The sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby span three generations, four decades, and thousands of miles. When Lyndon B. Johnson was in the White House, Cosby allegedly spiked a 22-year-old woman’s bourbon and tried to force her to perform oral sex on him; the year Barack Obama was first sworn in as president, Cosby allegedly drugged and assaulted a teenager who regained consciousness in a room at the Playboy Mansion to find Cosby’s mouth around her toes. In the 43 years in between, nearly 60 women claim, Cosby repeated the pattern over and over and over again, leaving legions of traumatized — and, until recently, largely ignored — victims in his wake.
Reading the litany of Cosby accusations can almost start to feel like playing some stomach-churning game of Clue, where instead of choosing a suspect, murder weapon, and room, you fill in the blanks with a vulnerable woman (aspiring model, auditioning actress, young writer), a substance (two white pills, a spiked Coca-Cola, wine she tried to decline) and a secluded location (hotel suite, dressing room, one of Cosby’s homes). As stunning as the sexual assault allegations were when they first surfaced in 2005, even more striking is how quickly they faded from mainstream view — how eager the public was, it seems, to get on with things, to go back to loving Cliff Huxtable.
Andrea Constand, the former Temple University administrator who filed a civil suit against Cosby in 2005, settled her case at the end of 2006. But weeks before that case even settled, Cosby was inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame, where he was honored as “a true humanitarian and role model.” (Constand is currently fighting the only criminal case against Cosby. If convicted, Cosby faces up to 10 years in prison.) Less than three years later, Cosby was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.
From the end of 2009 to mid-October 2014 —comedian Hannibal Buress’ stand-up set seen ‘round the internet was posted online on October 17 — only two major publications covered the assault allegations. In February 2014, Gawker asked, “Who Wants to Remember Bill Cosby’s Multiple Sex-Assault Accusations?” Three days later, Newsweek ran an interview with accuser Tamara Green. And then, until October, nothing — nothing, that is, except Netflix announcing plans to release the stand-up comedy film Bill Cosby 77 and the publication of Mark Whitaker’s Cosby: His Life and Times, which, in its almost 500 pages, failed to address the allegations at all.
What follows is a comprehensive timeline of the allegations against and cultural conversation around Cosby, starting from 2000, with the first woman to file a police report about his sexual misconduct, through the present day. We will continue to update this story as the civil cases against Cosby move forward and the criminal case against him goes to trial.
January 28, 2000
Lachele Covington files a police report claiming Cosby, who offered her career advice over dinner at his New York townhouse, “put her hand under his t-shirt and guided it south toward his sweatpants.” The New York Post later reports that Covington, 20, says she pulled her hand away and told Cosby she was leaving, to which he replied, “Fine.”
The police do not question or charge Cosby, having determined that every act until Covington pulled her hand away was consensual.
Covington, an actress, had appeared on Cosby’s CBS show, Cosby, but only in non-speaking roles.
A March issue of the National Enquirer quotes Covington’s relatives as saying Cosby actually grabbed Covington’s breasts, was “trying to put his hand down her pants and exposing himself.” Her father says she “ran out of the house. She was traumatized and didn’t even tell her mother for two days.”
Cosby’s spokesperson, David Brakow, tells the Post, “The story is not true. It did not happen. Mr. Cosby was not contacted by the police and the first he learned about this was from the National Enquirer.”
December 2001
Andrea Constand begins work at Temple University as the director of basketball operations.
That winter, according to her Montgomery County police interview from 2005, Constand meets Bill Cosby for the first time at a women’s basketball game at the Liacouras Center. He proceeds to call her for the next few months to discuss, among other things, locker room renovations. He also provides her with his home phone number (for his Cheltenham residence, outside of Philadelphia); she gives him her personal cell phone number.
The first time she eats dinner at his home, Constand later told police, “he reached over and touched my waist and my inner thigh.”
Over the next few years, he invites her to dinner at his home several times. They speak “occasionally” by phone.
June 21, 2002
President George W. Bush awards Cosby the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. In his statement, Bush commends The Cosby Show, which “revolutionized the portrayal of African Americans on television.”
September 21, 2003
At the Emmys, Cosby receives the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award.
January 2004
Cosby invites Constand to dinner at his Cheltenham home, telling her they can discuss her plans to change careers. Constand alleges that, at this dinner, Cosby sexually assaulted her.
According to Constand, though she tells Cosby she does not want to drink because she hasn’t eaten, he insists she drink wine. He offers her three pills that “will make you feel good.” She asks if they are herbal; he says yes. (In his interview with the police, Cosby maintains that he gave Constand one-and-a-half Benadryl pills.)
After taking the pills and drinking some wine, Constand starts to have blurred vision. Cosby tells her to lie down on the sofa. As she later described to police:
“I got scared. I thought I was having a bad reaction to something. I had no strength in my legs. They felt rubbery and like jelly. I was a little spacy. Everything was blurry and dizzy. I felt nauseous. I remember that I couldn’t keep my eyes open… He said, ‘I’m going to help you relax.’… This was the last thing I remember.”
Constand says Cosby “positioned himself” behind her.
“I was aware that his hands were on my breasts [and] that his hands were in my pants and that his fingers were in my vagina… I also remember him taking my right hand and placing my hand on his penis [which was] erect [and] exposed… I was unable to move my body. I was pretty much frozen.”
When she comes to, Constand says, her bra is undone and her sweater is bunched. It is 4:00 in the morning. Cosby, wearing a robe, offers her a muffin and lets her out the front door.
March 31, 2004
Constand leaves her job at Temple University.
May 2004
Cosby speaks at an NAACP event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education. His remarks berate black Americans for blaming racism for their problems, giving their children “names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap,” and dressing “with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack.”
His infamous address will become known as the “Pound Cake Speech” and will, in 2015, be cited by Judge Eduardo Roberno, who unseals Cosby’s deposition from 2005. Speeches like this one, the judge contended, prove that Cosby purported to be a “public moralist,” which diminished his right to privacy. As Roberno would go on to write:
“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 AP — and by extension the public — has a significant interest.”
January 13, 2005
Constand tells her mother about the alleged assault. This is the first time Constand talks to anyone about what happened because of, as she later told Montgomery County police, “concern about my job,” “an element of fear,” and “some emotional distress.”
That same day, Constand reports the alleged assault to the police in Durham Region, Ontario.
January 16, 2005
Constand’s mother speaks with Cosby by phone. According to Constand, Cosby “admitted to all the things that occurred” and apologizes to both Constand and her mother.
January 22, 2005
Constand is interviewed by Montgomery County police. She describes, in detail, her relationship with Cosby and her memory of the sexual assault.
January 26, 2005
Cosby is interviewed by the Cheltenham Township police department. He describes his sexual encounter with Constand as consensual.
February 10, 2005
Tamara Green, a California lawyer, appears on the Today show and accuses Cosby of sexually assaulting her in the 1970s. She says that, at a working lunch, Cosby gave her two pills he described as cold medicine. Half an hour after taking them, she said, “I was almost literally face down on the table of this restaurant.”
Green alleges Cosby took her back to her apartment.
The center of my being understood that he had gone from helping me to groping me and kissing me and touching me and handling me and you know, taking off my clothes… I actually told him that he would have to kill me, that if he didn’t kill me and he tried to rape me, it was going to go very badly. And I was furious and I’m throwing things around. So he, you know, I guess it was inconvenient at that point, I had not been crushed successfully into submission and he left two $100 bills on my coffee table and he left my apartment.
She explains why she did not come forward before:
The first thing you feel is stupid, and then you feel that no one will believe you. This is the great Bill Cosby, he has tremendous wealth, power, a P.R. machine, a reputation, he is Mr. Jell-O, but the worst thing you feel is stupid. There’s a shame element involved.
She also says, “If I am the only other victim besides the present victim then that’s two too many.”
Through a lawyer, Cosby issues a statement responding to Green’s allegations:
“Miss Green’s allegations are absolutely false. Mr. Cosby does not know the name Tamara Green or Tamara Lucier [her maiden name] and the incident she describes did not happen. The fact that she may have repeated this story to others is not corroboration.”
February 17, 2005
Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor announces he will not pursue criminal charges against Cosby.
Castor says he “finds insufficient, credible and admissible evidence exists upon which any charge against Mr. Cosby could be sustained beyond a reasonable doubt.”
February 21, 2005
Beth Ferrier, who will go on to be Jane Doe No. 5 in Constand’s civil suit against Cosby, wants to go public with her allegations in the National Enquirer. She is interviewed by Enquirer reporter Robin Mizrahi and goes so far as to undergo a lie detector test, which Mizrahi would later say Ferrier passed “with flying colors.”
But according to Mizrahi, her Enquirer editors killed the Ferrier story because Cosby’s lawyers threatened to sue.
In exchange for killing the Ferrier piece, Cosby gives an exclusive interview to the Enquirer. He denies all the allegations against him and, in reference to Constand, says “I am not going to give in to people who try to exploit my celebrity status.”
March 8, 2005
Constand files a civil lawsuit against Cosby. Her lawsuit charges Cosby with battery, assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She seeks a minimum of $150,000 in damages for each of the five counts.
Thirteen women, all of whom allege assaults similar in nature to those described by Constand and Green, are referenced as Jane Doe witnesses in court documents.
June 23, 2005
Ferrier (Jane Doe No. 5) reveals her identity in the Philadelphia Daily News. She says that, in the mid 1980s after ending a months-long consensual relationship with Cosby, she was drugged by Cosby when she saw him before a performance in Denver.
“I woke up and I was in the back of my car all alone,” she said. “My clothes were a mess. My bra was undone. My top was untucked. And I’m sitting there going, ‘Oh my God. Where am I? What’s going on?’ I was so out of it. It was just awful.”
Ferrier says she later confronted Cosby at his hotel; he told her that she “just had too much to drink.”
September 29, 2005
Cosby is deposed in the Constand case. In this deposition, which will remain sealed until 2015, he admits on the record to obtaining drugs for women he wanted to have sex with.
February 1, 2006
Constand sues the National Enquirer and Marty Singer, Cosby’s attorney. She alleges they are responsible for defaming her, libeling her, and invading her privacy.
June 9, 2006
Barbara Bowman, a Jane Doe, is interviewed for a Philadelphia magazine story, “Dr. Huxtable & Mr. Hyde.” That November, she grants Philadelphia an extended interview in which she details her allegations against Cosby. She was a teenager aspiring to be an actress in 1985 or 1986 when she met him. She believes he drugged her once at his brownstone in New York and says he assaulted her in an Atlantic City hotel room:
“Cosby threw me on the bed and braced his forearm against my neck and attempted to disrobe me and himself — I can still remember him messing with his belt. And I was screaming and crying and yelling and begging him to stop.
Cosby was angry but got tired of the fight, and said that I was embarrassing him, that I was making too much noise and making a scene. He threw me out. I grabbed my bags and out the door I went. I got myself to New York... I was forced to go home to Denver as soon as I could get my stuff together. Cosby called me. He told me that he better never, ever see my face, or hear my name, again…
The incidents with Cosby made me feel completely violated, and that I couldn’t trust someone who told me that I could… A few years after it happened, I told a friend what happened, and she took me to a lawyer. He laughed at me. I never told another authority figure about it again.”
October 26, 2006
The NAACP announces that Cosby will be inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame. The Image Awards Chairperson, Clayola Brown, describes Cosby in a statement as “a true humanitarian and role model in the entertainment world… Through his outreach efforts, real life storytelling, emphasis on family values and encouragement for peace and love, he has influenced generations and we are proud to bestow this honor on him.”
November 8, 2006
Cosby and Constand settle before any of the Jane Does can testify. The public statement from their attorneys is that the two “have resolved their differences, and, therefore, the litigation has been dismissed pursuant to local court rule.” Details of the settlement are not disclosed.
December 18, 2006
People magazine interviews five Jane Does for a story, “Bill Cosby Under Fire.” Three agree to share their allegations against Cosby publicly. None of these Jane Does, People reports, went to the police. Two of them “allowed Cosby to pay part of all of their travel and/or living expenses for some time,” three “accept cash from him years after the incidents,” and two “even went on to have consensual relationships” with Cosby.
Regarding these women, People writes:
“Their stories, which take place in several cities and span two decades, illustrate the same pattern of behavior, primarily the accusation that Cosby, then one of the most powerful entertainers alive, targeted them because they were vulnerable and gained their trust by promising to help their careers.”
May 2008
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes a critical, reported essay about Cosby’s black conservatism, “This Is How We Lost to the White Man,” for The Atlantic. Coates’ piece largely ignores the allegations against Cosby, save for a parenthetical near the end:
“(In 2006, Cosby settled a civil lawsuit filed by a woman who claimed that he had sexually assaulted her; other women have come forward with similar allegations that have not gone to court.)”
In November 2014, in a story about the rising number of allegations against Cosby, Coates will, in hindsight, describe this line from 2008 as “a brief and limp mention.” He writes that he believed these allegations; that he chose, for reasons he details in the essay, not to focus on them in the story; and that it is one of his only “writing regrets”:
It was not enough.
I have often thought about how those women would have felt had they read my piece. The subject was morality — and yet one of the biggest accusations of immorality was left for a few sentences, was rendered invisible.
I don’t have many writing regrets. But this is one of them. I regret not saying what I thought of the accusations, and then pursuing those thoughts. I regret it because the lack of pursuit puts me in league with people who either looked away, or did not look hard enough. I take it as a personal admonition to always go there, to never flinch, to never look away.
October 26, 2009
Cosby receives the 12th Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center. He had previously turned down the award on two separate occasions, reportedly because he was upset with the use of profanity during the 1998 ceremony honoring Richard Pryor. During the ceremony, Jerry Seinfeld calls Cosby “the guiding light of my entire career.”
December 22, 2009
Cosby is granted the Marian Anderson Award, which “honors critically acclaimed artists who have impacted society in a positive way, either through their work or their support for an important cause.” The previous year’s recipient was Maya Angelou.
February 17, 2011
Cosby is recognized as an honorary chief petty officer in the United States Navy. He served in the Navy from 1956 until his honorable discharged in 1960. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus calls Cosby “not just a comedian and an actor“ but “a tireless advocate for social responsibility and education — and a constant friend to the Navy,”
November 23, 2013
Cosby performs his first television stand-up special in 30 years. “Bill Cosby: Far From Finished” airs on Comedy Central and kicks off the “Far From Finished” tour, which will end in Atlanta in May 2015.
January 22, 2014
NBC announces Cosby will return to television with a new sitcom. He is slated to “play the patriarch of a multigenerational family” on the same network where The Cosby Show aired.
February 4, 2014
Gawker asks: “Who Wants to Remember Bill Cosby’s Multiple Sex-Assault Accusations?” The piece is published just days after Dylan Farrow’s open letter — in which she says that her father, Woody Allen, sexually assaulted her when she was a child, allegations that had been public before but never described by Farrow herself — runs in the New York Times.
As Gawker’s Tom Scocca writes, Cosby is “one of the most culturally important and successful comedians ever, an elder statesman of the entertainment industry. He’s also someone who has been accused by multiple women of drugging them and sexually assaulting them.”
He goes on:
This coverage was more recent and possibly more prominent that the coverage of the abuse allegations against Woody Allen.
And? Basically nobody wanted to live in a world where Bill Cosby was a sexual predator. It was too much to handle.
“With shocking speed,” Scocca writes, the whole story “was effectively forgotten.”
February 7, 2014
Tamara Green talks to Newsweek about her allegations against Cosby. She says that going public was a “career-ender” for her and that she is sometimes contacted by other women who have been assaulted by celebrities. “They say, ‘We have no voice.’”
“Once I ran into him in a hallway in Las Vegas and pointed at him and began screaming ‘Rapist! Liar! Asshole!’ and he and his whole entourage ran and hid in the bathroom! I told him the last time I saw him that I was going to tell everyone in the world.”
August 14, 2014
At the Television Critics Association press tour, Netflix announces that Bill Cosby 77, a stand-up comedy film, will be released on November 28.
September 2014
Mark Whitaker’s biography, Cosby: His Life and Times, is published. The book, which clocks in at nearly 500 pages, fails to discuss or investigate the sexual assault allegations against Cosby. In November, Whitaker will publicly apologize for this failing, telling New York Times media critic David Carr in a tweet, “I was wrong to not deal with the sexual assault charges against Cosby and pursue them more aggressively.” In July 2015, Simon & Schuster announces it will let Whitaker’s book go out of print without adding any information about the dozens of allegations against Cosby.
October 16, 2014
While performing at stand-up at the Trocadero in Philadelphia, Hannibal Buress does an extended bit about Cosby. He says:
“Bill Cosby has the fucking smuggest old black man persona that I hate. He gets on TV, ‘Pull your pants up black people, I was on TV in the ‘80s! I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom!’ Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches…
I guess I want to just at least make it weird for you to watch Cosby Show reruns. I’ve done this bit on stage and people think I’m making it up…. When you leave here, Google ‘Bill Cosby rape.’ That shit has more results than ‘Hannibal Buress.’”
The next day, Philadelphia magazine posts the clip and a write-up of the performance online. It quickly goes viral.
November 6, 2014
During an interview with the Associated Press, Cosby refuses to comment on sexual assault charges. He then tells an AP interviewer to “scuttle” the interview footage: “If you want to consider yourself to be serious, it will not appear anywhere.” The AP releases video of the exchange on November 19.
November 9, 2014
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art opens an installation of African art that was funded largely by a $716,000 gift from Bill and Camille Cosby. The exhibition, called “Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue from the Collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and Camille O. and William H. Cosby Jr.,” features quotations about Cosby’s work, portraits of Cosby and his family, and art by Cosby’s daughter. Cosby also loaned art from his personal collection for the exhibit.
The museum later adds a message to its website acknowledging that the allegations against Cosby “cast a negative light on what should be a joyful exploration of African and African American art in this gallery.”
November 11, 2014
Cosby’s team attempts to kickstart some positive publicity with a #CosbyMeme generator on Twitter, but the effort is derailed when hundreds of people use the platform to call Cosby a rapist.
CosbyMeme Oh Boy!pic.twitter.com/5shOSuH74c
— @ejc
November 13, 2014
Barbara Bowman, one of the Jane Does from Constand’s lawsuit, publishes an essay in the Washington Post: “Bill Cosby raped me. Why did it take 30 years for people to believe my story?”
Her story laments that public outcry against the comedian did not pick up speed until decades after she went public. “Only after a man, Hannibal Buress, called Bill Cosby a rapist in a comedy act last month did the public outcry begin in earnest.”
November 15, 2014
Asked directly and repeatedly about the sexual assault allegations in a national NPR interview, Cosby gives no response:
SCOTT SIMON: “This question gives me no pleasure Mr. Cosby, but there have been serious allegations raised about you in recent days.”
BILL COSBY: [SILENCE]
SIMON: “You’re shaking your head no. I’m in the news business. I have to ask the question. Do you have any response to those charges?”
COSBY: [SILENCE]
SIMON: “Shaking your head no. There are people who love you who might like to hear from you about this. I want to give you the chance.”
COSBY: [SILENCE]
November 15, 2014
Cosby cancels an upcoming appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, slated for November 19. Neither he nor CBS comments on the change in plans.
November 16, 2014
Joan Tarshis accuses Cosby of drugging and assaulting her twice in 1969. She describes on the blog Hollywood Elsewhere that, at the time, she was 19 years old and had traveled to Los Angeles to work as a comedy writer.
“The next thing I remember was coming to on his couch while being undressed. Through the haze I thought I was being clever when I told him I had an infection and he would catch it and his wife would know he had sex with someone. But he just found another orifice to use. I was sickened by what was happening to me and shocked that this man I had idolized was now raping me. Of course I told no one.”
November 17, 2014
In a Facebook post, Linda Joy Traitz accuses Cosby of getting “sexually aggressive” with her when she was 19 years old and working at Cafe Figaro, a restaurant he partially owned.
“He drove out to the beach and opened a briefcase filled with assorted drugs and kept offering me pills ‘to relax,’ which I declined. He began to get sexually aggressive and wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer. I freaked out and demanded to be taken home.”
November 18, 2014
Supermodel Janice Dickinson appears on Entertainment Tonight and says Cosby drugged and raped her in 1982.
“I woke up, and I wasn’t wearing my pajamas, and I remember before I passed out that I had been sexually assaulted by this man… The last thing I remember was Bill Cosby in a patchwork robe, dropping his robe and getting on top of me. And I remember a lot of pain. The next morning I remember waking up with my pajamas off and there was semen in between my legs.”
She had hinted at the incident in her 2002 memoir, No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World’s First Supermodel, but, as she later revealed during an interview with Howard Stern, she was made to “tone down” that section so Cosby wouldn’t look bad.
That same day, Netflix “postpones” the release of Cosby’s stand-up special, Cosby 77, which was originally scheduled to premiere on November 28.
That night, CNN’s Don Lemon interviews Joan Tarshis and asks her why she did not use her teeth as “a weapon” when Cosby forced her to perform oral sex on him. “There are ways not to perform oral sex if you didn’t want to do it.”
The exchange goes viral. #DonLemonReporting trends on Twitter and, the next day, Lemon issues an on-air apology.
Why did JFK drive down that road in Dallas? You're telling me there were no other streets? #donlemonreporting
— @joepardavila
November 19, 2014
NBC kills an in-development, Cosby-starring, primetime family sitcom which would potentially have premiered in fall 2015, and TV Land announces it will pull all reruns of The Cosby Show, effective immediately.
November 20, 2014
Three more women accuse Cosby of sexual assault: Actress Louisa Moritz, Carla Ferrigno and Therese Serignese.
Moritz tells TMZ that Cosby forced her to perform oral sex on him in 1971, before an appearance on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.
“He took his hands and put them on the back of my head and forced his penis in my mouth, saying, ‘Have a taste of this. It will do you good in so many ways.’”
Ferrigno tells RumorFix Cosby “attacked” and “grabbed” her at a party in 1967, when she was a teenager; she never told anyone because “there was no one to tell.”
Serignese, a nurse and one of the 13 Jane Does in the 2005 case, reveals her identity in the Huffington Post. She says Cosby drugged and raped her in 1976. After he gave her two white pills and a glass of water:
“The next memory I have was I was in a bathroom and I was kind of bending forward and he was behind me having sex with me,” she said. “I was just there, thinking ‘I’m on drugs, I’m drugged.’ I felt drugged and I was being raped and it was kind of surreal. My frame of mind was that it would be over soon and I could just get out of there.”
She says she stayed in contact with Cosby, on and off, for the next two decades, including at least one sexual encounter in the mid-1980s, and that she accepted two payments from him after she was seriously injured in a car accident in 1996. She did not go public at the time, she says, out of fear that she would not be believed.
Michelle Hurd, an actress, writes a Facebook post in which she says Cosby “was VERY inappropriate” with her when she was a stand-in on The Cosby Show:
“It started innocently, lunch in his dressing room, daily, then onto weird acting exercises were he would move his hands up and down my body, (can’t believe I fell for that) I was instructed to NEVER tell anyone what we did together.”
Cosby’s attorney, Marty Singer, releases a lengthy statement denying all allegations against Cosby. It reads, in part: “People are coming out the woodwork with fabricated or unsubstantiated stories about my client.” He also publicizes the criminal record of accuser Linda Joy Traitz, which include charges for criminal fraud and possession of numerous drugs.
November 21, 2014
Three more accusers come forward: Actress Renita Chaney Hill, model Angela Leslie, and one of the 2005 Jane Doe accusers, Kristina Ruehli, who was a secretary at a talent agency in L.A. at the time of the alleged assault.
Ruehli tells Philadelphia magazine that, in 1965 when she was 22 years old, she was invited by Cosby to a party at his house. She claims he spiked her bourbon and tried to force her to perform oral sex on him.
“I found myself on the bed, and he had his shirt off. He had unzipped his pants. I was just coming to.
He was attempting to force me into oral sex. He had his hand on my head. He had his cock out, and he had my head pushed close enough to it — I just remember looking at his stomach hair. And the hair on his chest. I had never seen a black man naked before.
And it never went past that. I immediately came to and was immediately very sick. I pushed myself away and ran to the bathroom and threw up.”
Hill tells a KDKA reporter that she met Cosby in Pittsburgh when she was a 15-year-old model. He cast her in Picture Pages, his educational TV segment, and would fly her to cities where he was to meet him at his hotel at night. He would give her a drink, she says, and she now believes she was drugged.
“One time, I remember just before I passed out, I remember him kissing and touching me and I remember the taste of his cigar on his breath, and I didn’t like it… I remember another time when I woke up in my bed the next day and he was leaving, he mentioned you should probably lose a little weight. I thought that odd, how would he know that?”
I remember being in high school saying to him, ‘I’ll come see you, but I don’t want to drink because it makes me feel funny.’ And he would tell me that if I didn’t drink, I couldn’t come see him.”
Leslie tells the New York Daily News she met Cosby in his Las Vegas suite in 1992, ostensibly to talk about acting opportunities, when he assaulted her. She was 26 years old.
November 22, 2014
The Washington Post publishes an extensive investigation into the allegations against Cosby, including an interview with a new accuser, Victoria Valentino. Valentino, a former Playboy Playmate, claims Cosby drugged and assaulted her and a friend in 1970. She tells the Post that the assault was “a waking nightmare.”
Joyce Emmons, who ran comedy clubs in the 1970s and ’80s, tells TMZ Cosby usually had “a drawer full of drugs,” including Quaaludes, in his hotel room. One night, Cosby offered her a white pill for a migraine; she says she took it, blacked out, and woke up naked in bed in Cosby’s suite with one of Cosby’s friends who had tried (and failed) to hit on her earlier that night. She says when she confronted Cosby about the drug, he “laughed and said it was ‘just a Quaalude.’”
November 23, 2014
Ex-NBC employee Frank Scotti tells the New York Daily News that Cosby used to pay off women he’d assaulted. Scotti says he “became the conduit” for payments of up to $2,000 a month to women, and that he “stood guard” while Cosby invited women back to his dressing room. Scotti, now 90 years old, says, “I felt sorry for the women.”
November 24, 2014
Former model Jewel Allison accuses Cosby of sexual abuse. She tells the New York Daily News that, while dining with Cosby at his home in New York, she drank a glass of wine, suddenly felt “woozy and ill,” and was carried by Cosby to another room, where he grabbed her hand and placed it on his genitals. She vomited the entire cab ride home.
“There’s no such thing as America’s Dad. There’s just a man named Bill Cosby. He’s a very sick sociopath.”
November 25, 2014
A woman who asks to only be identified as “Jena T.” (she later reveals her full name, Kaya Thompson) tells People magazine she met Cosby in New York City when she was a 17-year-old aspiring model in the late 1980s. He met her parents, offered to assist Thompson in her move to New York, and gave her a walk-on role in The Cosby Show. She describes a series of encounters with Cosby, including a instance in which he pressured her into a sex act, after which he gave her $700:
“I’m sure he fixed something to drink. He knew that I was ready to submit. The whole thing was like — I just knew that I gave him a hand job.” Cosby told her where to find lotion in the house, she claims, and she got it. “I’m like a robot, and that is what I became, and that is what I did for him…
I tried my best to muster a sort of, ‘I am an adult making this decision.’ Did I really feel that way? ‘No.’”
November 26, 2014
Donna Motsinger, one of the 13 Jane Does from 2005, reveals her identity. She tells ABC News that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in the 1970s, when she was a waitress in the Bay Area.
“I didn’t feel right. I felt bad. I finally asked him, ‘Can I please have an aspirin?’ Next thing I know, I wake up in the limo with his hands on me. I wake up in my own bed the next morning, all my clothes off, except for my underwear, and I know I have been sexually assaulted.”
Shawn Brown, the woman with whom Cosby admits he had an affair, tells the Daily Mail Cosby drugged and raped her in 1973, when she was 20 years old.
Cosby gave her drinks and a joint, which he said was marijuana, that Brown says she didn’t inhale.
“I was sitting in this wicker chair, hanging from the ceiling. It felt like I was sitting way up high in the corner, that’s how loopy I was — I felt like I was floating… I was in another world, it was more than drowsy, I knew that any second I would be out cold.”
That’s where her memory stops. When she woke up the next morning, she was naked in Cosby’s bed. “I knew I had had sex. My whole body ached. There was no place that was untouched.”
Shortly after that, Brown found out she was pregnant. She still believes her daughter, Autumn, is Cosby’s child. (She says Cosby convinced her to use her ex-boyfriend’s name on the birth certificate so Cosby could protect his reputation.)
University of Massachusetts, Amherst asks Cosby to step down from his chairman duties. Cosby — who received a masters and doctorate in education at the school, was an honorary co-chair of a $300 million fundraising campaign, and had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the university — agrees.
University spokesman Edward Blaguszewski says in a statement that Cosby “no longer has any affiliation with the campaign nor does he serve in any other capacity for the university.”
The Berklee College of Music, which had a scholarship in Cosby’s name, severs all ties with Cosby.
December 1, 2014
Cosby resigns from Temple University’s board of trustees. Temple is Cosby’s alma mater; he had served on the board for 32 years.
Another woman comes forward to accuse Cosby of sexually aggressive behavior: Lisa Jones tells Entertainment Tonight Canada that, in 1986 when she was 17 years old, she met Cosby, who flew her from Vancouver to New York to audition for a potential role in his show. Upon her arrival in the city, she was taken to his residence, where she alleges he ordered her upstairs, made her take off her makeup, get her hair wet and put it up in a ponytail. Then, she says, he poured her alcoholic drinks and became “intense,” telling her the only way women could get ahead in the entertainment industry was to have sex.
“He, out of nowhere, started to walk past me, and crouched in front of my knees, grabbed my legs, and tried to pull them apart,” she says. She fled his home. “All I wanted to do was get out of there because I was in an unsafe environment and that’s what I did.”
December 2, 2014
Judy Huth files a lawsuit against Cosby, accusing him of sexually assaulting her in 1974 when she was 15 years old. Her complaint is for sexual battery and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
She is the first person to take legal action against Cosby since Constand filed her lawsuit in 2005.
As Huth’s lawsuit describes, Cosby allegedly took Huth and a friend to a party at the Playboy Mansion, where he told her to lie about her age. She used the bathroom and “emerged to find Cosby sitting on a bed.” Cosby asked her to sit next to him, tried to “put his hand down her pants, then took her hand and forced her to masturbate him.”
December 3, 2014
Two more women come forward at a press conference led by Gloria Allred. They are joined by Ferrier, who retells her story.
Chelan Lasha says that she was 17 years old and working at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1986 when Cosby drugged her, gave her alcohol and fondled her, at which point she blacked out.
Helen Hayes says, after meeting Cosby at Clint Eastwood’s Celebrity Tennis Tournament in Pebble Beach, California, in 1973, Cosby stalked her “like a predator.” He followed her to a restaurant where she and two friends were having dinner and grabbed her breast.
Ferrier, a Jane Doe, met Cosby in the 1980s and had a consensual affair with him for several months. Backstage after a performance of his in Denver, Ferrier claims, Cosby gave her coffee and she lost consciousness.
“The next thing I knew, hours passed and I woke up in the back of my car alone. My clothes were a mess; my bra was undone. My car was in the alleyway behind the venue. I felt disoriented. I had no idea what happened to me.”
December 4, 2014
Cosby countersues Huth, alleging extortion. He claims her sexual assault allegations are a “meritless and unsupported.” He demands $33,000 in damages.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Mike Stevens rescind Cosby’s honorary chief title, which had been conferred in 2011.
“The Navy is taking this action because allegations against Mr. Cosby are very serious and are in conflict with the Navy’s core values of honor, courage and commitment.”
December 6, 2014
PJ Masten tells the New York Daily News that Cosby attacked her in 1979, when she was a Bunny manager at the Playboy Club in Chicago. She says he convinced her to come up to his room at the Whitehall Hotel by promising her they’d go out to dinner, but when she got there, Cosby was smoking cigars with several male friends. He served her a glass of Grand Marnier on the rocks, she says:
“I don’t remember anything after I drank it. The next thing I knew it was 4 o’clock in the morning and I woke up naked with this disgusting man next to me… I have no idea what he gave me, but I woke up feeling very groggy and very sore. I knew I had been raped,”
She claims to know “a dozen former Bunnies” with stories like hers who are too afraid to come forward.
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner releases a statement regarding the number of allegations against Cosby that cite the Playboy Mansion as the scene of Cosby’s crimes:
“Bill Cosby has been a good friend for many years and the mere thought of these allegations is truly saddening. I would never tolerate this kind of behavior, regardless of who was involved.”
December 10, 2014
Tamara Green sues Cosby for defamation. She claims that, by publicly accusing her of being a liar, Cosby has impugned her reputation. The statute of limitations for defamation is one year; her lawsuit is based on statements Cosby has given recently to Newsweek — “This is a 10-year-old, discredited accusation that proved to be nothing at the time, and is still nothing.” — and the Washington Post. She is suing Cosby in Massachusetts federal court.
Her attorney, Joseph Cammarata, famously defended Paula Jones in 1994, when Jones sued then-President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment.
December 11, 2014
Supermodel Beverly Johnson publishes an essay in Vanity Fair: “Bill Cosby Drugged Me. This Is My Story.” In 1974, Johnson was the first black model to appear on the cover of American Vogue.
“I still struggled with how to reveal my big secret, and more importantly, what would people think when and if I did? Would they dismiss me as an angry black woman intent on ruining the image of one of the most revered men in the African American community over the last 40 years?”
December 13, 2014
Cosby sidesteps addressing the sexual assault allegations in a phone interview with a Page Six reporter, taking “the black media” to task for what he considers to be poor, biased reporting.
“Let me say this. I only expect the black media to uphold the standards of excellence in journalism and when you do that you have to go in with a neutral mind.”
Bill Cosby ‘Breaks His Silence,’ Suggests That He’s The Real Victim
December 15, 2014
Chloe Goins accuses Cosby of drugging and assaulting her at the Playboy Mansion in 2008. She tells the Daily Mail that, after accepting a drink from Cosby at a party and then being taken by him to a room to rest, she woke up to find herself completely naked with Cosby, his pants around his ankles, leaning over and licking her toes.
“He wasn’t on my breasts when I woke, but I could feel, you know, the saliva on them and that he’d been licking on me.
I felt embarrassed, it was a gross, icky feeling, I felt very violated and humiliated.
I was scared, I was just 18 and he was an old man, I was not very sexually experienced and I didn’t really know what had happened, it was violating.”
Camille Cosby releases a statement to CBS comparing the media coverage of the allegations against her husband to Rolling Stone’s infamously debunked feature, “A Rape on Campus.”
NEW: Billy Cosby's