In Cosby: The Women Speak, Victims Share Tragic Stories and Eerie Pictures
LatestOn Thursday, A&E aired Cosby: The Women Speak, a collection of interviews with the alleged sexual assault victims of comedian Bill Cosby. To watch the over a dozen women recount what happened to them was sobering and harrowing, not to mention likely empowering for them, because they are finally being heard.
In July, 35 women were photographed for the cover of New York magazine with the title Cosby: The Women. The cover was damning evidence of where Cosby’s image as America’s dad broke with how his alleged sexual assault victims described their attacks. In the A&E special (which you can watch in full online), a number of the victims tell their sides of what happened to them as early as the 1970s. As we know, that means Cosby was on the prowl for victims for almost 40 years when he assaulted Andrea Constand, who sued him in 2005 and settled for an undisclosed sum.
What sticks out in these stories was how calculated Cosby was in his approach. He often went through the women’s agents if they were models or aspiring actresses and offered to be a mentor. Once they were alone, he’d instruct them to do a monologue as if they were drunk. If they’d never had a drink, he’d conveniently fix them a beverage as a prop and then they’d black out soon after.
During Heidi Thomas’s encounter with Cosby, he contacted her parents because, before he flew her to a different city for his mentorship, he wanted to assure them that he was trustworthy. Instead of acting classes, Heidi says the days-long trip was a haze of being drugged and repeated sexual assault. She kept a scrapbook of her trip highlighting her arrival at the airport with her parents, the driver Cosby sent to fetch her from the airport and the ranch where they stayed. She even kept a photo she took with Cosby after she saw him again at a show in St. Louis where she tried to talk to him and understand what had happened between them. He refused to discuss it.