiple groups right now: conservative media, which will seize on his narrative, maligned ex-Cosby supporters, who will perceive that the seemingly comparable Shermer has gotten a free pass due to white privilege, and of course the standard liberal/feminist/skeptic blogosphere, which already has reasons to hate him. It’s only a matter of time.
It’s probably been said (even lots) but I can’t help but read this as a bit of a Rorschach test for a particular manifestation of sexism.
Three dozen women telling stories with remarkable similarities? Meh. Bitches could still need lyin’…
Oh. He confessed you say?
Fine. Now we’ve got somethin’.
We criticise (and we should) the principle a certain nasty old state religion advanced that a woman’s testimony is somehow worth half a man’s. But apparently, in at least some parts of the court of popular opinion, even some 37 to 1 still just gets you to the Scottish verdict ‘unproved’.
@ brucegee1962
I understand the concern about privacy, but I think the judge’s reasoning is defensible because the sealing of civil testimony isn’t a fundamental, constitutionally-protected kind of privacy, but rather an “extra protection” to facilitate a legal process. In this case, the public interest in seeing corroborating evidence of his (likely criminal) M.O. could override his personal privacy interest. Making himself a public figure on the issue only weakened his case.
It does seem a bit of a stretch, but my non-expert impression is that the option to have civil proceedings sealed is good to have in many cases but isn’t a type of personal privacy that needs be treated as sacrosanct.
Out of his own mouth.
People DID use quaaludes for consensual sex back then. The drug did have that reputation. But that is obviously not the case with Cosby. No hint that HE took them.
Gee, if he’d just used alcohol to incapacitate them he’d be off the hook. Mentioning the ‘chemical warfare’ in that case is magically transformed into ‘slut shaming.’ Which is absolutely insane. We still have a culture where ‘normal’ dating routinely involves disabling quantities of alcohol.